The Long Tail and Personal Branding

In a previous post, I had written about the importance and paradox of personal branding. I was just now thinking about and reading some literature on the topic of "The Long Tail", which as a Wikipedia defines, "is the colloquial name for a long-known feature of some statistical distributions... In these distributions a high-frequency or high-amplitude population is followed by a low-frequency or low-amplitude population which gradually 'tails off'".

The graph below is a nice illustration of this phenomenon:



As the graphic illustrates, in these types of curves its about 20% of the whole area being measured that dominate about 80% of the phenomenon. Indeed, it is Pareto's 80/20 principle that is being displayed and the long tail is in a sense a Pareto tail. This is important to keep in mind, because later I will show how Pareto's principles come back to us.

This notion was popularized by the Wired article written by Chris Anderson which is probably the most commented and written about article in Wired history. Here's how he describes the Long Tail:

You can find everything out there on the Long Tail. There's the back catalog, older albums still fondly remembered by longtime fans or rediscovered by new ones. There are live tracks, B-sides, remixes, even (gasp) covers. There are niches by the thousands, genre within genre within genre: Imagine an entire Tower Records devoted to '80s hair bands or ambient dub. There are foreign bands, once priced out of reach in the Import aisle, and obscure bands on even more obscure labels, many of which don't have the distribution clout to get into Tower at all...

When you think about it, most successful businesses on the Internet are about aggregating the Long Tail in one way or another. Google, for instance, makes most of its money off small advertisers (the long tail of advertising), and eBay is mostly tail as well - niche and one-off products. By overcoming the limitations of geography and scale, just as Rhapsody and Amazon have, Google and eBay have discovered new markets and expanded existing ones.

This is the power of the Long Tail. The companies at the vanguard of it are showing the way with three big lessons. Call them the new rules for the new entertainment economy.

The music industry is where the effect of this has been the most pronounced, as the industry has lost significant market share to downloaded music both legal and illegal. The reference to Tower records is most telling of all, as that franchise recently declared bankruptcy and has closed all its stores down.

So what does this entail for someone (like myself), trying to pursue establishing a personal brand? Quite a bit.

My feeling is that the whole idea of trying to brand yourself is predicated on there being enough market share in the long tail for your to monopolize. Because lets face it, you are trying to be a "minor" celebrity within your chosen profession, industry, service, etc. niche. In other words, you don't want to be just another Joe/Jane competing with a bazillion other Joes and Janes for a job, business opportunity or gig. You want your brand, namely you, to be recognizable enough in your chosen niche such that opportunities come to you, instead of like the rest of the herd, fighting for the scraps.

Let us now look at the main tenets of the Long Tail and how they will influence your pursuit of your personal brand dominating a niche (I got this summary from an Amazon book review of "The Long Tail" by Chris Anderson):

1. In virtually all markets, there are far more niche goods than hits, as a result of the improvements in the basic tools of production (i.e. Internet).

In the regard, it would be the ability for you to distribute your brand and ideas about you very efficiently, effectively and cheaply through the internet. Just like I'm blogging here and all the other forums I participate in related to my specialty.

2. The costs of reaching these niches is now falling dramatically thanks to digital distribution, search and a critical mass of broadband technology.

The key here, is having your self-brand to be easily searched and identified. As I posted in my previous blog, while it is very easy to get your brand out there, paradoxically, so it is the same for everyone else, so you have to work harder to distinguish yourself.

3. There are a range of tools - from recommendations to rankings (think search) that help to shift demand down the long tail, and help people find useful/relevant niches.

Yes, and given that you are targeting a niche in the Long Tail, there is a more highly focused audience and potential market demand. The key as I mentioned, is to be easily identifiable and recognizable.

4. The effect of all of this is that the demand curve will eventually flatten, with the hits becoming relatively less popular and the niches growing in popularity.

Yes, but as I will mention in a moment, your niche will eventually grow into its own meaty curve with sub long tails within it.

5. All of the niches add up to comprise a market that rivals the hits.

We are already witnessing this phenomenon with the advent of user directed content on YouTube, blogs and social networking sites that is now rivaling traditional mainstream media, and in some respects have exceeded it.

6. The internet can reveal a natural shape of demand, undistorted by distribution bottlenecks, scarcity of information and limited choice of shelf space.

While this is true, there is a concern where the Long Tail gets too flat and the demand distribution gets too diluted. When this occurs, the curve can shift back.

History seems to indicate that no matter how much a certain technology, and the internet was a pretty huge one, disrupts economic patterns, there is still only a finite amount of people, time and attention you can expect to obtain, thus the fundamental laws of economics will still hold. When the Long Tail becomes to flat for your particular focus, the Law of Diminishing Return will kick in and effect you.

Thus, here's what I'd recommend in your strategy to expand your personal brand:

• Pay careful attention to the niche you are targeting. Will you have enough time to occupy the upper quadrant of the Pareto curve within the niche you are focused on? Is it large enough to be worth your effort?
• If so, then Pareto's law kicks in, because in every economic phenomenon, about 20% of the entities control 80% or more of the resources. You cannot escape this, so make sure you obtain and sustain the monopoly or oligopoly to which your brand identifies with.
• Then when you are a well established personal brand, be careful of overexposure and complacency. The very same disruptive forces that allowed you to dominate a niche, can displace you as well. Clayton Christensen documented this well in his book, "The Innovator's Dilemma".
• One way of preventing the above, is to parlay your brand to capture another niche. A great example of this is Arnold Schwarzenegger, a person who found a way to become a dominant brand within the niche of bodybuilding, then parlayed that skill to gain great prominence in business, acting, and politics.
• Finally, you are the CEO of the company called "You", thus you must work hard much like a company does to market and acquire mind share as opposed to market share, and do all the very same practices the big companies do to maintain it. Fortunately, you are a one person show, thus you are more nimble and can adapt quickly to changing circumstances.

Interesting what I'm describing above is much like the phenomenon of Fractals in Chaos or Complexity Theory. Each time you zoom into the Long Tail, you see other Long Tails, each with their own Pareto curves. Likewise, your brand niche could be as software programming expert, and within that field, there would be sub-niches such as Java expert or web scripting expert, and so on and so forth.

Lots of work and things to think about, but what could be more important than being mindful of that identity called "You"?