Online Personal Branding


by Ted Demopoulos - Date: 2008-08-21 - Word Count: 425 Share This!

Your personal brand is who you are. Since people often look others up online, it's important your personal brand is online.

But let's backup. What's a brand?

A brand is a promise and is what prevents something from being a commodity. It's why I pay more for a cup of Starbucks coffee than the coffee down the street. The coffee down the street may be better, or it may be swill, I don't know. The Starbucks brand assures me that I'll get a good, strong, although over roasted to my taste, cup of coffee and somewhere comfortable to sit and drink it as well.

There is trust and safety in brands.

Personal branding is, you guessed it, branding applied to you. It describes:

. What's special and unique about you?
. Why are you not a commodity?

Your Personal Brand is who you are.

Your personal brand will help attract the right people, organizations & opportunities, AND repel those that are inappropriate for you.

Your personal brand must come out immediately when people look you up online.

Although your personal brand needs to be authentic, needs to be the real you, you do have choices.

You can and perhaps should NOT put some of your true self-online. Some personal branding experts may disagree vehemently, but you certainly have choices and you can self-censor some of the "True Authentic You" if you choose. You are allowed to have a private life!

Are you an anarchist or do you sympathize with abortion clinic bombers? Do you believe women shouldn't be allowed to vote, dogs are the embodiment of Satan, or the world will end on August 4th, 2011?

You may want to keep these views offline, or at least not associated with your name. It's your choice.

Take a few moments to look yourself up online. Use at least two search engines, for example Google and Yahoo! as their results will be quite different. If googling your name doesn't work, try googling your name plus other identifying information. For example, if you work for IBM, then googling your name + IBM may turn up interesting results, if you live in Fresno, then googling your name + Fresno may work. Be creative - people looking you up online will be.

What do you find? Is it accurate and does it represent you well? What do you think others who look you up online will think?

Your online personal brand, what others see, feel and think when they look you up online, is important. People are regularly looking you up online. You need to periodically look yourself up online, see what others see, and assess your online personal brand.

Related Tags: google, branding, online, brand, personal brand, personal branding

Ted Demopoulos is the author of the upcoming book "Google Me." For a preview, including his free ebook "Effective Internet Presence, Now required for success in business and life," visit www.EffectiveInternetPresence.com.Click here for Ted's recommended resources for Online Personal Branding

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