Information Cannibal - Life in the totalitarian state of Content

If you work in marketing, social media, public relations, advertising, corporate communications, media relations, issues/ crisis management, engagement, stakeholder management, corporate affairs and you don't have a personal blog - you're fucked.

When you boil what I do for a living down to its most base element, I create content: media releases, briefing notes, speeches, communication strategies, issues management plans, corporate reports, newsletters, executive training sessions, websites, blog posts - it's all content driven.

You can find the base elements of my personal brand in my tweets, blog posts, vlogs, comments on forums, LinkedIn topics - it's all content driven.

If a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, has the tree still fallen?

I'm really proud that some of the posts on this blog have gotten 600 views. Sure, that's not huge, but my previous PR blog was doing well when I got to 40 hits for one post. In my opinion, what really counts is the fact that I am always creating my own content. I am always talking about issues, topics, trends. In the process I am learning, I am reaching out to people that I would never have been in contact with were it not for my blogs and my tweets. Most importantly, I am building my personal brand.

When you google my name you will find an odd collection of comic book/ pop culture websites and forums, together with media releases that I have written and results from this blog and my posts on Twitter and other websites/ blogs. I have a number of content streams that can be found in search: my personal hobbies, my outputs in various media relations roles and my own personally branded content found on this blog, in my tweets, in my posts on LinkedIn or other PR blogs.

The reason for such an ecclectic mix is that I have been creating content - material published online - for years. Since I became conscious of building my personal brand I have sought to achieve this through a focus on creating content.

My first ever mass published written work appeared on a US-based comic book website almost 7 years ago. Sure, I regret that my largest body of online content relates to comic books, but I have taken what I learned about building my brand in that space (for a number of years I was a respected columnist for one of the most influential pop culture websites and I also came close to securing writing deals with a number of publishers) and I am applying it even more vigorously to my public relations career.

I am strongly attracted to Gary Vaynerchuk's ideas of creating content around a topic that you are passionate about and then using a myriad of social media tools to leverage that content. The point is that a personal brand built through social media can only work when it's driven by content.

If you work in this industry and you are content with none of your own content, you're history.

Hypotheses of the Info Cannibal:

1. Creating and consuming content is now the single most important industry in the human economy.

2. The ability to create, consume, analyze, question, dissect, reassemble and disseminate information - the pure distillation of our conscious thoughts - is what sets us apart from other animals.

3. There is now a more level playing field with the ability to produce and access information open to more of humanity than at any other time in our history.

4. The information ecosystem is symbiotic and can not survive without this duality: we must consume content, but we must also create content.

5. The rate of information that we consume and produce is exploding exponentially.

6. The winners of tomorrow are those who understand how to create, manage, navigate and leverage information.

7. At no time in our history has it been easier to have a voice and to be heard. At the same time, the mass volume of information makes it almost impossible for your voice to have unique cut through.

8. The big debates are no longer about ideology: there are those that have and those that don’t in information wars.

9. Information is now truly free.

10. Information is the ultimate drug: the more we create the more we consume, the more we consume the more we create.

You can follow my usual blog stream that looks at general issues in media, issues management, social media, engagement over at http://jasonbereklewis.posterous.com or you can find both streams covered at http://twitter.com/jbereklewis