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  • On your personal brand and why it doesn’t matter

    Posted on December 15th, 2009 by Eric Dodds and currently 26 commenting.

    “You really should work on your personal brand. You need to be paying close attention to your personal twitter and you need to have a slick blog where you post regularly. You need to align all of the social media outlets you operate in for clear, consistent representation of you.”

    Actually, though, you don’t.

    Not that any of those are bad things to do. In fact, they are really smart things to do. But if you work for a company and clients through that company, the best development of your personal brand is devoting yourself to the success of those clients (and in turn, the success of the company). Their increased profitability will speak much, much more about you than your blog or twitter account.

    So, I’m not too sorry that I don’t update my website, twitter account, or Facebook page very often. My personal brand is to be the absolute best employee possible to Brains on Fire and the clients I work with through them.

    Sidenote: from experience, personal brand has played a very small role in potential employers’ consideration of me in the hiring process. Having a website and a twitter account increased my visibility, but in the end interviewers wanted to know how the work I performed impacted the bottom line for clients. Even if I had the best personal brand in the world, my ability to actually contribute to the success of a company or a client would eventually be what determined my value.

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  • http://twitter.com/93octane Lyell E. Petersen \ @93octane

    Good points, Eric. If 1) you’re employed and/or 2) you have clients.

    If you’re neither (read freelancers or the recently unjobbed) then having a personal brand to work on creates plenty of value for your own experience, keeping your internets skills sharp while at the same time creating additional body-of-work to build credibility behind your “brand.”

    Oh, by the way, my personal brand is 93octane. I’m unjobbed and I have no clients. :)

  • http://www.twitter.com/emjaydoesPR Matt

    Couldn’t have said this any better. The self-indulgent obsession of enhancing one’s ‘personal brand’ seems contrary to the unofficial mantra of the social space, that is service to others. The idea of sharing others content seems to have been tainted by an underlying expectation of reciprocity. Reciprocity is nice and certainly a best practice but not under the pretense of “I shared yours now share mine.”

    Bravo.

  • http://brainsonfire.com Eric

    I couldn’t agree more, Lyell. If you are looking for a job, development of your brand in order to find one IS your job and you should be pouring yourself into it. Finding an occupation is the profitable outcome of working for yourself (your brand) as a client. Your point about staying sharp is really true – great thought!

    For free-lancers, personal brand is ‘the company’ they work for, so they definitely need to pay close attention to it – it’s their livelihood. And that’s hard stuff – the people who do successful work for clients and maintain a really good brand as a free-lancer are very talented (and probably hard workers).

    Your thoughts are especially applicable for those right out of school – you have no client work, so you have to promote the qualities that you will bring to potential clients or a potential employer. And that initial sell is really, really hard too.

    Thanks for the comments. Next time I’m in Charlotte (or you’re in Greenville, SC) let’s grab a cup of coffee.

  • http://brainsonfire.com Eric

    Matt – really good point about reciprocity – expectations can get way out of hand and become abrasive to others. And I definitely agree that personal brand can quickly become motivated by self-indulgence – we all want to be famous, right? But our job is to make other people famous.

    Thanks for your thoughts.

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  • http://aarontempler.com Aaron Templer

    Good points Eric. Thanks for reminding us that all we do in the professional sphere – personal branding, building trust, developing relationships – is *always* in service to adding value. Adding value is ticket to play.

  • http://brainsonfire.com Eric

    Thanks Aaron – you jammed that entire post in to one sentence!

  • http://hyku.com/ Josh Hallett

    Ha, nice quote.

    I’ve found that in doing the real work and doing it well…..the folks that need to know will always find out who is doing the job right.

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  • http://wordswillsaveme.wordpress.com Teresa Basich

    Wooo. I agree with you and I also agree with Lyell. In my experience, the presence I’ve created online really has had very little impact on employers’ hiring decisions. Yes, I’ve had great opportunities presented to me via online social channels but, at the end of the day, they never turned into solid jobs. At the same time, I do believe it’s important to maintain a presence and take hold of those chances that come up to demonstrate your smarts.

    I think the one thing that needs to change about the concept of a “personal brand” is the idea that a personal brand should be crafted or built in a limiting or 2-dimensional sort of way — don’t put yourself into a corner with the information you share, the people you connect with and the content you create. It’s so important that we be ourselves and show our personalities, faults and all. We’re human, we’re not perfect, and we shouldn’t adjust our behavior online to make it seem as if we are — that’s false advertising, no?

    Great post!

  • http://thefastgrowthblog.com Doug Davidoff

    Eric,

    Great post. Not to nit-pick, but personal brands and business brands follow the same principles. Your “ability to actually contribute to the success of a company or a client” is the best brand you could have. Your website and twitter account just enabled you to communicate – they were not your brand.

    As with businesses, it’s what others say about you – and what your work says about itself – that defines your brand.

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  • http://personalbranding101.com/category/popular-posts Ryan Rancatore

    Interesting take, Eric. Even as a personal branding advocate, I can’t really disagree with your main theory.

    My only counter-point would be this: personal branding (in my opinion) comes in all shapes and forms. It isn’t always thought out, purposeful, self-promotion. Most of it comes about “accidentally” – like by doing a kick-ass job for your clients. Think those clients will remember the job you did 5 years from now if you are working as a freelancer? Probably, right? In that case, you’ve built a personal brand…all while not knowing or trying.

  • http://mendeltsiebenga.com Mendelt Siebenga

    These are two sides of the same coin. On one side you should deliver value and be the absolute best you can be, on the other side what good can you do if no one knows about you?

    Personal brand building has grown to be ‘all about talk and no value’ so I tend to agree with you here, we need to take a step back and do something useful first. But it can’t hurt to blog/twitter/fax/facebook about it afterwards. This gives you an opportunity to multiply that value by enabling other people to learn from you and if you’re lucky to point some people to you or your employer.

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  • http://www.brainsonfire.com/people.aspx?id=11,15 Eric Dodds

    Teresa –
    What a great point – I agree authenticity in how you represent yourself on the internet is a must. It is always strange to meet someone offline and realize that they are taking advantage of the online space to portray things about themselves that aren’t very accurate. Interesting stuff.

    Doug –
    I agree 100%, and thanks for the clarification. Those are tools for communication, they aren’t your brand. But I do think that many people (and companies) can mistake the image that those tools fit into for a brand – not the actual work they do. And personal brands / business brands following the same principals – dead on. Great, great thoughts. Thanks.

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  • http://brainsonfire.com Eric

    Ryan –
    Right on, brother. Can’t go wrong with letting kick-ass work being the reason people remember you.

    Mendelt –
    That’s the rub, isn’t it? You’re right in saying that there is a huge amount of ‘all talk, no value’ out there. And you’re point about using communication tools to spread the story about the value you are adding lines right up with Doug’s great observation about the difference between brands and tools.

    Great thoughts guys – all of these comments are challenging me to think about this issue from so many angles. Some smart, smart people here. Thanks for the conversation and the learnings.

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  • http://www.14four.com Ryan Moede

    I think coaching legend John Wooden said it best – “Be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are.”

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  • http://www.brainsonfire.com/people.aspx?id=11,15 Eric Dodds

    Ryan –
    Great quote. Thanks.