The Blogosphere is Like High School All Over Again
June 12, 2008 at 11:11 am | In People, Personal Branding, Success Strategies, social media | 11 Comments
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.
Up-and-coming bloggers
Chris Wilson, Dorie Morgan, Andrea Emerson, Tim Ferro, Timothy Sykes, Terra Anderson, Thursday Bram, Sean Canton, Sarah M Dillon, Ronnie Nurss, Paull Young, Matt Kushin, Miguel Palma, Lance Haun, Kristina Summers, Jonathan Mead, Jason Gan, Jason Drohn, Jamie Harrop, David Giesberg, Dean Hunt, David Robertson
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Great post and thanks for the link! That was a nice surprise
Cheers
Andrea
Comment by espressoshots — June 12, 2008 #
Great analogy. There are clicks online and breaking into their circles isn’t easy. You must come with something intelligent that makes them stop their fast paced life and think, wow, that was an awesome point/idea/thought/etc. If you can make them stop to think about something you said, you might just get em.
And besides, who says you need to be an A-lister to brand yourself, build your business or make some niche money?
Comment by Greg Rollett — June 12, 2008 #
Just a point of contention with your opinion: I link out via Twitter to dozens of new blogs a day. Check my stream this morning (Thursday around 10:08AM. I link to Shannon Paul, who has a total of 3 posts). I link to Adversity University, Glenda Watson Hyatt, and I link about once every seven posts to Jon Swanson at the Levite blog.
So, much as I love to link to Copyblogger and Problogger and the like, I think links to interesting things are valid.
Comment by chrisbrogan — June 12, 2008 #
@Chris – Thank you for shedding light on this topic. I wrote this post because I’ve seen a trend since I started blogging. Singling out bloggers was not my intention.
When it comes to personal branding, it’s far easier to explain a topic when people already know the brands involved.
Comment by Dan Schawbel — June 12, 2008 #
If only there was a blogosphere when I was in high school…
Thanks for the article & recognition (yay!). I think it’s human nature for powerful forces to band together to keep the lesser powers at bay, necessitating the alliance of those lower on the totem pole to overcome the adversity. Then again, the internet is supposed to be a meritocracy, where ideas can perpetuate on their own, without the information controlling paradigm of push media. You can have the single most world-changing idea since democracy, but if you don’t have an audience, you don’t have a viable idea. It’s a shame we bury that potential with cheap laughs and gadget news…
Comment by Sean Canton — June 12, 2008 #
[...] Schwabel of the Personal Branding Blog listed me as an up and coming blogger in his recent article, The Blogosphere is like High School. I’m honored, and sort of boggled, because I was really on it for most of May. Then I turned [...]
Pingback by Creative Communications » A mention! — June 12, 2008 #
Your post, Dan, is a great reflection for those working hard to tap into the venture capital game or to land on the radar screen of that recruiter who gets all the cool searches.
Blogging has opened opportunity to get “in”. You still have to have talent, great ideas and relevant value. Brad Feld is a popular VC from MIT in Boulder, CO, Guy Kawasaki and anyone else who actually manages there own blog, twitter, etc. are approachable.
People can get noticed (and blow it) easier than ever.
Comment by davidsandusky — June 12, 2008 #
Once again your young age proves to be an asset.
Comment by Alejandro — June 12, 2008 #
I do appreciate the high school analogy. At least blogging is more democratic and meritocratic. I just found your blog a couple weeks ago and I really like your fresh perspective of looking at things! I hope to leave more comments in the future.
Comment by Vanessa — June 13, 2008 #
[...] Money Non-Profit Personal Development Politics Technology Dan Schawbel The Blogosphere is Like High School All Over Again [...]
Pingback by The Blogosphere is Like High School All Over Again : Brazen Careerist — June 13, 2008 #
Hi Dan! Thanks for the link – it made my day
Comment by Dorie — June 15, 2008 #