Balancing the Personal and the Professional
Ever since I dove into this whole social media thing, I’ve heard the following messages on repeat:
- Your blog is your resume
- You must establish your personal brand
- You must use your site as a storefront, a store where you’re selling one product – yourself.
As a result, I feel pressure to write posts about “smart” things complete with”smart” commentary. I feel the need to write about topics related to the social media landscape, all from the perspective of my twentysomething viewpoint. I feel the need to cater this blog to an audience of people who I want to get to know me, people who might hire me, who might work with me, people who I respect and admire. Like the bullet points on any job description, I want my posts to showcase who I am and what I do.
At the same time, I still have to embrace who I am outside of the social media bubble. I am a person, a young female who has insecurities, doubts, and dreams. I can’t write like the A-list bloggers I read because I simply don’t have the experience or the authority to project that same voice. I want to blog about my friends and silly stupidnes that ensues when we get together. I want to blog about how much I enjoyed Iron Man and how much I cried when I went to watch Sex & the City at midnight on Thursday. I want to blog about my relationships, the move I’m about to make to Boston, the absurdity of politics in America, the ignorance of the average person, the awesomeness that is Wii, and also how desperately I want to get my nails done today.
Most of the time when I don’t post, it’s not because I don’t have a lot to say, it’s because I have too much to say. I get wrapped up in thinking about what I *should* write, that I skip over what I *feel* and *need* to write, to the point where I just don’t do it at all.
I realize I acknowledged this in previous posts I wrote, but it’s so much easier to dish out advice than execute it yourself. That said, I’m remotivating myself to be a better blogger by posting more. I think I can establish myself professionally without having to compromise myself personally. Hopefully both voices will be heard in the posts to follow.
I’ll leave off with an excerpt from one of my favorite movies, Across the Universe:
“What you do defines who you are.”
“No. Who you are defines what you do.”
“It doesn’t matter what you do. It’s how you do it.”
40: Ack! I need my blog back!
I recently experienced a surge of traffic to my site as a result of an assignment I worked on with Chris Brogan, social media king and Mr. all around nice guy. Back in March he gave me the challenge of compiling a list of his best blog posts dating back to July 2007 (anyone familiar with the blog knows what I was working with – a lot of content and even more challenging, a lot of *quality* content). To say I was overwhelmed would be an understatement because at the time, I couldn’t possibly fathom how I would determine which posts were worthy of a “Best of Brogan” page. There was just so much good stuff there.
That said, I spent a considerable amount of time reading and re-reading his archives and compiled a list using a very non-formulaic system. I asked myself if a post was useful to me as social media newbie, contained thoughtful comments from readers, was more than just a paragraph blurb or embedded video, and contained something unique to Chris as a blogger/thinker/writer. What I took away from the experience was invaluable.
Here’s my problem today: People are coming to my site and there’s no blog! I’m being publicly acknowledged as someone who knows arguably the #1 social media blog on the web front to back, yet I don’t do what I spent hours studying.
Truth be told, I blog a lot and manage about 10 online properties, but I’ve really neglected my personal stuff on here. I can’t possibly describe the level of anxiety I have right now because my blog is in this shape, but what can I do? I either put up a splash page with a tacky “Under Construction” or “Coming Soon” notice, or I just do what I should be doing – write, write, write.
(Note: My site wasn’t always this way, but thanks to a botched WordPress 2.5 upgrade and a backed up copy of my blog on a 500GB Seagate external harddrive that no longer mounts (umm, someone wanna tell Robert Scoble to be my new bff?), it is what it is.
I’m on a mission to give myself blog CPR and I’m going to do that by writing everyday for the next forty days straight. I did it last spring and I’ll do it again. It’s a challenge that any blogger should do if they want to really get themselves back on track.
After publishing this post, I’m one down, 39 to go…
