On personal branding and personal work identity

April 23 2010, 10:59 AM  by Bernie Michalik
Brands < Identities. What do I mean by that?

I have been thinking about personal branding this week. I had a conversation about it the other day with a good friend of mine, and then I read this good blog post on The problem with personal branding from sacha chua whom I work with.

Why do I think brands are less than identities? My short comment on this is: brands are for products in order for you to identify qualities about those products. People's identities are more complex than that. People's identities are multifaceted.

Now, that said, you should consider how people see you. How you represent yourself on your resume, on what you post online and in public, and how you conduct yourself generally. But to me that is more than your "brand". That is about who you are as a professional.

I sometimes see people at work say "so and so is excellent" or "that person is lacking in some wy". In a way, they are stating their opinion about a person as if they were a product. I have found, though, that that information is never enough, and there is alot more to know about the person. I need to get by their brand and find out what they are really like to work with. I hope you are the same.

What do you think?

 

 

 

350 views and 3 responses

  • Apr 23 2010, 11:56 AM
    Tom Plaskon responded:
    I think people, often shortsightedly, act as if certain traits are virtues (always good) when the value of a given trait is, for the most part, situational.
  • Apr 23 2010, 2:23 PM
    Bernie Michalik responded:
    Very true! Also, some people's "brand" may be situational too.
  • Apr 23 2010, 3:20 PM
    (Facebook) responded:
    How about the notion that people just project multiple brands. For example the Archie brand you get at work is different from the one you would get from the one you would play video games with, vs the one you get on-line via blogs and stuff.

    Although I do try to go by the notion that I want one public identity, there are of course facets of my life I do like to keep private for two reasons:

    1) to prevent identity theft (you don't put every little detail that someone can fake who you are, remember in Canada you don't need much to get a loan unless they changed the rules already).

    2) to protect/respect other people's privacy. Although I am not as concerned about hiding stuff about myself, I have to make sure I don't disclose anything about other people since it is their information not mine.

    That said I do have several brandings:

    Facebook for family and friends (which I will keep separate, because although it is notorious for messing with your private information, still has the best control and largest network to share personal hijinx with your friends). Remember, make a co-worker group and keep things private from them.

    LinkedIn for professional
    UrbanSpoon for food critiquing
    Flixter for movies
    StumbleUpon for web site commenting

    I still haven't done my promise to myself to aggregate all this information into one automatic blog so I would have practically one