Twitter Personal Branding Q + A #4

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.3876577832_89be10dd48

Some ideas to get you started:

  1. 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?
  2. 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?
  3. 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?

This is a good to reason to center your online branding activities around something you can own completely- a website or blog, hosted with a domain name that you purchased. Of course, continue to use social media as the distribution and networking tool that is but it would be very risky to let your personal brand depend 100% on something that is controlled by people who don’t have your interests at heart.
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?

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.

Picture of Jacob Share

Jacob Share

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.

TRENDING AROUND THE WEB

People who are truly pleasant and kind but have no close friends often spent years as someone’s emergency contact and no one’s everyday one — and the gap between those two roles is where the loneliness actually lives

People who are truly pleasant and kind but have no close friends often spent years as someone’s emergency contact and no one’s everyday one — and the gap between those two roles is where the loneliness actually lives

The Vessel

Most people assume the hair dye on the shelf was approved as safe before it got there — coal-tar hair color is exempt from the rules that govern every other cosmetic ingredient

Most people assume the hair dye on the shelf was approved as safe before it got there — coal-tar hair color is exempt from the rules that govern every other cosmetic ingredient

The Vessel

People who check their phone hardest during a stressful week aren’t the most addicted, they’re the ones who never learned another way to regulate what they’re feeling

People who check their phone hardest during a stressful week aren’t the most addicted, they’re the ones who never learned another way to regulate what they’re feeling

The Blog Herald

What the questions someone asks in a conversation reveal about whether they’re actually listening

What the questions someone asks in a conversation reveal about whether they’re actually listening

Global English Editing

People who fall hard and fast aren’t naive — many have simply never been shown what slow, careful love looks like

People who fall hard and fast aren’t naive — many have simply never been shown what slow, careful love looks like

The Vessel

Choosing to stay home most weekends often has less to do with avoiding people and more to do with rationing a limited supply of attention for the handful of conversations that matter most

Choosing to stay home most weekends often has less to do with avoiding people and more to do with rationing a limited supply of attention for the handful of conversations that matter most

Global English Editing