Penelope Trunk: Blogging And Branding

It's raining.

I love rain and the gentle patter it makes on window panes. I don't love bundling up and sitting, damp, in my favorite coffee shop sipping overpriced espresso. So this Saturday morning I stayed home, curled up with my iPad, and caught up on reading Penelope Trunk's blog.

Penelope can make anything interesting! One of her posts was about bedbugs and I was fascinated.

I've posted about Penelope's blog before, but today I noticed she has a page devoted to the topic: How to blog. Why hadn't I seen it before? Anyway, as you'd expect, she gives great advice, and I'd encourage you to read it, but what I want to talk about is something Penelope said about branding.

Penelope didn't call it branding, she talked about picking a topic for your blog, but what she said made me think. She writes:

Pick a topic — you can change it when you know what you’re doing.
This is like dating. Pick something that seems good, and if it isn’t, try again. Don’t get hung up on topic. As in dating, you’ll know when you’ve found one that’s the right fit. There are some obvious things, like pick a topic you have a lot to say about, pick something that interests you, pick something that will help your career. This is great advice, but you already know that if you look for a perfect match you’ll never actually go on a date. (The easiest instructions for how to start a blog)

I think this advice applies not just to picking a topic for a blog--making a blog a cooking blog, or a book blog, or a personal finance blog--but also to picking a public face, for building a platform, for branding.

It turns out Penelope has written a post about this: Tips for building your personal brand. If you're in the process of building a community it's worth a read even though it wasn't written specifically for writers.

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- 12 Writing Tips: How To Be A Writer
- NaNoWriMo: 5 Tips On How To Get Ready
- 7 Tips On How To Get Your Guest Post Accepted

Photo credit: Amanda Slater