Lisa Brewster: "find the people who you think will care and establish their trust"

Photo by Lisa Brewster

I had a chance to interview Lisa Brewster about her thoughts on personal brand.  Here are the highlights, with my favorite quotes in orange.

Why are you putting yourself out there?

There are several reasons, all with completely different motivations.  The most important reason is because I have a bad memory, and I'll forget details both large and small if I don't record them somewhere.  It means a lot to me to go back months or years to reflect on where I was as a person during that period.  I also have challenges that other people share, and by recording my explorations I can both keep track of my own progress and educate others at the same time.  But as inspirational as I like to think I can be sometimes, I get shy when meeting people in real life.   By using online tools, I can feel like I'm being myself without worrying about forgetting someone's name or taking too long to come up with something interesting to say.

What is the single most valuable web channel for getting in front of the people you care about?

Based on how I communicate, the most valuable channel is Twitter...but it really depends on what the message is.  My thoughts typically come in small snippets suitable for starting conversations or aggregating in my wiki, but others' styles may get better results using a different combination of tools.  There's no formula that you can apply to everyone.

What piece of information about your brand, that you don't have, would you most like to have?

More analysis of how my life is going, commonly referred to as lifetracking.  I want to publish a reflection on successes, challenges, and insights to provide context for the data I'm generating every day.  Lifetracking can combine any metric you can record about yourself...location, diet, exercise, weather, mood, and so on.  With the appropriate data points, one can start to identify patterns, such as optimal configurations for productivity or a food ingredient that always makes you ill.  The act of lifetracking is generating metadata for your life, and when you combine this with a social network you're creating a semantic web of people, not just machines.

What really distinguishes your brand?

As you can probably tell by twitter this afternoon, this was the hardest question for me to answer!  According to all the marketing blogs, I've clearly established a brand...but I'm not entirely sure what that branding message is.  I've identified some of the aspects of it:  empowering and supporting local communities, open licensing (like creative commons and open source software), skepticism of marketers, having full knowledge and control over what goes into my body, protecting personal freedoms...I feel like the mix is the distinguishing factor, but I can't define what the theme is. I'm just me.

What would you recommend to someone who is just starting out?

Identify something you're passionate about, identify your target audience (not just "the Internet"), and ease yourself into the conversations they're already having.  Even if you want your brand to eventually stand on its own, nobody is going to be there to listen if you're shouting in an empty room.  You have to find the people who you think will care and establish their trust.

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I've identified some of the aspects of it: empowering and supporting local communities, open licensing (like creative commons and open source software), skepticism of marketers, having full knowledge and control over what goes into my body, protecting personal freedoms

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Even if you want your brand to eventually stand on its own, nobody is going to be there to listen if you're shouting in an empty room. You have to find the people who you think will care and establish their trust.

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Lifetracking can combine any metric you can record about yourself