Branding Friday: Are You Hanging Out with the Wrong People?

I’ve been reading All for One: 10 Strategies for Building Trusted Client Partnerships. Great book, by the way, if you want to learn how to be more of a partner or advisor to a business rather than just a vendor. In the middle of reading, I had an epiphany:

I am hanging out with the wrong crowd.

On Twitter and Facebook, I hang out with social media and marketing types. I read the same types of books. But if I’m working on branding myself in a niche, shouldn’t I be hanging out in that niche??

Go ahead and say it. Duh.

Still, it takes a catalyst for us to have these realizations, so I’m pretty proud. I recently honed my focus into products that appeal to women and mothers. I wanted to pick an industry that I knew, liked and was comfortable working in. I’m a woman and mother, and working with my GiveDaddy giveaway blog, I realized how much I like telling others about great products.

So I have made it my goal to do the following:

• Spend less time following social media and marketing conversations
• Finish reading the stack of social media books I owe reviews on, then switch to reading about marketing to this demographic
• Attend product related trade shows next year rather than focus on blog conferences
• Pay attention to more brands on social media
• Establish myself as someone who knows her stuff in this realm

That’s not to say I’m foresaking my social media buds. I still learn a ton from them. But I need to follow a different school of learning if I really want to get good at my industry. It’s easy to stay complacent when we truly have mastered something, but how hard is it to leave the comfort of the nest and try to master something else? Pretty hard. But I have you as my witness, so I’m going to be just fine.

What about you? What’s that thing you’re fantastic at that you don’t want to leave? Could you stand to hang out with a different crowd online to learn something new?