What does your personal brand say about you? Are you actively managing your brand? If you don’t have any idea what your personal brand is you should start to take a look.
Lines are blurring between public and private lives. Even if you aren’t publishing yourself for all to see you may have friends, acquaintances or even random strangers publishing your life to the world. I discovered this a few weeks ago when doing a Google search for my online persona, ’soxgal.’
At the time, the top Google result returned a link to a STRANGER’S Flickr account, which contained an image of my license plate. That bit of data is relatively harmless but it was a bit unnerving to discover that someone photographed my vehicle and posted images of it online. It was more disturbing to fnd that the top result for my primary keyword belonged to someone else.
Since that search I’ve been more active with Twitter and this blog. Depending on which search engine you use, both soxgal.net and my Twitter feed come up in the top five results. I have a lot more work to do before soxgal truly becomes my brand. There are a few challenges to overcome:
- There are a lot of Red Sox fans out there using some variation of soxgal on message boards and social networks
- Possible confusion with a Chicago White Sox fan (though I haven’t seen evidence of this)
- Timeline of online activity (still too new to generate a lot of traffic or reciprocal links)
As I devote more time to defining what soxgal means, I have to be sure I’m presenting a consistent message across all services I use.
I’m watching some corporate branding exercises, hoping to figure out what I want my personal brand to be. A personal brand follows you around, no matter where you end up. If you don’t take steps to manage it, you can’t complain when you’re not represented in an agreeable light.
