Course Work – Building my personal brand

Have you heard of personal branding before? If not well let me let you in on a secret, you have one so my tutor informs me, a personal brand whether you like it or not. I have been attending classes and my tutor in so many words is basically saying my personal  brand is all down to reputation.

Your reputation and how the people offline and online perceive you. And what people are saying behind your back.

So who are you and what do you have to say and does anyone really give a poop?

To be frank, building or managing my personal brand I initially thought that I had to have a product to sell and that yapping on about my life experiences of #myregrets was the worst topic ever to start blogging about and I needed to establish an audience!?

I later discovered personal branding is not about me being better or worse than anyone else or signing up to wordpress blog site and writing a couple of posts. It’s all about connecting with people on a personal level that targets your audience. I have signed up and connected to a couple of other social media platforms to spread my personal brand. Not doing too well as I am a bit of a noob at all this self marketing stuff. I have twitter account that I struggle to use I try to post a few words relating to my brand but let’s just say its a working progress. I also started up an Instagram account to which I am yet to utilize i am coming to the realisation that my brand is not suited to instagram. Instagram is like telling a story with images and I am not much of a photo taker. I will look at another social media Platform but at this stage I am yet to find the right one there are a lot to look in to.

I have also learned that what I post online can have detrimental effects on career opportunities. Say that if an employer really wanted to be nosey they could quite easily look my name up on facebook or linkedin and bugger knows what they will find. I couldn’t even tell right this moment. So what I’m saying is that having an online presence can be powerful or disasterous. Something I am wary of.

In class we did a wee social experiment. a fellow student went online and googled me and I her. We tried to find as much dirt on each other as we could.

Interestingly Lucy uses an alias name online Lucy explains to me in China where she is from no-one uses their real names online this is to protect themselves and privacy.

Whereas Lucy finding info on me was a little different. I do not have much of an online presence but Lucy found more of my online reputation than I of hers. I think it is wise to be careful of what you post on how you perceive yourself with the online community.

From doing that little experiment i am thinking that a Facebook page might be a better option than Instagram if using an alias. Facebook has a huge audience that my brand #myregrets could tap in to.

My Mantra, well it is currently “Taking responsiblity for my actions and not playing the victim”.

Taking responsibility I am meaning that, life throws curve balls and if you catch one that’s great if you catch one in the face then what do you do about it? In both situations do you run around rubbing it in everyones face that your awesome or not. Or if you fell victim to foul play do you play the victim and live your terror everyday?

Its your choice what you do in these situations and I can not tell you how you should behave. It is more how I react and behave to situations that happen to me in life.

My blogs I hope to reflect my personal brand and that is “my regrets” its not that I regret they happened it is more to the point, am I going to repeat them?