I already shared a short post about this topic last summer on Facebook, but approx. one month ago it became relevant again when I saw a post written by a comms professional about this ‘shoemaker style’. According to that post’s approach, if you like your profession, it should not be tiring to take care of your own ‘shoes’, and if you are good at it, there is no excuse in handling your own things and actively build your own brand.
All respects to this peer marketer and congrats to being able to manage everything. Probably there is a massive work behind it. However, when I was reading that post, I raised three questions to myself:
- So am I not a good entrepreneur because I haven’t published any posts for 2 weeks?
- Or am I not a credible comms professional because it is not the first case that I was not socially visible for weeks?
- Or am I not a reliable brand builder consultant because I say that sometimes it is ok?
I don’t think so – I do hope.🙂 Let me go into the details and share my thoughts which could be helpful for you, too.
Past month indeed I was not so active – but(!) only here in the social media. In the background I was working a lot: Brand identity building for one startup, total re-branding project leading for another small business, communication strategy consultations to micro entrepreneurs and networking to make new partnerships & new deals with others. Due to my workload and capacity limits I had to choose:
- Generating social media contents in the evening instead of having real social life.
- Writing my self-branding posts in the night instead of sleeping.
- Ranking my own brand forward instead of keeping my current clients deadlines.
- Putting away my reputation building for few weeks as my business is going smoothly and there is no pressure on me, and choosing the work-life-balance.
Probably there are even more options and probably there are some people who say that every time you can find development opportunities in time or capacity management. However, I have gone for option Nr.4 and I haven’t minded it at all.😊
Why am I sharing this story here? Because of several reasons but at least three ones.🙂
1. The context has an importance
Brand building rules are very necessary and useful, but every time you have to review and properly adapt them in the certain situation. So depending on the format, target groups and goals of your business comm (personal or company brand building, B2B or B2C…) active brand building has a different meaning, for example the necessity of the everyday posting might differ or temporarily you can put it away to focus on another priorities.
2. The background story has an importance
You don’t know, what is in the background of many people. How much work they have, what they have in the focus etc. And behind the scenes there are often alternative options which can be temporarily enough or even more effective than being in the spotlight. These might be like offline networking or making partnership deals etc.
3. Each professional statement has an importance
Comms professionals have a big responsibility in how they influence their existing or potential clients, how big pressure they put/don’t put on them. Words have a strong power, they have a big impact on others’ feelings and behaviours. Business building is anyway not easy and different in every case, so it is crucial to take this fact into consideration and instead of giving an extra pressure on people by saying strong statements, rather help them find the alternative solution and the golden mean.
So what I stand for in this ‘shoemaker style’ topic?
I like shoes and I like the stylish (high heel) ones. 😉 And definitely shoemakers need stylish ones, if they want to successfully sell themselves. But more types of outfits can be ‘stylish’ and sometimes it might happen to choose rather a comfy style and temporarily rank backward the outstanding one to balance. It is ok, maybe on a different way but just keep moving, move forward. I am this type of shoemaker. 👠🥿
And you: what is your approach?
