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Copying and Social Media: Personal Branding and the "Dilution Factor"

denmarkguyPosted for Everyone to comment on, 5 years ago4 min read

Continuing a bit with my recent explorations of social media, blogging, content creation, creativity and originality.

I keep considering the trade-off between "staying original" and what I have come to call "The Dilution Factor."

Flowers
Summertime memories

It's easy enough to keep churning out original content when you only have ONE blog to focus on. Or ONE web site, or ONE social media platform.

But if you keep adding venues, it becomes harder and harder to keep creating "original" content for each venue.

Believe it or not, there was a time when I actually managed/wrote/co-wrote almost twenty unique niche blogs. Keeping up with that was — quite literally — a zoo!

So then the alternative strategy would be to just create content once, and then distribute it to all your different venues, essentially copying yourself. In terms of actual effort, that's definitely the easiest. But then the "Dilution Factor" starts to play in... people start realizing that they "just see the same thing" whenever they come across one of your profiles.

Buddha
Buddha under the tree

"Just Sharing" vs. "Building Brand You"

I suppose our approach depends a lot on our objective.

Truth be known, 99% of social media users don't really have — or even think about having — an "objective."

"I just create and share stuff!"

And that's a fine and good approach, as long as you aren't too invested in a particular outcome happening. But now that we have these "rewards-based" platforms like Whaleshares, Steemit and others, we do have an objective: to get rewards. Even those who say they are "not in it for the money" still tend to like the "gamification" aspects of building a presence with their content.

Whether you like it, or not, social media is ultimately about presenting and building "Brand You."

Forget posting for a moment, and think about your own content consumption habits. What do you look at? What do you read?

It's a pretty good bet you follow "certain people" who seem to consistently share something you find interesting. And chances are those people have a personal brand identity.

A great example would be @papa-pepper. He's consistent, he's interesting, and you pretty much know you're going to get something relating to homesteading when you come across one of his posts. You probably even know who he is... as opposed to "some-random-person" who occasionally posts about homesteading, and occasionally about toenail clippings, and occasionally about sunsets.

Branch
Branch in the afternoon sun...

A Different Dilution Factor

Copying tends to dilute, no matter what.

We can even apply that on a greater scale in life... it would take a monumental marketing effort for Whaleshares to supplant Steemit as the number one platform in this market, or to even come close.

No disrespect to the creators of Whaleshares, Steemit has the "first mover advantage" here. Most people see this community as little more than "a copy" of Steemit. Those of us who are here may know better... but the uphill battle we face is that we're — in essence — starting 10 yards behind the starting line.

"Why should I join Whaleshares, rather than Steemit. Isn't Whaleshares just a clone of Steemit?"

Of course, we can explain that... but we're already starting with having to "make an explanation."

Bringing this back full circle, we face the question "Why should I read your COPY of the original, rather than just the original?"

Good question.

Then again, maybe I'm just assuming people care more than they actually do... what do YOU think?

Thanks for reading!

(All text and images by the author, unless otherwise credited. This is ORIGINAL content, created expressly for WhaleShares)
Created: 190108 14:19 PST

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