我、我、我：如何在個人形象管理的時代脫穎而出

By Arwa Mahdawi

So you want to write a bestselling book？ Of course you do. Literally everyone and their dog think they have a book in them. And while not everyone may be able to write， with enough guile1 behind you pretty much anybody can make it to the top of a bestseller list.

Take Lani Sarem， for example. For a few hours in August， the novice2 authors debut novel， Handbook for Mortals， was No 1 on the New York Times bestseller list for young adult literature. Soon after Sarems fantasy novel reached the top spot， however， there was a plot-twist. People on social media began questioning exactly how a book nobody had ever heard of， by an unknown author， put out by an unfamiliar publisher， had suddenly magicked its way on to a prestigious literary list. The answer was somewhat prosaic3： bulk-buying copies of the book from bookshops that report their sales to the New York Times.

在這個社交媒體稱霸的世界，網絡形象對于成功至關重要，如今誕生了一系列服務來優化你的個人品牌，無論是通過向你提供僵尸粉還是教你如何在一夜之間寫出亞馬遜暢銷書。

Bulk-buying is a tried and tested4 way of getting on the bestseller list and there are even specialist consultancies that will help you do it. However， the practice presents two problems： you actually have to write a book and you have to spend a fair amount of money buying it up. Thanks to the wonders of the modern internet， however， there are less arduous5 and expensive ways to get bestseller status.

The fastest， cheapest way is probably via Amazon. Last year a guy called Brent Underwood wrote a bestselling book called Putting My Foot Down： A Book Featuring My Foot， which consists solely of a picture of his foot. There are no words. Theres no story. Its just a picture of a mans left foot. You see， last year Underwood， a partner in a US marketing company， decided he wanted to tell the world about the“biggest lie in publishing … the word ‘bestseller.” So he took a photo of his foot and self-published it on Amazon.

Heres the thing about Amazon： it has hundreds of uber-niche6 categories you can choose to self-publish in and tracks the highest seller in each of these categories. Hit that spot for a mere hour and you get a shiny “#1 Best Seller” banner for life. So Underwood put his book in the Freemasonry7 category and set the price （another thing Amazon allows you to do） at $0.99. He bought a copy of the book and got a couple of friends to do so. All-in-all it took three sales， a princely8 investment of $2.97， to make his masterpiece the biggest seller in the Freemasonry category and get an orange bestseller banner next to his name. （Amazon removed the book when he published an account of what he had done.）

Underwood isnt the first person to discover you can game Amazons algorithms9. As he points out， theres a whole cottage industry around it： myriad online courses，10 webinars and consultants promising to get you to bestseller status for just a few thousand dollars. While the accolade11 may be hollow， its far from meaningless； as Underwood notes， being an Amazon bestselling author“dramatically increases your credibility and ‘personal brand.” If you are a businessperson， say， and quickly pen a “book” about your theory of Disruptive Blue-Sky Thinking in Game-Changing Workplaces12， that bestseller tag helps establish you as an expert， which helps you land lucrative gigs and generally parlay your faux fame into a real fortune.13

The Amazon Bestseller scam14 is a prime example of what you could call modern “egonomics”. If you want to be successful in the age of the internet， then image is everything. And so numerous services have sprung up that allow you to optimise your “personal brand” by fair means or foul： you can buy fake followers to inflate your social media presence； you can get a search engine specialist to put your website on the first page of Google； you can even hire a“Tinder15 consultant” to enhance your online dating profile.

Having a strong personal brand essentially just means having a strong reputation. However， all too often this is measured by the size of your social media following. Indeed， in industries like the media， having a large social following that you can leverage to amplify your employers brand， has become a huge competitive advantage， if not a prerequisite for being hired. Take， for example， a recent job advert for a news editor role at Mic， an American news startup that caters to millennials. The advert stipulates16 that not only do you have to “identify， assign， edit and publish at least 10 articles per day” （as a contractor， rather than a full-time employee） but you “must have” an “amazing personal Twitter feed”.

