Thing 3: Consider Your Personal Brand

Okay, I've been stalling with this post. I admit it. And, to be completely honest, I knew that would be the case from the first time I saw this on the list of 23 Things. However, now that we're on Thing 4, I should probably blog my thoughts on Thing 3. Here goes!

I have no idea how I feel about personal brands. Do I have a personal brand? I'm not sure. Given that I've just started my blog and my online presence is fairly minimal or guarded as of yet, much of the discussion didn't necessarily apply to where I'm at now. Having said that, a lot of what I read this week (or last week) was very helpful and gave me a lot to consider of where I would like to be in the future. So, could I have personal brand in the future? There's potential for it. I have mixed feelings. Part of me feels that it would simplify things. I would have one easily recognizable image for people. However, the other part of me feels boxed in by having a brand and limited in what I can present to people.


The recommended reading was extremely interesting and helpful. Dave Fleet's How to Ruin (Or Build) Your Personal Brand made me feel good about some of the qualities I already have, but it also gave me great ideas of how I can better both my brand and myself. It was handy to have a list of items to ponder, and he laid them out very well. LibWig's What's In A Name? made me reflect a lot on my blog name as well as any future names I may use. Though I'm happy to know that I can change my name in different platforms, she also made a good argument for trying to get your name right from the beginning. Honestly, I don't know if I've done that here. I'm happy with my name now, but I've given a lot more thought to how I'll feel about it in the future because it may not fit in the future. However, if I do decide to change anything in the future, I'll definitely revisit her post for tips on how to make the transition.

Though I enjoyed reading the information about the look of a blog, I don't really know if that is a concern to me. Obviously, I want it to look nice, but I don't know if I'm going to maintain one look all the time. With my previous blog, I changed it all the time. I treated it much like my virtual Barbie. With my Barbies, I never really gave them stories or characters, but, really, I just wanted to change their outfits. Here, I'll probably do a combination--story and character with some outfit changes.

Having revealed that slice of myself, I do like the term "profersonal" and plan to take that approach with my blog. In other online areas, it is very much personal. By that I mean, my Facebook profile is very guarded, and it's going to stay that way. I'm saying this like you'll have a raucous time at my Facebook profile. In reality, my profile is quite tame, so I don't have much to worry about. My parents are my Facebook friends, which kind of limits the insanity. Though I do understand that people use it in a professional way, I started my profile for personal purposes and continue to use it that way. Knowing that I feel this way about it, I've taken the proper steps to maintain it as a personal profile. Danah Boyd's Controlling Your Public Appearance was a good reminder to double check my Facebook settings. All is right with my Facebook world.

Adding to that, my Facebook profile did not come up when I Googled myself because I do not want it to. In fact, I didn't find myself until I searched my name with a city I lived in. What I found wasn't very spectacular. And, actually, it was pretty convenient from a professional stand point. In each case, I found myself listed in my current and previous employment. Nothing fancy, just stating that I worked there. But, still, I'm not making it up, I did work at those places, and there is online proof (that I didn't know about in some cases, but, as long as it's not negative, I'll take it). My previous online adventures do not exist. As I've mentioned, I did have a blog before, but I made sure to delete it. My college and early post-college ramblings do not need to be shared with the world any longer (and probably didn't need to be shared at the time). I also had a MySpace page, but, once I stopped using it, I made sure to deactivate it. I didn't want any previous online undertakings to come back and haunt me, and I've taken great care to make sure that doesn't happen. I'm all for having an online presence, but I want to have some sort of ability to maintain it as well. And I enter into any online venture with that mindset.

Heading into Thing 3, the idea of a personal brand was pretty daunting. I kept asking myself what the heck am I gonna come up with?! Obviously, I was putting way too much unnecessary pressure on myself. The idea is to consider not create a personal brand, and I've definitely considered it and will continue to do so in the future. I don't know what my brand is or will be or if I'll have one at all, but I feel much more aware of the concept and comfortable with the idea of one now that this week is over (or, more accurately, weeks are over).

Happy Blogging!