What Is Your Lighthouse Product?

You never actually reach the lighthouse, but you use it as a guiding principle every step of the way in order to dock your boat in the harbour successfully.

I heard this very interesting idea in a meeting when the concept of a lighthouse product was shared with me. A lighthouse product is something that will likely cost too much money and time to ever create, but everything you do should be moving you in that direction.

To that note, my friend Bill (owner of www.empirebuilding.net) and I have begun a new Facebook community page called The Social Branding Network. It essentially replaces my experiment of the coreytyhurst.com fan page, and has a focus on discussing issues surrounding personal and professional branding in everything you do, particularly online.

The name is very deliberate:


Social- This is a place for conversation, debate, and asking questions. I've learned from my mistakes that there is no point in having a community page unless you are active in it!


Branding- It's all about branding; personal, professional, location, product. You name it, we want to talk about branding it.


Network- You cannot have a conversation without a network. As such, this is a place for those who may or may not know each other to meet others and explore what different perspectives have to offer.

You'll also note that the logo design is very similar to the Empire Building Network. This is deliberate as well. Bill and I are working together to help promote our social networks, and we wanted that to be clear to everyone involved.

If you are interested, you can visit the page or "Like" it via the big box on the right, or by clicking here. I expect it will often contain articles from your favourite sites like Mashable and Digg, but we also hope that it can have some unique content; be it user created or even pictures and videos that exemplify how important it is to take your brand by the horns and actively manage it.

There is still much work to do on www.coreytyhurst.com as well as on my personal blog to be sure. However a career in brand building can take many paths, and I feel like this step is moving me a little bit closer to my lighthouse product.