How do you Shape Your Brand (Witness/Testimony)

Last weekend while participating in the Bloggiesta I read something that I haven't been able to get out of my mind. It was all about the importance of your Brand in the blogging world, but I couldn't get over how much of it also related to the importance of your Christian witness in the world.

As part of her bloggiesta Mini-Challenge about favicons and gravatars, Trish quoted from a ProBlogger post about How to Shape Your Blogs Brand and I had to go check out the whole post.  I hope ProBlogger doesn't mind but I've written my own adaption to the post to show where my mind has been.  I do encourage you to go check out the original post.  Most of these words are from that post, but I've edited them slightly.

1. A Brand (Witness/Testimony) will emerge whether you want it to or not

People begin to develop perceptions about you and what you stand for as they listen to what you say, as they look at what you wear, as they see what's important to you, as they observe how you interact with them and others – all of this contributes to how they perceive and describe you – your brand (witness/testimony).

2. You Can Shape Your Brand (Witness/Testimony)

People will form their own ideas about who you are and what you stand for – but you do have some ability to help them come to these conclusions.

How do you Shape Your Brand (Witness/Testimony)

1. Identify what You want to be Known For

2. Be what you want to be known for…… Consistently

Every time you do anything keep the witness you’re attempting to grow in mind. Everything you write, everything you say, everything you do either has the potential to build and shape your witness or conversely to hurt it.

Build relationships with people and influence their perceptions.  It is very easy to rush into conversations about you with guns blazing to ‘defend’ yourself and ‘fix’ peoples erroneous views about you – however this kind of attitude can actually do more harm than good.  Listen and reflect on what people are saying before you respond.  You’ll not only gain the respect of others but hopefully learn a thing or two about yourself and your witness that will help you improve it.  Don’t get sucked into letting what others say about you determine how you view you or determine your self worth.  Learn to know when to take it on board and learn to know when to let it go and move on.

Such wise, wise words.  Thank-you, ProBlogger.  I know you were talking about something totally different than what I ended up thinking about, but I learned much from your post, for both the blogging world and my Christian witness.