A Beard and Brand Building

You’re reading a social media post about . . . social media posts.

Also beards, which we’ll get to in a minute.

?On the social media front - how can you use digital tools to build personal and business brands simultaneously?

A South by Southwest session I attended today covered the topic (among a few others). CNN product manager Upasna Gautam moderated the panel entitled “Brand Building & Storytelling in the Digital Age.” It featured four (including Gautam) businesspeople who had used digital tools, including Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, and/or blogging, to build brands.

They’ve all experienced a lot of success – 100,000 people follow Aparna Shewakramani , a former lawyer who has used reality-show notoriety in service of business opportunities, on Instagram. The Juggernaut, Snigdha Sur ’s web magazine covering stories of South Asians, has earned nearly 250,000 followers on the platform. While many of their posts are positive and uplifting, some of the content that grabbed the audience’s attention in this live session involved the negative moments in their digital brand journeys.

“Haters are a sign you made it,” suggested panelist Hitha Palepu , the CEO of Rhoshan Pharmaceuticals. As someone who works in sports, I understood what she meant when she said, “Being an Eagles fan, I’m used to things not going my way, including this most recent Super Bowl.” As a North Texan I do find it tough to generate a lot of sympathy for a fan base that booed Santa Claus, but I can admire someone who doesn’t let failure keep them down. In fact, as Gautam pointed out, “failure gives you feedback.”

Shewakramani endured perhaps the most serious of negatives - trolls’ death threats in response to their perception of her on the Netflix show “Indian Matchmaking.”

They also worried about how personal social media efforts might affect their professional prospects. Upasna Gautam commented about her concerns regarding “what if my boss sees?” or “what if my family sees?”

All overcame their trepidations through, as Shewakramani put it, “authenticity and transparency.” They tried to provide something truly valuable to their audiences and do so in a way that didn’t come across as fake. And it so happened that as they did, they found voices that worked for them on multiple levels.

Palepu said she wrote last week about Formula 1 fangirlification and Star Trek "Picard," two subjects important to her but probably not likely to result in immediate pharmaceutical revenue.

Sur noted that her Twitter voice is more confrontational than her Instagram feed or what she posts for her company. She finds the dichotomy fulfilling. “I realized that s**t-posting on Twitter gives me joy,” she said.

They suggested that publicly indulging one’s personal passions online doesn’t have to lead to issues on the job, and, in fact, can even have the opposite effect. Even though she works for a news organization, Gautam said when she started becoming a problem-solver in her personal feeds, it helped her at work.

In business, we need proper tools to do our jobs, but relationships with co-workers or collaborators affect productivity, too. Clients often make purchase decisions based not only a product they like, but also on a salesperson they trust.

And what we do for work affects our personal brand as well.

I was reminded of that walking from the session to my next gig. A random guy on Congress Street asked me if I played bass in a metal band. I felt like the question validated a decision I had made some years before regarding my personal and professional brands.

It came at a pivotal time in my life and I had decided to just mix things up. I had broken up with a girlfriend. I was working with new management at the Texas Rangers who I felt didn’t see my creative talents. I felt I needed to appear to them more like someone capable of coming up with cutting-edge ideas. And, yeah, I was playing bass in a couple of bands (not a metal one, but close enough) and I felt like I needed to look more like a musician.

So I grew a slightly unconventional beard – the same one that attracted the dude’s attention today in Austin. Just like the women in the session I had attended, I had melded my personal and professional brands. And while I don’t play much bass any more, I am here gathering ideas for my current sports creative endeavors. Plus a guy on the street just confirmed that my instincts were right about the music side of things, too.

And now I have, hopefully authentically, posted about it. I hope it’ll work out for me the way it seems to have done for today’s panelists. Rock on.

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Rush Olson?has spent two-plus decades directing creative efforts for sports teams, broadcasters, and related entities. He currently conceives and executes content projects through his companies,?Rush Olson Creative & Sports,?FourNine Productions?and?Mint Farm Films. Through MFF, he’s at work on biographical documentaries about Nancy Lieberman, Sidney Moncrief, Pudge Rodríguez, Ed Belfour, and Bob Lilly as well as a show about the?The College Gridiron Showcase.

Subscribe to @MintFarmFilms on YouTube to see excerpts from upcoming documentaries.