Do You Have a Personal Branding Strategy for the Web?

Ivana Taylor at Strategy Stew is looking for your opinion on whether or not creating a personal brand is important.

She and I attended a visioning workshop not long ago and at one point the discussion of logos came into play and she said something about our personal brand ultimately being more important than a creative logo design. 

I'm in the process of launching a new branch of my business and as I'm working through the planning process I had contemplated the need for a logo and Ivana's words echoed in the recesses of my mind.  If the new portion of my business is based on my expertise than what could be more valuable to market than my name?

Then I read her post today seeking opinions on branding as I formulated my comment I realized that the interconnectivity of the web requires that we take a moment before we leave our trail or forge a new trail on the web as it all comes back to our name:  our personal brand.  It is all linked together.

Last week I heard a story about a professional who left a Tweet sharing a pretty disgusting personal body gesture he'd witnessed another colleague making while in a meeting.

The question was raised:  Was it his attempt to punk his peer or did it really happen?  If it really happened - why repeat it on the web?  And why wasn't he paying attention in the meeting instead of sending a Tweet that made his peer look bad and in turn, made him look less than sensitive and more like a jerk?

Is social media spinning so quickly out of control that people are jumping on board to participate in an effort not to be left behind that they are making poor judgement calls?

When you leave a comment, review a book at Amazon, Tweet or post a photo or video do you first think:  is this in alignment with the image I want to project to my customers or my employer?

Have we taken time to jump off the web roller-coaster long enough to think through a strategy for what we want linked with our name on the web?  Should we?

Photo courtesy of FMI

Comments

[Deborah Chaddock Brown]

Norma,

I agree branding yourself as a person should be managed as you would a product or a business. However, does that mean that you censure yourself intentionally in all forms of social media so that you become viewed as a one-dimensional, albeit professional brand or do you allow some of your human side to come through in sites like Twitter?

[Norma Rist]

Branding for a professional has many of the same key elements as branding for a product. Consistency is essential. Branding is a promise regarding the quality or the standard of the product/service. That same vanilla cone at McDonalds should be consistently good. So planning your strategy for web branding - how it will be consistent - is just as important - perhaps more.

[Ivana Taylor]

i Deborah - and thanks for answering the question -- I think it might end up in the article!

I'm humbled to think that you were actually reflecting back on something I said - thanks, that means a lot.