Answers to some of the latest questions people are asking on Twitter about personal branding.
Chris Gillis, @thechrisgillis, twittered: Do you recommend that a personal account be used to communicate on behalf of a brand on a FB page? Or just the official page?
Jacob Share, @jacobshare: The best scenario, both for a company and its corporate brand-building employee, is to use an account with the employee’s name & face yet with the company branding. You want to make it clear that the employee is a real person representing a real company. As long as people can click through to verify that there are real people behind them, personalized accounts carry more credibility by default than corporate accounts.
Obvioosly, @Obvioosly, twittered: How do u apply personal branding in reality? U can’t just walk up 2 pontential employer and go “here is my card, on it u will find my brand”
Jacob Share, @jacobshare: In an era where most people will google your name before inviting you to a first interview, your personal branding online is often more important to give credibility to the resume of yours sitting in front of the potential employer.
There are of course many situations, such as at conferences and other networking events, where your first live impression is the most important. How you appear (dress, personal hygiene, etc.) can be critical relative to the kind of people & the kind of event where you’re meeting them, your business card and whether you even have one, but most importantly, what other people at the event are saying about you. Hopefully there are many people around who can vouch for you when you meet that potential employer.
For more real world ideas, see my 50+ Tips to Brand Yourself Offline.
Mike Cassidy, @mikecassidyAZ, twittered: Working on a presentation for students: What advice would you give highschoolers to protect their personal brand online now?
Jacob Share, @jacobshare: Protecting a personal brand is about 2 things: removing harmful information and burying what can’t be ruined, preferably with positive information.
Positive information
The advice I’d give my own children is to:
- Be careful which information they post publicly online
- Be careful who they share private information with, since that person can then decide to go public with it regardless
- Have a simple monitoring mechanism in place (like a Google Alert on their names & nicknames), and…
- Have a way for creating positive information that can show up in Google results. This is especially true if they want (or you feel, need) to build their personal brand in a directed way, for school, (eventual) work, etc.
Tammy Hawk-Bridges, @SocialHeavy, twittered: Just curious what are your thoughts about having a “real” job while maintaining your personal brand?
Jacob Share, @jacobshare: You always have a personal brand. Just because you aren’t actively thinking about it doesn’t mean that it isn’t there. So I think what you’re asking about is when your non-job personal brand (your “personal” personal brand) doesn’t add anything to your on-the-job personal brand or vice-versa.
In that case, it depends how different your non-job personal brand should be from your on-the-job personal brand.
Having a job that doesn’t match your publicly-known personal brand can only be a problem if:
- Many people are likely to find out about the non-match
- Many people will be confused or at worst, negatively surprised at finding out
If you work for a youth organization and online you’re best known for your drug consumption habits, that might be a problem for your employer. In the other direction, if you’re active online with kids and what you do in real life would very much worry their parents, that’s also an issue.
These are extreme examples that don’t reflect most people’s situations. In any case, the answer is to be transparent. Make sure your employer is aware of your personal activities and don’t hide your “real” job from your online following either.
James Scoville, @jamesscoville, twittered: Removing friends from facebook because we don’t talk anymore: is this hurting my personal brand?
Jacob Share, @jacobshare: It can only hurt your personal brand when people find out about the removal.
No removed friend will look positively on being removed. Your best hope would be that they DON’T get insulted. However- if you don’t talk anymore, why not just hide them from your News Feed? It’s basically the same result while leaving the connection in place if you need each other again.
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.
