Andrew Wayman

I was reading through a set of posts tonight by Brian Solis (www.briansolis.com) called “The Socialization of Your Personal Brand - Part I ,II, and III” and I think he captured the issue of why you need to think about your Personal Brand better in this post than any I have read as of yet.

“Your digital identity defines who you are and in this genre of Web-savvy content creators and purveyors, your online reputation does indeed precede you. The pictures and videos you upload, the bookmarks you share, the profile you define on each social network, those you befriend, the comments you share on blogs and other profiles, the posts your publish, the tweets you send on Twitter, basically everything you contribute to the Social Web shapes and contributes to your personal brand and how people will most likely perceive it. Hopefully in most cases, it can promote and showcase your expertise, and sometimes, what’s representative online can and will be used against you.

Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, blog posts and comments, basically every piece of content you generate collectively feed search results in Google, Yahoo, Ask, and all other search engines. All it takes is someone to “Google” aka search your name to begin the process of forming an opinion and perception based on the search results – usually without your knowledge and definitely without the opportunity to explain the results.

Whether you’re a student, currently employed, seeking a new job, a brand ambassador or the official community manager of a company’s social media strategy, your activities online contribute to and ultimately shape your identity and lay the foundation for your reputation.

It’s been said that Google is the new resume. Truth be told, any search engine, whether social or traditional, is the resume – it’s the Wikipedia entry for the rest of us. It’s no longer what we decide to curate onto a piece of paper or onto one traditional one-page digital resume. It really is moot in a world when anyone can practically piece together your story without the help of a document designed to shape and steer our perception.

Easy AdSenser by Unreal

“Seventy-seven percent of recruiters report using search engines to find background data on candidates. Of that number, 35 percent eliminated a candidate because of what they found online.”

– Kevin Donline, Star Tribune Minneapolis, St. Paul, Minnesota”

Read the full post on his personal blog here – Part I, Part II, and Part III

Brian does a great job of identifying the problem, but what about the solution? From what I can tell, a lot of what is being recommended (on other sites) as personal branding is just noise.

Your Personal Brand should be authentic. It should therefore emerge from your search for your identity and meaning in life, and it is about getting very clear on what you want, fixing it in your mind, giving it all your positive energy, doing what you love and develop yourself continuously. Your Personal Brand should always reflect your true character, and should be built on your values, strengths, uniqueness, and genius. If you are branded in this organic, authentic and holistic way your Personal Brand will be strong, clear, complete, and valuable to others.
You will also create a life that is fulfilling and you will automatically attract the people and opportunities that are a perfect fit for you. If you are not branded in this unique (honest) way, if you don’t deliver according to your brand promise, and if you focus mainly on selling and promoting yourself, you will be perceived egocentric, selfish and a jerk, and your branding will be simply cosmetic. You will end up simply talking about yourself instead of talking about something that’s useful to others.

Any recommendations on other great blogs (Like Brians) or people I should be following on twitter?

-Andrew Wayman

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This entry was posted on Saturday, February 21st, 2009 at 9:00 pm and is filed under Personal Branding, Social, Web. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.