When someone reads material you produce, if they cannot associate it to a human being, then you lose the chance to get an emotional connection. If I visit a website/blog, it might be because they write about personal branding or a related topic, such as public relations, career development or social media. It could also be because they are in my feed reader because I’ve enjoyed and learned from their content in the past or already have a tie to them. The first thing I gaze at is the person’s image. Next is there name, followed by their profile and then their latest entry.
Let’s take Brian Solis‘ blog as a best practice. You will notice that his picture and name are exhibited on his blog, which also has his name as the url. Although, he titled his blog “PR 2.0”, you can associate that name to his personal brand because of the domain name, his picture and his name written all over it. Although, I’m not a big fan of blogger (my legacy blog “driven to succeed” was hosted by them) and view the Google Adsense ad’s a bit out-of-place, Brian’s content is strong and compelling enough to attract attention. What I’ve also noticed about his blog, is that it’s linked directly from his company’s website, in the upper right. Again, he associates the blog with his name with his company. He is successful because of his consistency and reinforcement of his brand name, as well as how he associates it with PR, which is the focus point of his business.
Another quick example for you and I know Chris Brogan didn’t want to be left out of this. Again, notice how his domain name, reflects his blog’s name, which is identical to his real name (slightly different from Brian’s approach). He also uses his picture multiple times, in combination with his new podcast series called “Attention Upgrade.” He does take advantage of the fact that he’s a well known social-media-preneur, as that he can get away more with just using his brand name. Also, notice the subtitle of his blog “A Conversation with a Community about Digital Relationships.” It can’t get more friendly than that and it makes his blog very personable, alongside his other personal branding arsenal (social networks, etc).
