Dan Schawbel - Gen Y Expert RSS feed: The Blogosphere is Like High School All Over Ag

[David Sandusky]

My RSS Feed is a Thinker and blog is #1 for online personal brand thoughts. Dan Schawbel is Gen Y and geared to Gen Y personal brand, but you will benefit regardless of generation. He has Just Posted the Following:

What high school was like

High School is a segregated playground of individuals who stick to their own petri dishes and wrap barb wire all around them. It’s a place where clicks have been previously formed and alliances are hard to escape. The only parachute in High School is your best friend that’s waiting for you, ready to play Playstation. The main message in High School was: you’re in or you’re out. I grew up not caring about these different crowds and thought I could be apart of all of them. Boy was I wrong and this decision ended up having a negative impact on my social life. During High School I was desperately trying to figure out who I was, without even considering communicating that message to anyone.

From phase to phase, I was trying to be what “they” wanted me to be. I was living in a “Brand THEM World” instead of a “Brand ME” world. Now I know we’ve spoken about how you don’t want to be selfish or conceited with personal branding before, but this is quite different. You need to be true to yourself and when you become a follower, you lose that self identity.

A lot of people, like me, give High School a bad rap, but High School is just the end result of what takes place in the culture where you grow up. Relationships are formed as early as pre-school, when your parents become friends with other sets of parents and you meet their children. In High School, the “cool group” is invited to all the parties and has the most respect, while the other groups either revere them or become “outcasts.”

Current state of the blogosphere

We are living in a digital world, where the early adopters and media powerhouses will keep winning. Michael Arrington will continue to link to and promote Robert Scoble, who will continue to link to and promote Shel Israel, who will continue to link to and promote Jeremiah Owyang, who will continue to link to and promote Chris Brogan, etc. Even competitors at the top, such as Mashable, GigOm and TechCrunch promote each other. The fact is that these links allow the traffic to stay at the top with the “A-Listers” and never help the bottom grow. (Note: I just linked to all of them, so I’m just as guilty, but I’m trying to prove a point)

Links are currency in the blogosphere, thus these blogs continually gain traffic, a high Technorati authority and mainstream media attention. Most of the A-Listers are friends and realize the power of collectively helping each other out. This is part of the reason why we begin to have household or top-of-mind personal brand names in the blogosphere.

What you can do about it

Just like with your full-time job (if you have one), you need to earn respect. You can’t expect links from the A-Listers until you provide content/value to them that is unique and peaks their interest. Just like anyone else, they are more apt to link to their friends (other A-Listers) than you, especially because people can associate with names such as Arrington and Dave Winer. When you drop a “no name personal brand name,” it’s hard to understand the example or context.

• 1) Don’t lose your identity to be an A-Lister yourself.
• 3) Start connecting with C and B-Listers first before you head into the A-List domain.
• 2) Reach out to A-Listers by commenting on 3-5 of their blog posts first and then sending them a nice email. They all provide their email address on their blogs.
• 4) Build your own platform, with subscribers and social network friends in order to gain respect.
• 5) Form your own clique, but don’t be inclusive or isolate others. There are 100 million blogs out there, and at least one other is relevant to your topic, so make the connection today.

People have mixed emotions when it comes to High School. For one, I think the blogosphere and High School allow you to discover who you want to surround yourself with and over time, we can all help each other climb to the top. I spoke with David Meerman Scott today about this and he agreed that linking to blogs that have few subscribers is the best way to gain evangelists for your personal brand.

Remember that is costs you NOTHING to link to someone’s blog.

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