Answers to some of the latest questions people are asking on Twitter about personal branding.
Rochelle, @_Rochelle, twittered: Question: does ur personality / personal brand remain constant when blogging on a community vs own blog?
Jacob Share, @jacobshare: If you feel the need to manage multiple personal brands, it’s easier and better to focus all your efforts on building one that has universal appeal so that regardless of where you blog, you can always be authentic and don’t need to act a specific way.
Be that honest, sincere, vouching, credit-giving person blogging about X while also being that honest, sincere, vouching, credit-giving community person blogging about Y.
Avi, @NiteGlow, twittered: Can’t someone really tell you how to do ‘personal branding’? That’s like someone telling how to be yourself isn’t it? You already know that.
Jacob Share, @jacobshare: Actually, telling people to “just be yourself” often makes them nervous, when they feel that’s not good enough for the job interview or whatever other obstacles are currently in their way…
“Just be yourself” may be a good place to start in building an authentic personal brand, but much more is necessary for it to also be a successful personal brand, such as:
- Taking your personal brand seriously enough to think about it and consciously build it.
- Deciding what your personal branding goals are and figuring out how best to reach them, i.e. exactly how and where does “just be yourself” fit in.
- Mapping out a plan of action and executing, measuring, adapting and repeating until your goals are reached or new goals are needed.
- Learning about what else you can do to build your brand, and integrating what you learn into your plans.
If you’re achieving your personal branding goals by “just being yourself”, good for you, you’re a natural at personal branding. However, most people can use help by at least learning where to concentrate their efforts and following how others have quickly achieved the success that they want.
Elaman Timantti, @ElamanTimantti, twittered: Just wondering, when someone will start talking about Human Capital Branding. Would it be good or bad – or do you prefer Personal Branding?
Jacob Share, @jacobshare: Human Capital Branding is when a company tries to build its brand by leveraging the personal brands of its employees.
There are people who have begun to talk about Human Capital Branding, and smart companies should be doing more than just talking about it, i.e.:
- Taking your personal brand seriously enough to think about it and consciously build it.
- Deciding what their company branding goals are and figuring out how best to reach them, in part using human capital branding.
- Choosing employees and/or hiring people who *already have* relevant personal brands.
- Mapping out a plan of action and executing, measuring, adapting and repeating until their goals are reached or new goals are needed.
- Learning about what else they can do to build the company brand, and integrating what they learn into the plans.
(By comparing with my previous answer, you can see that when it comes to company branding, there’s only one important extra step- choosing the right people to build the successful brand. Otherwise, company branding is almost identical to personal branding.)
Morris Ted, @MorrisTed, twittered: Personal Branding: Isn’t this concept a paradox in an age of supposed authenticity? Packaging & positioning of self? Line extensions?
Jacob Share, @jacobshare: I see what you mean. Social media websites allow people to expose themselves more than ever, and we’d like to think that everyone is being authentic, but of course many are not.
Just because someone has a personal brand doesn’t mean that they’re not being authentic. On the contrary, the best personal brands are the authentic ones, where “the packaging and the positioning” don’t create something out of nothing (like so many product marketing campaigns do), they instead increase the chance that an interested audience will discover and connect with the people behind those brands, for the benefit of both.
Author:
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.
