My 30 Day Brand-Building Experiment

“Do. Or do not. There is no try.” – Yoda

A few months ago, I noticed some “brand stagnation” in my little corner of the world. I’m not into using follower counts as a measure of worth, but I had noticed that my Instagram stats were lagging.

It doesn’t matter to me whether I have twenty followers or 20,000, but it does bother me if I’m not helping people, if I’m not adding value to lives, or if I’m simply being noise, instead of music.

To some people, growing a brand and a social media presence comes easily. I’m not that person.

I’m an introvert by nature, and the energy that engagement demands doesn’t come naturally to me. In social media world, this can position one as stand-offish, or snobby–which I’m not. But when I’m ON, I’m on, and when I’m off, well, I’m in bed, with the covers pulled up over my head, and I’d prefer not to be bothered for oh, ten hours.

I’ve mulled this stagnate brand problem over for a while now. I’ve wondered about various strategies, and I’ve thought about “taking a break”. (Whatever that means, I’m not sure I know–it was just on the list of options to be considered.)

But driving down the road the other day, a thought hit me with the greatest amount of clarity:

The single most valuable thing I can do for my brand is write.

In my head, I repeated the sentence, adding a tone of emphasis:

The single most valuable thing I can do for my brand is write.

Write every day. Write early and often. Write well and write poorly. But write. And press publish.

So, I’m tasking myself with a challenge. It’s July 3rd. I’m going to write, here, every day, for thirty days. It’s not going to be easy. I stay busy with kids, and I have a lot of travel scheduled for the next few weeks.

I’ll keep you posted over on Instagram, if you want to follow along.