Brisbane Events, Brisbane Blogs and Brisbane Journalism: Building your personal brand

I want to step back in time for a moment, in week three of the semester we received a lecture about how we should market ourselves as a brand. Clumsily, I took the wrong notebook to class that day and today I rediscovered those notes in the midst of a note taking frenzy in my Radio and Television class. Reading over the notes I'm reminded of both the importance of the lecture content, and of keeping up with lecture notes.

Branding Yourself 

Be you
One of the things that most resonated with me was the instruction to be yourself and to use blogging as a platform to find your voice. Scrolling back through posts in this blog from the beginning of last year when it was born to now there a many noticeable voices used. Over the past year and a half my blogging voice has varied from straight up news reader to Carrie Bradshaw and I suppose that's okay. We're allowed to change, grow and experiment in every aspect of our lives including the way we write and it's okay not to have everything sorted out at the age of 20.

How to build a blog
The keys to a quality blog, as explained in the lecture, are a combination of the following:

• Solid content,
• Solid community engagement, and
• Knowing your topic.   

 It seems obvious enough but it's important to be aware of these things while we're planning our writing. We need to make sure that what we blog is  worthwhile. Additionally, once we've decided what to write we need to think about how we're writing it and what we hope to achieve. Are we trying to:

• Inform,
• Inspire,
• Add value,
• Solve problems, 
• Entertain, etc. 

To me this might be the hardest part of it all. What do I want my readers to think or feel about the topic? When I sit down to write content for my radio breakfast show I know that my purpose is to entertain so I write accordingly and very differently to how I would in a formal research essay for university. It's harder to make this distinction when preparing a blog post because it's all being published on the same medium and one that is very versatile at that.

Making it work
Your content can be clever as anything or funny as you like but if your blog is sporadic and one sided it's unlikely you'll gain much of a following. To give your blog roots there are a few simple guidelines to follow:

• Start a conversation
• Ask readers what they think of issues, ask for their stories and opinions, show that you value their input.
• Be consistent
• Post regularly - morning is a good time to post.
• Be Persistant
• Okay so you're a student with 50 followers on twitter and a few hundred friends on Facebook. Don't expect your blog to make you the next Michelle Phan straight away.
•  Engage in social media and on other blogs
• For people to be able to find your blog you'll need to be present in a lot more places than just your blog, tweet, google +, tumblr, instagram, Youtube and engage in other people's blogs as much as you can. If you want to make people feel comfortable interacting with you on your space try visiting theirs and talking to them there first.
• Share other people's blogs as you share your own. 
• If you're expecting others to share your blog around be prepared to return the favor. What goes around comes around and if you want that to be your blog make sure you're supporting other people in the blogging community. 

And there you have it. No doubt it takes more than a few quick tips and tricks to build your online presence but it's a start.

Good luck