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A Personal Brand Revolution Is At Hand

Posted by Nick O'Neill on April 2nd, 2008 9:00 AM

Yesterday in a phone call with the amazing Leslie Bradshaw I asked a question: “What did people do to brand themselves before the internet?” Her response wasn’t what’s important (although all of her words are always words of wisdom so follow her on Twitter). What was significant is the fact that we have just witnessed a transformation in the ability to brand yourself.

Gary Vaynerchuk is the epitome of personal branding and if you watch his daily insights you will be handsomely rewarded. The main point is that the new technologies have enabled us to reach a large number of people that we were never able to reach previously without promotions via fliers, radio ads, personal publicists and a number of other methods. The bottom line is that we now have the capability to reach exponentially more people than ever before.

My good friend Rachelle Lacroix says that “it’s no longer branding my consumption, it’s branding my creation.” This means you create the content and promote it to others rather than let people judge you based on the purchases you make (you probably didn’t need that explanation though). Last night I finally the realized the significance of the revolution taking place. You can instantly set up your brand via a blog, cross promote it on social networks and suddenly you have distributed brand you to the masses.

There are millions of job opportunities that surround this new market. You don’t need to be the center of the brand that you are promoting but you should still promote brand you no matter what you are doing. Even your publicist should be known for being the most amazing publicist around. How do they do that? Set up a blog and start writing about publicity on a daily basis! The social web is furthering this transformation and it is our job to embrace it.

Do you agree? Do you think personal brands are extremely important? What are you doing to further your brand? When is self-promotion crossing the line?

Posted in Entrepreneurship
  

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 2nd, 2008 at 9:00 am and is filed under Entrepreneurship. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Viewing 4 Comments

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    You wrote:

    "Last night I finally the realized the significance of the revolution taking place. You can instantly set up your brand via a blog, cross promote it on social networks and suddenly you have distributed brand you to the masses."

    That alone is huge. I think the most important piece of this revolution is that you don't have to be the next Apple, Google, Coke, or BMW of what you do. You don't have to be a megabrand. You don't even have to be Gary Vaynerchuk. By branding yourself you're positioning YOU with your skills and interests and a consistent effort at that alone gets you noticed by audiences in your space -- and that space expands beyond the "web community."
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    As always Nick, thank you for the support and the official shout out =) And Tim, great additions as well. Like where you are going with this -- The web as your platform to be YOU, develop the YOU in a community, and by extension your online efforts then act as a living-breathing CV in a way, but better?! more interactive, etc.

    After the call with Nick, I gave it more thought and what I realized is that the most important words to a self brand (IMHO) are more about values than anything else. Words that come to mind are integrity in all that you do, authenticity + transparency (I like using the term "WIZZYWIG" to encapsulate this... get it?), compassion for yourself + others and passion-plus-knowledge/intelligence in the areas you claim experience/expertise. Growing outward from that become a natural extension.

    Seems like a no-brainer, but one last thought: Putting the cart (media/promotion) before the horse (authentic value) is a tempting trap, but to be avoided at all costs. While things like gimics, taglines, "networking," blogging, using lots of technology etc. all work for giving voice and outlet and audience to personal brands, they really should be an afterthought for things that are truly valuable and have true worth (what you know, how you conduct yourself, what makes sense given your "trade" and goals).

    Thanks again for including me in the conversation and for keeping it going!

    L.
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    Basically, by putting yourself out there on the internet, people will judge you and the one's you want associated with your brand will be magnetically attracted to your writing, podcasts and such. The one's that aren't interested in you or your topic will go elsewhere and that is the power of personal branding online.
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    The problem with the "personal branding" movement is that any widespread adoption dooms it to failure: Brands are built via marketing but their success is determined by the masses; if you put out the right message, you could be chosen to represent a viewpoint that the populous reveres higher than the noise. But by definition, that is an elite group -- most actors are unknowns, most companies are unheard of, and most bloggers are unread. Building an online presence and community of your friends, peers, admirers and colleagues can be personally rewarding, but if everybody does it, then it becomes the norm. True brands will always be the realm of the chosen few, and no amount of blogging, twittering or networking is going to change that. IMHO, social media is simply a new cog in the old mass media machine.

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