I once worked closely with someone who had bright pink hair. Neon, unapologetic, visible-from-across-a-conference-hall pink.
And here’s what happened inside my head every time I sat down to write: Am I interesting enough? Do I need a thing? Should I dye my hair? Get a signature outfit? Develop a larger-than-life persona?
It’s the question that keeps quiet, competent people from ever hitting publish: Am I fascinating enough for anyone to pay attention?
Let me answer that directly.
The two paths of online brand building
There are basically two ways to build a brand online. Understanding both, and choosing consciously, changes everything.
Path one: Build a brand around your personality.
You become the show. Your name, your face, your energy, your story. Think Gary Vaynerchuk’s intensity, or the way certain creators become synonymous with their niches.
This works. The internet gives us all mini-kingdoms to reign over, and personality-driven brands can gather tribes faster than almost anything else.
But here’s what people don’t mention: when you are the brand, you can never leave. Need a vacation? Want to step back? The show doesn’t go on without you. No pressure, but every single thing is riding on your continued presence and performance.
I’ve had this conversation with some of the most well-known people online. People who make you nervous. And they all say versions of the same thing: “My family still doesn’t understand what I do. My neighbors think I ‘make money on the internet.’ If my fans could see my actual daily life, they’d wonder what all the fuss was about.”
The celebrity is real. And it’s also a construction.
Path two: Build a brand around a promised experience.
This is the older, quieter path. You identify a group you want to serve, and you build a brand that represents a series of experiences, not a person.
Wellness Mama: Simple answers for healthier families.
The Creative Penn: Resources to help you write, publish, and market your book.
No Meat Athlete: Runs on plants.
These names tell you exactly what you’re going to get. No personality required as a gateway. The brand is the promise.
This approach has trade-offs. It’s harder to put a human face on a set of words. You have to work a little more to create warmth and connection.
But it has advantages too. You can craft a name that markets itself. It costs less to establish what the business actually does. And, this matters more than most people think, a brand built on an idea is much easier to sell than a brand built on your proper name.
The third way (the one content marketing makes possible)
Here’s the move that smart online businesses make: they build a brand name based on a promised experience, then they use content to deliver on that promise day after day, year after year.
The brand name attracts the right people. The content does the heavy lifting of building trust, demonstrating expertise, and creating connection. Over time, the humans behind the brand become known, not because they engineered their own celebrity, but because their usefulness made them visible.
It’s a Gravity Brand: it doesn’t chase attention. It creates a field that pulls the right people in through consistent, undeniable value.
The one step that multiplies your fascination quotient
You may not have neon pink hair. You may not be beautifully bald. You may not give high-energy talks that make audiences leap out of their seats.
Online, none of that matters as much as we think it does.
You know what actually stands out? Content that’s in tune with what an audience needs. Content that serves without whining. Content that delivers, time after predictable time, until people start seeking it out because they’ve learned they can trust it.
If you’re worried you’re not fascinating enough, stop trying to become more fascinating. Instead, become more useful.
Find a way to be of service. Create content that goes above and beyond. Go deeper than your competitors. Be the person who makes your readers feel like they just found a secret advantage.
That’s the kind of fascinating we need more of online. Not louder. Not flashier. Just relentlessly, undeniably useful.
And it’s available to anyone willing to do the work, pink hair or not.