The What and Why of Personal Branding

This should be the first post on my blog because it is part of the reason why I started this thing. Blogging is not that popular anymore as everyone knows. People seem to cruising through the sea of social media more than ever. The content being consumed and created by internet users these days is different. A 30-second video is almost too long for some people to watch to the end. Short tweets and Instagram reels are flooding the web. But the true reason behind the declining popularity of blogging is that blogging is hard, both for creators to create and for readers to read. So why should we bother with blogging?

We would not answer that question directly. If the readers are keen to get the answer, a Google search will suffice. A personal blog is one of the answers to a larger question: How to influence others on how they perceive our images, and our brands? Which brings us to the topic of personal branding. This topic is not new, by the way. It was covered in the article called The Brand Called You by Tom Peters in 1997. I stumbled upon this idea in high school, but never put it to work until recently. In this blog post, the content will be derived from various sources. The main idea is from Dorie Clark's Talks at Google and her book Reinventing You: Define Your Brand, Imagine Your Future. So let us get started!

The Reinvention Process

Why Personal Branding?

In the present world, there are too many connections between us and other people. There are also too many things to keep up with for each person. That is why other people's perceptions of us may be out of date for two or three years. If we want to be the ones who get opportunities, we must let other people know what we are doing, what we are capable of, and where we are now. As for personal branding, we must find a subtle way to convey our value, our worth, and what we can do. The question is how do we determine how we are viewed professionally?

Then, What to Do Next?

There are 3 basic phases to the reinvention process. The first is to discover the brand we are perceived now by other people. The next step is to determine what we want to be known for. And the final step is how we manifest our brand. Let us look at each step in more detail.

First, to discover our brand, it is important to realize that everyone has a personal brand. But sadly, what is our brand is not what we want to be. It is what the others see. So it is crucial to be aware of the gap between our expectations and reality. Clark has gone much deeper into the details of how to do these such as how to conduct "360 interviews", where everyone in our sphere is interviewed and honest feedback about us is gathered. Moreover, she mentions a thing called a "focus group" and urges us to check for our online presence, whether by searching our names on the search engine or checking how we are presented on our social media accounts.

Next, we need to be sure where we want to go. If we do not know where to head, it will be hard to find the best next move. In the book, Clark suggests that we might need to take a break if we are burnt out and do not have the creativity to think about what we should do next. When we are ready, we can search online for our model and emulate them. For example, before the start of this blog, I had been searching for the "prototype" blog of other successful people. I did not try to replicate exactly what they did, but instead, used them as an idea for my blog. One of the advice in the book is to connect ourselves with other people who have common interests with us. This will help shape our future direction in branding ourselves.

When we have successfully built our brand, the next big thing to do is to make everyone see it. Clark reinstates that one of the most important things is to know what makes us unique. Our originality will make us memorable for other people. After that, we need to communicate this to the world. Social media is not optional anymore, although the return on investment may not be apparent. Our reputation needs time to be built. Content creation plays a crucial role in reaching our audiences. (And this is where blogging comes in!) By the way, social media can be overwhelming and we might need a break from it at some times. Lastly, do not forget the offline side of this process: we need to make real connections between people.

Against Personal Branding

There are many arguments against personal branding. Some just feel that the term "personal branding" sounds like reducing a full-fledged human to a product. But this is not the case. As stated before, everyone has a "personal brand", which as far as we are concerned, is about the person's reputation¹. I am not a marketing person by the way, but I am quite sure that we take so much care not to use the strategy that treat humans as products of some kind. Anyway, if you feel that some tips mentioned above are weird, there is nothing wrong with you. In some occupations, we can get away without caring about our brand that much.

Privacy is also a concern for some, as for us here. We advise everyone to be selective about what to post online. When we put anything onto our social media account, please be aware that it is not a private space and everyone can access that. This is what we call the digital footprint, and it is a double-edged sword. If we use it in the right way, we can boost our career. One wrong step may ruin our whole reputation.

Afterthought

Now my situation is quite weird: I have been reading about linear algebra for the past week in the hope that I can share some of my notes as a blog post. This post is hard to write by the way, because I am not an expert in this. But it is a joy to (re)learn things that I have read in the past in some more detail. During the process of writing this post, I discovered that being able to express my knowledge is different from acquiring knowledge, and that is the reason for my blog besides personal branding: to practice communicating with others.

I would like to share some resources on this topic.

• Dorie Clark's Talks at Google and her book Reinventing You: Define Your Brand, Imagine Your Future is a good place to start. The book goes into much more detail on how you could do the three steps of the reinvention process. It is a kind of how-to book: do not expect too much on the philosophical side of personal branding.
• Platform: The Art and Science of Personal Branding by Cynthia Johnson is a book that I encountered in high school. I cannot remember much about it but this inspired me to take personal branding more seriously.