_{*Branding can be seen from different perspectives as it relates to the content we publish here on Hive. Obviously, we can upload posts from the perspective of your account as a personal account, a business account, a community account, etc. In short, branding can be done differently depending on your goals here on the blockchain. I've been on the side of using my blog as a personal brand. Something not totally old-school blog, but not really straying far from it because it is something that I already know how to do. After five years of almost daily interactions here and on Hive Discord channels, I've come to realize that this is something that can become more than a hobby. Hence, the revisiting of my Hive account branding goals. It doesn't really mean that I will go bonkers on branding, but just thinking about the basics might suffice.}

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Hive Rabbit Hole

Being active onchain is something that I enjoy doing. It's something that many of us do for recreation, relaxation, rejuvenation, or whatever nice "R"-words we might want to use in describing the Hive "rabbit hole". Hive is, to a certain extent, entertaining, informative, and a place to earn some pocket money. "Pocket money" because I don't really consider this as my main source of income. In fact, I have earned more from other cryptocurrencies during the past two years. So, Hive is a hobby where I earn extra. Would I like to earn more from here? Yes, of course. Since I already like writing and creating content, publishing and earning would be a nice "reward" to have because I don't really want to spend ALL my extra time going on-chain, reading blog posts, watching videos, and engaging with other Hiveans. Because time equals money. Because time is a limited resource. Because time can be spent somewhere else and I will be getting bigger returns. ROI for the time spent on Hive vs time spent on other IGPs (Income Generating Projects).

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Brand

I haven't really thought about my Hive branding since I first joined the legacy blockchain many, many moons ago. Back then, I only thought about posting something related to my lifestyle, hence the #vegetarian tag, that I've added to my online persona that is "JUAN". So, what I was thinking about was just to post anything related to cooking my everyday foods, vegetarian / vegan / plant-based dishes, my veggie journey, self-awareness and meditation, reducing stress and identifying stressors in one's life, etc. And, I have published content on all of those things, and more. This was a personal project that I did not think would become a big part of my online life so I wasn't really concerned about crossing the boundaries of a focused brand awareness campaign early on - actually, until now.

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Smorgasborg branding

And there lies the rub, how much more outside the identified core content is too much? Thinking about it in hindsight, I could have just posted ONLY about things related to food and that would have been awesome. But as time went by and I was experimenting and trying out things that could possibly work out, I found that I can post about literally anything under the sun, and it would get upvoted. As long as it satisfies the basics: original, interesting, informative. Something new and fresh along with a healthy dose of engagement and good banter with the community and other authors will, and did, get upvotes; I didn't mind the metrics after that because I was, and still am, happy with being able to write and create content about my stuff. I learned that people are interested in what I do, however trivial it may be. As long as I write logically, sometimes comically, and not really mindful of the strict rules of grammar. I am not a native English speaker so I had this excuse of being NOT perfect when it comes to speaking and writing in English. But this is straying far from my subject.

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Light bulb moment

Going back to branding, I saw some things on my feeds related to branding and marketing, which I used to be passionate about back in the day, and something clicked. I should be thinking about this when I plan for the future. It's imperative if I want to make this into a "career" because posting about random stuff, while a good emotional release, doesn't really translate to big upvotes. It doesn't really get me profits, which is also an important metric when trying to "monetize" ones social media platform. And given that fact that we, or most of us, here want to earn from blogging, I'd say that being mindful of rewards per post is important. But it isn't the end all and be all of creating content: it shouldn't. To be clear, there must be a balance between hunting for bigger upvotes and staying true to one's content, thus hunting for good curation and delegation for upvote accounts because I can still publish what I've been uploading here like it was a personal blog, but I would get bigger upvotes. The only limitation is how much HP I can delegate to get curated versus my upvote value when I do engage with other authors myself. I will know in a few months when I do revisit this once again. Hopefully, with the best results.

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Conclusion

Finally, for me, personal branding is something that must come naturally, organically for a blog. It should be something that one loves to do and is passionate about. It falls inside a person's circle of interests and skills. It must be something we truly want to learn, write, and share to the world. Branding your blog can be done many ways but it can be easier done when you already know and like doing it. And that's it for today. Thanks for visiting. Wishing you a wonderful and bright day ahead.

Love and peace,
@juanvegetarian

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