“Personal branding” is a phrase that means many different things to many different people. Some view it as the unabashed expression of one’s true self, others view it as a carefully calculated and manicured package. [Poll at the bottom: How personal is your personal brand?]
In recent weeks I’ve stumbled across three examples of personal branding commentary, each painting a very different picture of how we should (or how we do) portray ourselves. I’ll try to present them in an unbiased manner, and let you vote on which route is best.
1. Sonia Simone of Copyblogger writes about having pink hair, loving it, and genuinely doing it because she enjoys it. Would you feel this comfortable?
“Every once in awhile, someone asks me why I have pink hair…
…I have pink hair because I like the way it looks, because it makes my kid smile, and because I happen to rather like tweaking ordinary expectations.
But here’s the important part: What I do with my hair doesn’t matter at all. But if I lived a mousy-brown life — where I did all the things we expect of a “normal” person — I wouldn’t be as successful or as happy as I am today.”
2. Robert Scoble insightfully comments that our outward likes and dislikes are censored by our inner-desire to look “cool” to our friends and the world. To a certain degree, everyone is guilty of calculating the effect of their actions or appearances. This is the middle ground on the personal branding “spectrum of truth”.
“The other day I found myself over at Yelp.com clicking “like” on a bunch of Half Moon Bay restaurants. After a while I noticed that I was only clicking “like” on restaurants that were cool, hip, high end, or had extraordinary experiences.
See, I like McDonalds and Subway. But I wasn’t clicking like on those. Why not?
…Because we want to present ourselves to other people the way we would like to have other people perceive us as…We lie and we lie our asses off.”
3. Lastly, Nance Rosen (prominent consultant and business coach) tweeted her thoughts on personal branding – with an emphasis on the personal aspect. Nance views overly personal and unprofessional communication to be a detriment to one’s brand. Whether or not you actually like Jell-O, Nance recommends omitting such information from your public profile.
What about you? Are you 100% open and personal, cautiously in the middle, or purposely calculating how every action will make you look?
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