Responses to recent tweets by people about personal branding and Gen-Y, Twitter, presentations and lack of focus.
Audrey Xiong, @Audrey_Xiong, tweeted: why do we need personal branding?
Jacob Share, @jacobshare: To build your value in the eyes of others.
Personal branding has always existed, it just wasn’t always called that.
Take job search, for example.
In the past, if you wanted to impress a recruiter, you came dressed well, brought a smart resume, recommendation letters and polished interview responses.
Today, you wouldn’t even be invited to the interview unless your personal brand is strong enough online to bring positive results to the top of a Google search, or at least, ahead of any not-so-positive results about you.
Candidates who have built their personal brand now get to the interviewee’s chair one step ahead of everyone else.
Jennifer Edwards, @GenYJen, tweeted: … I will be changing my personal brand handle soon. Any tips for those of you who have made change?
Jacob Share, @jacobshare: From The Beginner’s Guide To Finding A Job With Twitter:
“choose a username that’s either your full name, first name and profession (think “Joe the Plumber”) or a pseudonym based on a formula of [Adjective][Country][Profession] e.g. SmartTechGuy. If you’re planning to twitter a lot about your private life, consider a second Twitter account.”
Jen, is it because you’re tired of all those Generation Y stereotypes? (I’m sure you know that Gen-Y is not the dumbest generation, as Kyle Lacy has blogged here before).
Sammy Bravo, @sammy_bravo, tweeted: Is personal branding truly personal, or is it solely professional?
Jacob Share, @jacobshare: Personal branding is so-called because it’s about branding your person, and not because it’s related to your personal life.
However, while many people only think of personal branding in terms of promoting themselves professionally, authentic brand builders – the best kind – have brands that should still be relevant even in a social or family setting, and not some act that they only put on at work.
Rachel Elnaugh, @RachelElnaugh, tweeted: What’s the point of having a personal brand that is a dumbed down version of who you really are?
Jacob Share, @jacobshare: People are complicated, and in today’s multi-level multimedia world that’s getting more complicated all the time, it’s hard enough to communicate even a simple message.
Don’t think of it as ‘dumbing down’. Your branding message needs to be accurate but concise, so that the right people will immediately get the message about you that you want them to.
Only you can prevent information overwhelm 🙂
William Martin, @wkm610, tweeted: How much damage are you doing to your personal and corporate brand by not replying to enquiries?
Jacob Share, @jacobshare: Anywhere from a little to a lot. It all depends on who’s making the enquiries.
Most of us spend an awful lot of time trying to engage other people, to get them to take action. Now that they’re doing it, ignoring them is the worst thing you can do.
Responding to enquiries can lead to job offers, more business, finding long-lost family members, you name it.
If there’s only a trickle every day, respond to them all. However, keep your eyes open for patterns in the messages and look for rules you could set up to manage the responses with the ultimate goal of offloading/outsourcing most if not all the enquiries to an assistant.
Why?
As your brand grows and reach with it, so will the number of enquiries you get. Ultimately you simply won’t have the time to respond – reading and ignoring is also a type of response – but by that point you will likely understand more than ever why you need to do so.
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.