Having an “amazing personal Twitter feed” doesnt just help you land an extremely stressful job at a millennial-focused publication， it can become a lucrative career in itself. A large number of advertising dollars are now being diverted away from traditional media channels towards “influencers”， people with large social followings who are paid to endorse brands. According to influencer tech firm Hypr， influencers with 500，000 to one million followers across social platforms can make between $5，000 and $10，000 per post. And estimates from eMarketer show that globally， in 2016，marketers spent $570m on influencer marketing on Instagram alone. Tom Buontempo， president at Attention， a social media agency， explains that “the influencer economy is growing in popularity in part because its more difficult for marketers to reach their audiences because of adblockers.”

Constantly promoting yourself on social media can be very tiring. It can also make you very tiresome. Do you really need to be doing it to get ahead？ Not everyone is convinced. Last year， Cal Newport， an associate professor of computer science at Georgetown University， wrote an op-ed17 for the New York Times headlined “Quit Social Media： Your Career May Depend on It.” Newport argues that“dedication to cultivating your social media brand … diverts your time and attention away from producing work that matters and toward convincing the world that you matter. The latter activity is seductive， especially for many members of my generation who were raised on this message， but it can be disastrously counterproductive18.”

你想寫本暢銷書？當然，你當然想。幾乎所有人和他們的狗都認為自己腦子里有本待出版的書。雖然并不是人人都有能力從事寫作，但只要歪路子夠歪，幾乎人人都可以在暢銷書排行榜奪冠。

比如說拉尼·薩瑞姆。在8月份有幾個小時，這位新人作家的首部小說《凡人手冊》登上了《紐約時報》青年文學類暢銷書排行榜第一的寶座。然而，薩瑞姆的這部奇幻小說才登上榜首寶座不久，就出現了情節大反轉。社交媒體上的人們開始質疑，這樣一本作者不知名，出版商也不知名，從來沒人聽說過的書，究竟是如何突然變戲法般地登上了一個聲名卓著的文學榜單。答案或許沒啥新意：從向《紐約時報》反饋銷售情況的書店大批量購買這本書。

大批量購買是一種百試百靈的上榜手段，而且甚至有專家顧問來幫你。可是，這種做法存在兩個問題：事實上你必須寫出一本書，而且你得花一大筆錢去買。然而，由于現代互聯網的奇跡，有更加省力、省錢的方法來獲得暢銷書地位。

最快速、最省錢的方式可能就是通過亞馬遜了。去年，一個叫布倫特·安德伍德的家伙寫了本名為《放下我的腳：我的腳部寫真》的暢銷書，全書只有一張他的腳的照片。沒有文字。沒有故事。就只有一張一個男人的左腳的照片。你看，作為美國一家營銷公司的合伙人，安德伍德去年決定向全世界揭露“出版界最大的謊言，也就是所謂的‘暢銷書。”于是，他拍了一張他的腳的照片，并自行在亞馬遜上出版。

亞馬遜的情況是這樣的：亞馬遜設有數百個超級利基類別可供你選擇來自行出版，而且會追蹤每一類別中銷量最高的書目。你只需要花費一小時的時間，就可以獲得一個閃閃發光的“第一暢銷書”的標志伴隨你一生。于是安德伍德將他的書放在“共濟會”類下，把價格（亞馬遜允許你做的另一件事）定在0.99美元。他自己買了一本，再讓兩個朋友買了。總共只需要賣出三本書，一筆2.97美元的“大”投資，就可以讓他的杰作成為共濟會類的第一暢銷書，并且得到顯示在他名字旁邊的橙色暢銷書旗幟。（在他發文講述自己所作所為之后亞馬遜下架了這本書。）

安德伍德不是第一個發現你可以鉆亞馬遜算法空子的人。正如他所指出的那樣，圍繞亞馬遜算法已經形成了一整套小規模產業：無數的在線課程、網絡研討會和咨詢顧問都承諾只需要幾千美元就可以讓你獲得暢銷書的地位。雖然榮譽可能是虛的，但絕不是沒有意義；正如安德伍德所說，成為亞馬遜暢銷書作家“大大提高了你的可信度和‘個人品牌。”如果你是一名商人，比方說，并且很快寫出一本書闡述你的“顛覆性職場中的顛覆性藍天思維”理論 ，那么暢銷書的標簽可以幫你建立起專家的身份，從而讓你有機會獲得收入不菲的臨時工作，并且通常可以將你的虛名變成真金百銀。

