Social media evangelists (Christ Brogan, Mashable, etc) talk about about building a personal brand. I think this comes from the fact that they see their product as their online persona. Their primary platforms are tools for the construction of online identity. Blogging presumably allows more distance: I’m sure Geoff Manaugh, for example, wouldclaim a more nuanced and complicated identity than what can be gleaned from reading BLDGBLOG. His product is his thinking and his writing, packaged in the blog format, rather than his online identity itself.
Nevertheless, I think it raises an interesting question: to what degree do bloggers need to be concerned with staying “on message” or “on brand,” and to what degree do they see their identities wrapped up with the online personas they present in their blogs? Even when bloggers aren’t consciously engaging with the identity component of social media, are they still concerned about consistency of message and the branding of their blog itself?
I see branding as an odious development in the history of human communication. I’m not interested in creating a constructed or targeted identity. How can I build a blog in a way that stays honest to these concerns?
Also, is this even a real problem to tackle? Or am I just coming at this with a knee-jerk grad school “critical” perspective?