My Favorite Personal Branding Blog Comments of 2011

Almost any blogger will tell you that they love getting blog comments, and that’s true even for the ones they don’t agree with.

Sometimes, a blog comment is so good that you wish all readers could enjoy it, but that’s the big problem: comments usually appear at the end of a given article and unless you visit that article directly, you’re never going to see those replies.

With that in mind, I decided to take a look back at all the comments received on my articles here in 2011 and pull out the best, whether the most thoughtful, most funny or just the most memorable.

From the Formula for Perfect Constructive Criticism, LMG wrote:

“I always hated it when a compliment was included with getting criticism. It never felt genuine; only given because of recommendations to give a compliment to ‘lessen the blow’. It just made me feel small and that the person was patronizing me. Give compliments when compliments are due and keep them separate from criticism so they actually mean something.”

From Did TweetDeck Just Ruin Twitter For Us All?, Reese Mitchell retorted:

“I don’t really care, because I can tell in 140 characters if I want to read anymore of their rant. I use Twitter3 and it doesn’t allow this. I enjoy the challenge of trying to edit myself to 140 characters. I love some of the abbreviations people have adopted. Twitter is quite entertaining in 140 characters or less. :)”

From Why Google+ is Not a Good Personal Brand Building Tool, George Badina responded:

“I totally agree. By just looking at the main page, I can see Google+ addresses to people who want to strength their already grown offline relationships, in online. I see Google+ as a continuity to Facebook. If Facebook was initially a network for students, G+ is for young and middle-senior level professionals+ who are pretty busy and want to stay in touch with all their contacts and (college) friends. G+ is like a network of your longtime friends.”

From 7 Handy New Twitter Timesavers, Sherry Heyl said:

“Thank you for this list. I had not come across any of these tools and most of them seem helpful. The only one I think could be dangerous is the FollowFriday. Sometimes we find ourselves following people we do not really know and I would not want to automate my recommendations of who to follow. I personally have no problem with an auto thanks – but I can see that being abused by spammers trying to get attention as well. If you are using an auto thanks that means I can get you to mention me often by RT and #FF.”

From Ask The Experts: What’s Your Favorite Personal Branding Pet Peeve?, Jennifer Holloway had this to say:

“I’d agree with all of those, but the one that made me think, “Oh boy, you’re so right!” is that you should aim to let a bit of your personality shine through so people can engage with you – particularly online where it’s so easy for people to remain distant.

A close second woud be the impersonal avatar, although for me it’s more the profile picture people use on LinkedIn. It may be that getting married was the best day of your life, but using the photo on a business-orientated site like that tells me you’re not exactly switched on to the site’s real purpose!”

From 7 Hits and Misses of LinkedIn’s Fancy New inMaps, Meg Giuseppi agreed:

“When I created my inMap, I was especially struck by your “MISS: There’s no (clear) way to tell the stronger links from the weaker ones”.

Here were all these people I didn’t know, didn’t remember connecting with or why I connected with them. Some people sort of tainted the inMap and showed up in groupings that didn’t make sense.

The results made me re-assess who to connect with on LinkedIn in the future.”

From Is Your Brand Building Harder Work Than Necessary?, Kelley added:

“I think it’s easier to build your brand once you find something you thoroughly enjoy. There are so many ways to build your brand, so many outlets to use. The hardest part is finding an aspect of your brand that sets you apart from others. I feel that once you discover that and you keep up with marketing it, you won’t have to worry about finding an audience because they’ll find you.”

From Which Personal Page For You: about.me or flavors.me?, Rick Frost pointed out:

“You mentioned that about.me allows you to submit your splash page to the major search engines, but they have a google page rank of zero, whereas Flavors.me has a 6.

You also missed the fact that about doesn’t scale anyone’s background image correctly.

And about’s social stats hardly ever work.

You also failed to mention that nasty tool / branding bar that about splashes across everyone page.

Sometimes “Free” comes at a cost.”

From LinkedIn: Do You Have a CEO-Worthy Name?, Miriam Gomberg told:

“Jacob, 20 years ago when I was pregnant with my daughter I got her name from a book titled “Beyond Jennifer and Jason” that spoke to a name’s connotation rather than technical meaning. Her name is Avery, which was a CEO name because it was originally a man’s name and you could not predetermine her gender based on it.

It is interesting that the LinkedIn results were for more traditional names instead. Miriam”

Thanks for all your blog comments in 2011, and I look forward to more great comments in 2012.

Happy New Year!

This article was inspired by The Work Buzz’s Favorite Comments of 2011.

Author:

Jacob Share, a job search expert, is the creator of JobMob, one of the biggest blogs in the world about finding jobs. Follow him on Twitter for job search tips and humor.

Ask The Experts: What’s Your Favorite Personal Branding Pet Peeve?