Twitter Personal Branding Q + A #5

Responses to recent tweets made recently by people about personal branding.

Lyndsay Siegel, @Siegels, asked: do you think it’s important for everyone to have a personal brand?

Jacob Share, @jacobshare: Whether they like it or not, everyone has a personal brand. Most people don’t give any attention to their brand, and it shows- at best, they’re not getting as much benefit as they could be; at worst, their branding is unfocused to the point that they leave a wrong impression on many people they meet.

The question to ask is rather: should everyone give attention to their personal branding? And the answer: if you have any goals in life that personal branding can advance – which you almost certainly do – then yes!

Don’t get me wrong though- not everyone needs to come across as a trade expert, or spend hours every day networking with industry colleagues on LinkedIn, or even blogging, but it does mean you should at least try to leave the same memorable impression on everyone you meet.

Shaun Fossett, @shaun_fossett, asked: Tiger Woods has done major damage to his personal brand. To the PR people, a question: can Tiger truly recover from this fiasco?

Jacob Share, @jacobshare: the Tiger Woods fiasco showed us that Tiger’s personal brand wasn’t authentic. We all thought what his handlers wanted us to think i.e. that in addition to being an outstanding golfer, he was also an upstanding family man, but sadly we now know that only the former is true and not the latter.

Regardless…

Not only can Tiger recover, he will recover as long as he wants to and is allowed to continue doing what he does so much better than almost everyone else- swing a golf club on the PGA Tour. Success on the Tour isn’t measured by what kind of a person you are or how you treat your wife. When you’re as talented as Tiger is, most golf fans will be willing to overlook his (large) personal shortcomings as soon as he produces more amazing feats on the green.

Just ask Nike, who “fully supports him and his family“. They’ve got billions of dollars riding on Tiger’s brand recovering and will do everything in their considerable marketing power to get a full return on that investment.

Bryan Bliss, @blissfulfun, remarked: c’mon, be honest … don’t you think most of the buzz about “brand” , “personal brand” and “positioning yourself as an expert” is just crap?

Jacob Share, @jacobshare: it sounds to me like you’re lazy and hoping that buzz is just crap because personal branding seems like a lot of work that you don’t want to have to do.

I don’t blame you.

Many people misunderstand personal branding, which is why a lot of this buzz is so frustrating for people like you.

The good news is that good personal branding doesn’t necessarily require a lot of work. As long as you take some time ASAP to decide on your branding goals and then choose a path towards building a brand, you can achieve those goals with minimal extra work, if any at all.

The bad news is that you can’t delude yourself. The people who are working harder to invest in themselves will be get better returns, and faster.

If you don’t put in a little extra effort towards your personal brand, like you haven’t done until now, your job searches (for example) will be longer than they need to be, just like until now.

Author:

Jacob Share, a job search expert, is the creator of JobMob, one of the biggest blogs in the world about finding jobs. Follow him on Twitter for job search tips and humor.

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