As I was working with her to help establish her brand I started thinking about how to tackle mine. Personal branding seems to be a hot topic recently, and I'm actually going to be co-presenting on campus about it in the coming months.
The trouble I'm having is that there's another Sam Venable. Now normally, this wouldn't be a huge deal. Except this Sam Venable is a columnist at the Knoxville News Sentinel.
We even look alike! The Venable nose is unmistakable (side note: though I'm sure we're not related, I'd be interested to see if we have any shared ancestry).
But the real kicker is this - not only do we kind of look alike and have the same name - he's also a writer. Of course, the primary difference being he gets paid to do so.
So I've been debating what the best strategy to tackle this is. How do I differentiate myself from him?
When I first started writing and created this blog, I thought the best way was to stage myself as the "other" Sam Venable - but the problem is there are probably a few hundred of us elsewhere in the world. So, if I take the Seth Godin / Gary Vaynerchuk approach, I haven't really found a good niche. I'm not specific enough, and I'm not positioning myself for success.
Secondly, as I started to contemplate my own domain, I realized that www.othersamvenable.com is a bit longer than I want it to be. How do I concisely describe, differentiate and promote with a URL?
I don't have any answers yet, but I'm working on it.
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