Responses to recent tweets made recently by people about personal branding.
Sherman M. Cheng, @chengm7ny, asked: thinking of building up my personal brand…but what should I start with?
Jacob Share, @jacobshare:
The first part of a personal branding is to understand what its goals should be i.e, once you’ve understood what your personal branding goals are, you can start exploring the best ways to achieve them.
Some ideas to get you started:
- If you’ve begun to feel the need for actively growing your brand, ask yourself why. Put differently, what goal(s) do you now believe you can achieve with a stronger personal brand?
- Ask your friends, family and colleagues about how they see you. If they all have similar, positive impressions, your consistency has been subconsciously building your brand without you even realizing it. Which personal branding goals can leverage this foundation you’ve unknowingly built?
- If you’re on Twitter, try this Quick Way To Measure Your Personal Brand Using Twitter Lists. How do the results measure up with the responses to 1) and 2)?
Once you’ve decided on your branding goals, seek other people who have achieved the same or similar goals and understand how they did it. Ask them how! They might be willing to help you replicate their success.
Alex Karis, @AlexKaris, said: UR personal brand is less about what U Tweet & more about the way U use Twitter. Ask: What does my behavior demonstrate?
Jacob Share, @jacobshare:
That’s not very clear.
What you tweet is a critical part of the way you use Twitter because for most people who discover you, your tweets are the only demonstration they will ever get of your expertise i.e. the first chance your personal brand will get to make an impression on them.
Not every single tweet needs to build your brand, but most of them should. However, it only takes one bad tweet to damage your brand, so be careful with impulse tweets.
Mohammed Al-Taee, @maltaee, polled: NeEd YOUR Vote: What Brand Attributes are the Most Important for Remarkable Personal Brand?
Jacob Share, @jacobshare:
Mohammed’s list of attribute choices includes: Expert, Friendly, Motivator, Supportive, Charmer, Authentic, Innovative, Connector, Ambitious, and Humorous.
Authenticity it is, of course. That said, authenticity isn’t enough to make someone remarkable. So you need at least one of the other attributes as well, and it needs to be something that involves producing/creating.
Bruce De Boer, @brucedeboer, asked: Everyone is a brand, but now w/Social Media companies don’t own the Brand, so where does that leave us: we don’t own our personal brand?
That said, let me ask you this- does it even make sense to say you “own your personal brand”? For a personal brand to be truly successful, it needs recognition by other people, and how can you own their recognition?
Jacob Share, a job search expert, is the creator of JobMob, one of the biggest blogs in the world about finding jobs. Follow him on Twitter for job search tips and humor.