Are you willing to shift gears in your business? What about in your writing? It’s a fine line to walk. Every now and then, it’s necessary to re-evaluate your strategy. However, it can be tricky. At some point, you have to ask yourself if you’re throwing out the baby with the bath water.

Confession: this blog post was prompted by a recent decision to shift gears on my part. I decided that I’ve lost the original focus of this blog. Okay; maybe I didn’t lose the focus entirely, but I certainly compromised it when I decided to constrain the scope to writing. When I started writing this blog in late 2007, my intent was simple. I basically just needed to rant and vent about my frustrations with the extravert-dominated sales world and its continual resistance to change. There came  a point, though, when I realized that I needed to grow past this.

I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s time to return to the core fundamental purpose of this blog. Instead of getting up on my soapbox about how to become better at writing (I’ll continue to do that at EzineArticles), I’m going to be sharing about my experiences as an Introverted Entrepreneur. I hope this doesn’t bother you.

You’ve probably noticed the sea of marketing noise that’s fighting to get in front of you. If you’re in business for yourself, you’ve no doubt noticed what you’re up against. That’s why personal branding is so critical these days. Getting in front of people is getting harder and harder to do, unless they think they need what you’re selling. But that’s not all of it. Most likely, there are plenty of other people selling the same thing you’re selling. It doesn’t matter if you’re a business owner looking for customers, or if you’re looking for a job. You can’t afford to do and say the same things everyone else says and does. Throwing mud at the wall, hoping for some of it to stick just doesn’t work any more.

If you’re clueless about personal branding, it’s simple. What comes to mind when people hear your name? If you don’t know the answer, then it’s probably something different for each person. You want to be like Coke is to cola, and like Kleenex is to tissues. Whatever it is you want people to buy, they need to think that word when they hear your name.

How can you accomplish this? If you’re not Budweiser and you don’t have $10 million to spend on marketing, how can you brand yourself? The answer to this question is complicated, of course, and it’s more than I can cover in 100 blog articles, let alone one, but I’ll give you a simple place to start. Sit down at your laptop and start writing.

What should you write about? Where should you submit it? What audience should you write to? How will you know if it’s working? Those are all good questions to consider, but don’t let them stop you. Don’t think that you need to have that all figured out before you write anything. Here’s the reality: the way to learn branding, like anything else, is by doing it badly. You learn to sink shots on the basketball court by getting out there and practicing. You don’t learn by studying books about basketball or studying diagrams. You don’t learn by asking people for advice. These things can all help, of course, but none of them will help you at all if you don’t practice.

Writing is no different. The biggest place where writers get hung up: waiting to show anyone their writing until they’re sure that it’s perfect.

Here’s an easy formula to get you started.

1. Start a blog, and post something to it once a week.
2. E-mail five friends each week a link to your blog, and ask them what they think.
3. Read one new blog each week and see what you notice about it.

If you do this consistently, you’ll brand yourself. You’ll also get other ideas about where you can submit your writing. Just take it one step at a time.