the global microbrand, revisited

It’s been just over two years since I wrote “The Glo­bal Mic­ro­brand Rant”:

There are thou­sands of rea­sons why peo­ple write blogs. But it seems to me the big­gest rea­son that dri­ves the blog­gers I read the most is, we’re all loo­king for our own per­so­nal glo­bal mic­ro­brand. That is the prize. That is the tic­ket off the tread­mill. And I don’t think it’s a bad one to aim for.

It was yesterday’s post, “Mic­ro­Mar­ke­ting on Mic­ro­Me­dia” that got me thin­king about the GMB again. Here are some more ran­dom thoughts, some more ori­gi­nal than others:
1. The good news about blogs is that they’re very power­ful. The bad news is that they’re very time con­su­ming. So no won­der in the last two years we’ve seen so many other kinds of “Cheap, Easy, Glo­bal Media” spring up– Twit­ter, Face­book, You­Tube etc etc.
2. I will be fre­quently quo­ting this line from Clay Shirky until the day I die: “So for­get about blogs and blog­gers and blog­ging and focus on this — the cost and dif­fi­culty of publishing abso­lu­tely anything, by anyone, into a glo­bal medium, just got a whole lot lower. And the effects of that inc­rea­sed pool of poten­tial pro­du­cers is going to be vast.” I’ve been pro­mi­sing myself to write Clay for a while, asking him to ela­bo­rate on “Vast”. I have a few ideas. You?
3. Blogs may not be around in ten years. Face­book may not be around in 10 years. What WILL be around, howe­ver, is the afo­re­men­tio­ned “Cheap, Easy, Glo­bal Media”. The lat­ter is never going away, save for a nuc­lear holo­caust. Whoe­ver said “Blogs are just a fad” back in the early days was mis­sing the point. It was NEVER about blogs. It was about something far more “vast”.
4. Beware on beco­ming a “Vapor­Guru”. This is the term I use for peo­ple who don’t seem to do very much except write in their blogs and speak at con­fe­ren­ces [i.e. Peo­ple like me. Exactly!]. Not that what they have to say isn’t always use­ful, it’s just that it’s a very crow­ded mar­ket. Secondly, their pers­pec­tive often tends to be that of an obser­ver, not that of some­body who has actually gone ahead and “actually done it”. Which is why I stick so dog­gedly to the wine trade. No mat­ter what they may say about me on Tech­meme, peo­ple are always going to want to uncork a bottle.
5. We’re still wai­ting for the Blog­ging Mes­siah. And we always will be. Doc Searls came pretty close a cou­ple of times, though.
6. Again, I’ll say it one more time: Blog­ging is just the tip of the Clue­train ice­berg. And it wasn’t the tip that sunk the Tita­nic.
7. Type “GlobalMicrobrand.com” into your brow­ser and see where it takes you.
8. I con­si­der The Blue Mons­ter a Glo­bal Mic­ro­brand. One that has been adop­ted [but not assi­mi­la­ted *cough*] by a Glo­bal Mac­ro­brand i.e. Mic­ro­soft. Both feed the other. Cul­tu­ral Sym­bio­sis. Rock on.
9. In retros­pect, over time I haven’t writ­ten enough about the GMB as perhaps I should have. Pro­bably because, like I said in my ori­gi­nal post, none of it is roc­ket science. It’s really just a case of just doing it. The only other advice I can offer is, keep rea­ding the blogs that you admire and learn from them.
10. I plan to be thin­king more about The Glo­bal Mic­ro­brand sch­tick for the next wee while, and hope­fully wri­ting more on the sub­ject. If you have any thoughts or links you think could help me out, please feel free to send them my way. Thanks.
11. [Saving the best for last:] The ques­tion isn’t, “How do you turn your blog into a via­ble busi­ness model?” The ques­tion is, “How do you turn a via­ble busi­ness model into your blog?“
[Update: Dr. Mani, a Children’s Heart Sur­geon, muses about The Glo­bal Mic­ro­brand. Nice to see when folk with “real jobs” also start thin­king about this stuff, as oppo­sed to the usual sus­pects etc.]
[Update:] Just got an e-mail from Terry Rock:

I think this is why you haven’t tal­ked much about the Glo­bal Mic­ro­brand: [See
the 10th slide: Make Sand­wiches [don’t just take orders]].
Since I saw Merlin’s pre­sen­ta­tion online, that’s been the man­tra in our
micro-organization: stop taking orders and start making sand­wiches.
You don’t build a glo­bal mic­ro­brand tal­king about buil­ding a glo­bal
mic­ro­brand.
Terry T. Rock, PhD
Pre­si­dent & CEO
Cal­gary Arts Development

I added the empha­sis on his last sentence.