Strategy, strategy, strategy when it comes to successful personal branding a clear positioning-based strategy always comes before the implementation phase. And when the career brander deeply understands his or her core strategy, it is then time for some writing. In the new media world of personal branding, advisers offer many differentiating styles, distinguished by content tone and creative platforms. For example, from the following article (posted June 9th by Yu-kai Chou) Dan Schawbel is branded as “The Professor” in contrast to Penelope Trunk who is branded as the “The Gossipy Friend”. Read on to learn how this article interprets their differences in writing style:
(article excerpt)
“Dan Schawbel: The Professor
When you look at Dan Schawbel’s blogposts, it is always very professional and well structured. You can tell that Dan Schawbel has been carefully crafting his personal brand. However, the downside to it is that sometimes it can get a bit dull and dry. Dan rarely writes about his personal life and experiences. The only things that he reveals when he talks about himself are his list of accomplishments. When you hear “My name is Dan Schawbel”, be prepared to listen to another dozen seconds of all the impressive things he has accomplished. That is personal branding at its finest.
Penelope Trunk: The Gossipy Friend
On the other hand, Penelope Trunk takes things to another extreme. She takes her blog to such intensive personal levels that it shocks her audience. Penelope Trunk would include details about who she hates, her sex and dating life, her headaches with balancing kids and company, and much more. Unlike Dan Schwabel who focuses on pure advices, Penelope Trunk talks about her struggles and what people should learn from them. She allows people to see the raw things in life – with a Penelope twist. A lot of her posts are actually 90% personal experience, and 10% real career advice. For instance, her post about How to Deal with Getting Fired (From Yahoo) focuses mostly on how it happened and how she felt at the moment, but only a small part of it is real advice on what SHOULD a person do in that situation. There are other posts about “How To” do something where she mostly talks about how she tries something and it made her extremely frustrated. Sometimes it’s a “How Not-To”.
In this sense, Dan Shawbel is like a professor that lectures about the fundamentals of a subject, which is very useful but not as interesting, whereas Penelope Trunk is like that best friend who is always sharing about her struggles and feelings while giving you advice based on them. She even tells you how she changed her name from Adrienne Roston to Penelope Trunk.Your professor probably wouldn’t do that.”
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