Your personal virtual brand

What’s in a name?

by Deborah Weinstein

Everything, when it’s your personal brand; and perception is reality in the virtual world.

But branding isn’t something left to corporations and products. We are all brands. Your personal brand reflects who you are and what you do. Your personal brand is reflected in what you say and what you do. This is particularly important in the social media space, where your words, thoughts, musings and frailties are broadcast, saved and indexed by robots. It is therefore important to be proactive about managing your personal brand.

Virtual personality

This brand personality also needs to be strong, authentic and compelling. This is what helps people emerge and differentiate themselves from millions of other voices clamouring to be heard. Your name in the socially-networked universe defines your brand — your essence, what you stand for, your reputation and your three second BLINK, all in 140 characters or less!

Differentiate yourself

So, how do you differentiate and elevate your personal brand, your on-line identity, in a social world teeming with thousands, no millions, of individuals calling out to be heard?

For proof of the bottom-line importance of asserting your personal brand you need look no further than:

• A recent poll of 2600 North American Hiring Managers that revealed 45% of those surveyed use social media background checks to vet prospective employees; and
• 35% of respondents said they’d found something social that caused them NOT to hire the candidate. (continues next page)
  

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Techno-Tweetie

This is for the Over 50 Generation

and for the younger ones to pass on to their older friends

This amusing note came to me by email this morning. I laughed so hard I had to share it with you, even though I do not know who the author is.

I thought about the 30 year business I ran with 1800 employees, all without a Blackberry that played music, took videos, pictures and communicated with Facebook and Twitter. I signed up under duress for Twitter and Facebook, so my seven kids, their spouses, 13 grandkids and 2 great grand kids could communicate with me in the modern way. I figured I could handle something as simple as Twitter with only 140 characters of space.

That was before one of my grandkids hooked me up for Tweeter, Tweetree, Twhirl, Twitterfon, Tweetie and Twittererific Tweetdeck, Twitpix and something that sends every message to my cell phone and every other program within the texting world. My phone was beeping every three minutes with the details of everything except the bowel movements of the entire next generation.

I am not ready to live like this. I keep my cell phone in the garage in my golf bag.

The kids bought me a GPS for my last birthday because they say I get lost every now and then going over to the grocery store or library. I keep that in a box under my tool bench with the Blue tooth [it's red]phone I am supposed to use when I drive. I wore it once and was standing in line at Barnes and Noble talking to my wife as everyone in the nearest 50 yards was glaring at me. Seems I have to take my hearing aid out to use it and I got a little loud.

I mean the GPS looked pretty smart on my dash board, but the lady inside was the most annoying, rudest person I had run into in a long time. Every 10 minutes, she would sarcastically say, “Re-calc-ul-ating”. You would think that she could be nicer. It was like she could barely tolerate me. She would let go with a deep sigh and then tell me to make a U-turn at the next light. Then when I would make a right turn instead, it was not good. When I get really lost now, I call my wife and tell her the name of the cross streets and while she is starting to develop the same tone as Gypsy, the GPS lady, at least she loves me.

To be perfectly frank, I am still trying to learn how to use the cordless phones in our house. We have had them for four years, but I still haven’t figured out how I can lose three phones all at once and have run around digging under chair cushions and checking bathrooms and the dirty laundry baskets when the phone rings.

The world is just getting too complex for me. They even mess me up every time I go to the grocery store. You would think they could settle on something themselves but this sudden “Paper or Plastic?” every time I check out just knocks me for a loop. I bought some of those cloth reusable bags to avoid looking confused but I never remember to take them in with me. Now I toss it back to them. When they ask me, “Paper or Plastic?” I just say, “Doesn’t matter to me. I am bi-sacksual.” Then it’s their turn to stare at me with a blank look.

I was recently asked if I tweet. I answered, No, but I do toot a lot.”

Thank you to the anonymous author.