Thats actually a good article for people to read ...
rops:
Thank you. I've seen first hand a lot of people on this forum as well as other forum read my article and then change from using a forum nickname to their real name or a part of their real name. I could even name names but I won't.
While I know there are concerns about privacy in this Big Brother world, I've never had any issues using my real name.
Two years ago at SEMA the value of this really opened my eyes. Here's how...
At SEMA, while most of you reading this walk around and look at all the pretty cars, people that
work a booth pretty much
man the booth. That is we stay in the booth and shake hands, do demos and answer questions.
As a result of this you have a chance to meet and talk to a LOT of people that do the walking around thing, which includes a lot of what I'll just call the,
"Captains of Industry"
Whether that's a guy like Richard Griot visiting your booth, or the owners or reps of any of the companies that are carried by Autogeek or want to be carried by Autogeek. That's a LOT of big wigs and insiders.
And two years ago at SEMA, must have just been a weird coincidence, but many of these people that came through our booth and talked shop told me they have been reading my posts and my articles for years, all the way back to my MOL days.
That was surprising and eye-opening.
The reason why is because a lot of these people are older, as in leaders in the business world and I don't normally think of these Presidents, Vice Presidents, CEO's Engineers, Chemists, etc. sitting behind their desks
reading on the forum. Then again, most of these guys are "Car Guys" and our forum attracts all walks of car guys.
Some of these people of course I new already, but many of these people were new to me, at least the first time I had met them in person. The thing that I found interesting was for the people I did not know or had never met... they all new my
name.
And that's what my article is about.
Branding your name or your business name. It's powerful.
There's no power in branding some wacky forum nickname. Can it work? Sure. Is it as powerful or professional? Not in my opinion.
And that's why I always recommend to people that if they are in this automotive industry for the
LONG RUN, that is this is the path they want to go down, then drop the forum nickname junk and be real and be professional.
On that note, I'm always amused at the handful of people that don't act very professional in the forum world. It's a
small world and everyone sooner or later reveals their character or lack thereof through their
posting history which is tagged to whatever name they use an no matter what media they are active on.
but my inspiration stemmed from a Branding Manifesto. as its come to been known, I wrote earlier this year that has some of those very topics in it..
Well if it will hep others... I'd suggest sharing it.
Thanks for the follow-up...
