Personal Branding: How To Avoid The Echo Chamber In Your Biz

[Video transcript]

Hi guys it’s Jo Gifford here - today we  are talking about how to stay in your own lane and avoid the echo chamber as you build your personal brand

What do I mean by that?

Well, if you exist solely in any network or organisation or social platform, you are going to find that you surround yourself with people who agree with you all the time, people who have a certain way of talking, people who have certain views - that’s awesome, you know we love to find our tribe - but we don’t exist in a bubble.

We don’t live and work in societies or cultures where we are surrounded by people who agree with us.

Also, we don’t get to learn new things, to experience new ideas if we just exist in an echo chamber.

We often find that industries perpetuate certain cultures by living and operating in echo chambers; whether it’s internet marketers mainly operating on Facebook and having conversations that justify certain actions and ways of operating, ; whether it’s entrepreneurs who only exist and listen to people within their networking circles of other CEO’s and C Suite members; whether you are someone who surrounds yourself by other people of a similar view but never really expand out of that, staying out of an echo chamber will help you stay creative.

It will help you be informed about other conversations going on around you, it will help you really be able to stay in your own lane.

If you operate purely from within an echo chamber of a social platform or a social group, you end up taking on ideas and concepts from everybody within that same circle as you, and perhaps not challenging them, perhaps not staying true to your values, perhaps not being clear that there are other thought processes and other methods out there.

So, for your personal brand, make sure that you are finding time, for yourself, as well, to make sure that you are engaging in  variety of conversions on a variety of different platforms.

For me, that means I cycle my time off social media, so I will quite often have a social media break. I will realise that I have been taking on viewpoints of certain people, that I have been involved in groups, or discussions purely from one place, and I will make sure that I spend time offline,  that I spend time meeting up with real human beings, that I go to talks and discussions and conferences. 

Vary where you spend your time.

It might sound really obvious, but I bet you will notice yourself doing that now that we think about it.

So, stay out of the echo chamber, stay in your own lane, because you do have original thought and original ideas.

We build on thoughts and ideas of those around us, absolutely, but by challenging those thoughts and ideas, you develop your own, much more easily.