亞馬遜暢銷書騙局是你可以稱之為現代“個人形象管理學”的最好例子。如果你想在互聯網時代取得成功，那么形象就是一切。因此眾多服務如雨后春筍般出現，讓你通過正當或不正當的手段優化“個人品牌”：你可以通過購買僵尸粉來增加你在社交媒體上的存在感；你可以讓搜索引擎專家把你的網站放在谷歌首頁上；你甚至可以聘請一名“Tinder顧問”來美化你的網上約會資料。

擁有強大的個人品牌本質上就意味著擁有良好的聲譽。但是，這通常是由你在社交媒體的粉絲數來衡量的。誠然，在諸如媒體這樣的行業中，如果你擁有大量的粉絲，你可以用他們來擴大你雇主的品牌，即使這不是被雇用的先決條件，但這也已經成為一個巨大的競爭優勢。舉個例子，Mic是美國一家面向千禧一代的新聞創業公司，最近他們發布了一則廣告招聘新聞編輯。招聘條件要求你不僅需要“每天挑選、分配、編輯和發布至少10篇文章”（作為合同員工而不是全職員工）而且“必須”擁有“令人驚嘆的個人推特信息流”。

擁有“令人驚嘆的個人推特信息流”不僅能幫你在面向千禧一代的出版公司找到一份壓力巨大的工作，這本身就可以成為一種收入豐厚的職業。現在大量的廣告資金正在從傳統的媒體渠道轉向“大V”，那些擁有大量粉絲的人收費為品牌宣傳。根據大V科技公司Hypr，在社交平臺上擁有50萬到100萬粉絲的大V每發布一則消息可以賺得5，000到10，000美元。eMarketer估算表明，2016年全球范圍內市場營銷人員光在Instagram上進行大V營銷就花費高達5.7億美元。社交媒體機構Attention的總裁湯姆·博恩坦波解釋道：“大V經濟越來越受歡迎，部分原因是市場營銷人員所投放的廣告由于過濾軟件難以抵達受眾。”

不斷在社交媒體上宣傳自己會非常累人，而且也會使你感到十分厭煩。為了脫穎而出，你真的要做到這個地步嗎？并不是每個人都這么認為。去年，喬治城大學計算機科學副教授卡爾·紐波特為《紐約時報》撰寫了一篇題為《退出社交媒體：你的職業生涯可能取決于此》的專欄文章。紐波特認為，“如果你花大力氣運營你的社交媒體品牌……這會將你的時間和注意力從重要的工作轉移到‘讓世界相信你是重要的這件事上去。后一件事非常誘人，對于我這一代在成長過程中一直被灌輸這一信息的許多人而言尤其如此，但這可能會產生災難性的反作用。”

1. guile： 欺騙，奸猾。

2. novice： 新手，初學者。

3. prosaic： 乏味的，平淡無奇的。

4. tried and tested： 經過反復檢驗的。

5. arduous： 艱難的，費力的。

6. uber-： 指超級的，（程度）很大的，最大的；niche： 來源于法語，法國人信奉天主教，在建造房屋時，常常在外墻上鑿出一個不大的神龕，以供放圣母瑪利亞，因而后來被引來形容大市場中一個很小的產品或服務領域的縫隙市場。譯為利基，指針對企業的優勢細分出來的市場。按照菲利普·科特勒在《營銷管理》中給利基下的定義：利基是更窄地確定某些群體，這是一個小市場并且它的需要沒有被服務好，或者說“有獲取利益的基礎”。

7. Freemasonry： 共濟會，出現在18世紀的英國，是一種帶宗教色彩的兄弟會組織，也是目前世界上最龐大的秘密組織。

8. princely： 巨額的，龐大的。

9. algorithm： 算法。

10. cottage industry： 作坊式小產業；myriad： 無數的，大量的。

11. accolade： 榮譽，獎勵。

12. 此理論為作者編造。

13. lucrative： 有利可圖的，賺錢的；gig： 臨時工作；parlay：有限發展，使增值。

14. scam： 欺詐，騙局。

15. Tinder： 是一款手機交友軟件。

16. stipulate： 規定，約定。

17. op-ed： 專欄稿件。

18. counterproductive： 適得其反的。