Thoughts on anonymous blogging, personal branding and social media marketing noise

Blog My little blog has a nice crew of contributors. Some contribute a lot, many do it for the fun and passion of sharing, some do it a while (I guess until their Pagerank is up or they seek incoming links somewhere else), some do it now and then and some allow me to take what I like from their blogs.

There are all kinds of people, all kinds of reasons to do things and they are all welcome.


You might have noticed that many posts on this blog are not “signed”. That’s because I write most of them myself. Sometimes people ask me why I don’t say who I am. As I said: there are all kinds of reasons why people do things and that includes me as well.

When I started this blog end 2009, the only thing I wanted to do was writing as usual but this time in another language.

The blog did fine. Hurray. It doesn’t generate much revenues and the revenues it does generate are put back in the blog. I don’t blog to generate revenues and I have nothing to sell (well, not something yet that I find worth selling here). My blog is a little lab to experiment, try out stuff, do people a favor now and then and express my opinions.Some of these opinions will obviously not be yours. And I will probably often “say” or think “wrong” things because I’m misinformed, missing the point or simply because I’m a person and, praise the lord, thus by definition different from other people.

Many people advised me to use my own name because my blog seems to be quite known here and there. Well, to be frank, it’s doing really well and people ask me “what’s the secret to achieve this in just a few months”.

I guess it’s just being passionate, stubborn, a little bit crazy, being a networker, giving, asking back, taking and digesting the many “no’s” you get along the way, accepting that you give more than you get, a lot of work and some cold cash.

There is too much noise in social media marketing

I have thought about all these advices to use my name on my blog. But I think I will not do it. And I know why.

Because I’m sick and tired of the all too overtly personal branding and guru cult in the social media blogging and marketing world.

It sends the wrong messages, it stops real marketers from taking real decisions because there just is too much noise.

Social media marketing is marketing and, yes, it’s big, but it is marketing and it has its place but it’s not the end of the world as we know it, it’s just another, very important but almost natural step in an evolution that started ages ago.

Of course, the people I’ve interviewed, the contributors and some others know who I am but does it matter? I made the mistake of allowing to get a so-called “expert status”, which I never asked for, once, I will try not to make it twice.

Personal branding and satisfied customers

This doesn’t mean I condemn personal branding. On the contrary.

Besides: I must have written 5 or more books as a ghostwriter for people, seeking more visibility and I still have a few in the pipeline.

If you don’t brand yourself, you can’t sell yourself. And if you’re a consultant, for instance, that’s rather necessary.

But I simply don’t want to do it myself anymore. On LinkedIn, you can sum up all your awards and stuff. My profile simply says “satisfied customers”.

And that’s what I hope to be able to continue to have. Because satisfied customers are the best way to be sure that there’s always a new job waiting and all that without the need of the heat of too much exposure.

In a way, blogging anonymously, has thus become some kind of silent statement and message for myself. Not that anyone will care but there you have it. If people really want to talk, they just have to ask.

Channels enough these days.

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