Personal branding is dressing up in a costume

The day after I wrote the post about Showing Your Private Parts in regards to blogging, a month old article by James Altucher came up as unread in my reader.

He says his policy is to be completely honest, and that it is the opposite of personal branding.

I’m an author, and personal branding was hot in author circles for a while, died down, and is heating up again with John Locke’s recent tome about how he sold a million e-books on Amazon.  How I Sold 1 Million eBooks in 5 Months!  Everybody wants to sell a million e-books on Amazon, I know I do, so now everybody is following Locke’s advice, which is a form of personal branding.  Locke’s background is sales (insurance) and he was damn good at it.

He sold his business, had lots of money and decided to be a novelist.   The first thing he did was write a series with one protagonist.  He released five books all at once.  Then he used Twitter, twitting as his character, and responding individually to readers, to get a personal friend circle of readers.  You’re supposed to put them on a first tier mailing list of guaranteed buyers who will buy your books and that will shoot up your Amazon sales rank for your new releases.  They also will review and comment on your books.  That’s a good idea.

As far as blogging, he said to write loyalty transfer posts geared to your target audience, the people in the niche you want to sell your books too.  Write carefully planned posts about popular people and things that interest your target readers so they will transfer that loyalty to you.  These are short, infrequent (he posts monthly) to showcase writing style and draw those Google searchers.  Tweet, tweet, and tweet.   How I Sold 1 Million eBooks in 5 Months!

I’m not this organized or marketing oriented as far as blogging.  I like to write, so I blog far more often than monthly when I’m in blogging mode (that would be now).  I try to stick to subjects that will interest my readers, but hell, I’m the one writing, so the topic has to interest me the most.  I don’t get Twitter.  I haven’t worked enough on my circle of friends.  I don’t run around commenting for traffic.  I comment when I feel  moved to do so, and that’s not too often.  As far as John Locke, I’m not doing enough, or not doing it right.  With all the new Locke clones out there, we will soon see how that million book thing is working for them.

There are two things I think Locke did right to sell a million e-novels:  The first is to write a series with many books and a recognizable protagonist.   Secondly, he worked on a cadre of loyal readers who would buy all his books and new releases, writing reviews, etc.  He answered their e-mails and did all he could to build loyalty. This is social proof and it draws more and more readers.  Readable product in quantity and social proof is what I think works.   It’s not personal branding or promotion, other than promo that will get you more social proof.  I guess Twitter can help with the proof, but damn.  I gotta figure Twitter out.  Facebook?  Don’t even get me started on Facebook.

James Altucher says personal branding is bullshit and is fundamentally dishonest.

With the spectrum of pornography allowed by Facebook, twitter, linkedin, google+, etc etc etc a personal brand can evolve and grow like any superbowl ad. Kim Kardashian’s didn’t have an answer when Barbara Walters asked her, finally, “but aren’t you really just known for a sex tape?” when Kim initially tried to “re-brand” herself as a “businesswoman” in a very intimate interview.

So we start to arrive at the  truth of the matter: Branding is lying.

But personal branding is even worse because the joke is over. Now we’re talking about me and you. We’re talking about who YOU are. And let’s face it. It’s not pretty. You need to re-brand from birth.

People confuse “honesty” with a type of “happiness”. He can be honest because he is happy. But it’s not true. Life is a series of failures punctuated by brief successes. That’s honesty. Failure is not necessarily bad. It’s reality.

But branding tries to reverse that. With a “personal brand”, you suddenly pretend to be super successful, a “businesswoman” in Kardashian’s case – failure is non-existent, and out of your mind comes the exact mathematical formulas that if someone drinks your Cola and snorts your Ecstasy then they too will  have the pretty girl, the success, the money, the accoutrements.

That’s deep.  Altucher says a pathway to success is total honesty, which is the opposite of personal branding.  I believe honesty is good, but I quibble with the total part.

Honesty is about the scars. it’s about the blemishes.  But it’s more than just bragging about failure, which could be a form of ego. It’s about truly helping people.

Really?  I read Altucher more because he’s smart, than because he’s honest. He says honesty will set you free.  I think he’s got it good enough so he can write crazy shit and keep his audience. He says people flock to honest bloggers because complete honesty so rare.  I do believe it’s rare.  But, I think people flock to Altucher despite his cringe-inducing honesty, not because if it. If he toned it down a bit, he would be as popular, maybe more so. I think honesty in moderate amounts is necessary to be trusted. Too much is just crazy. I notice the successful bloggers with his brand of honestly are not only good writers, they are uniformly smart people.  I don’t think honesty will help if you don’t have anything to say or a pleasing way to say it.  So, if you’re smart, have something to say and are a good writer, yeah, you can be honest.

Altucher also is straight about the effects of honesty.  Showing your privates will have consequences.  Frankly, I don’t think readers thinking you’re crazy is going to sell many books. So, complete honestly for authors? Nah.

1. People will stop speaking to you

2. People will think you’re going to kill yourself

3. People will think you’re crazy

4. People will get frightened

5.  People will find you entertaining

6. People will trust your advice

7. You will become free

There is a happy medium.  I have to be honest, because the fake is too much damn work.  But, I don’t have to be stone crazy and run around with my ass hanging out.  I want to sell books, not piss people off, scare them, or make them think I’m insane.

I think the key to selling a million books on Amazon is writing a whole lot of readable books that hook together in some way.  I’m going to do that in IR romance, because I like it, have lived it, and there’s lots of room to grow. I also think it’s about building social proof.  If you’ve sold a million books, you have social proof.  As long as you’re not completely off-putting, I doubt if it matters what your persona is at that point.  Amanda Hocking is not John Locke as far as branding, but she’s doing as well.

Crap, let me go and tweet something.
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