Saturday, April 19, 2008

The search for a personal brand

I'm out to get a personal brand. This is the result of my reading of Casnocha's My Start-Up Life -- see what happens? But I've got a gig coming up -- I wrote a paper for the Trenton Computer Festival and have to present it a week from today -- and I want to have a brand more-or-less in place by then. Turns out people have heard about this paper, a comparison of MySpace, Facebook and LinkedIn from the professional's point of view, and they think (for whatever reason) that it's pretty cool. I am getting some unexpected attention regionally. And after all these years of being used to being invisible. LOL

The brand thing has so far escaped me, at least as far as particular strategy is concerned. I will tell you a couple of general principles I have picked up and would like to apply:
  1. I might need a nickname. I say this because in this country my name is not as unique as I might like. Even if you Google me two mathematicians come up ahead of me. Who cares about mathematicians? LOL
  2. I need an online identity. This is kind of a shame because I have already been on the Internet longer than anyone else you know, young as you are. LOL It is easy enough to find my work on the Internet, but I have yet to identify myself with it, "advertise" it. As a result, I find I get discouraged about it sometimes and let it sit there.
  3. I need an answer to the question "what do you do?" And it has to be something other than the stuff I do on the job during the work day. If it's the same, I am branding my employer. And I assure you, my employer doesn't need it.
  4. I gotta have one defined, consuming passion. I have lots of areas I really like, but I have to pick one, get behind it, and use it to make a first impression that really IS an impression. You do not get a second chance to make a first impression.
  5. THEN I must get all that out there. I will probably have to reinvent my Web site and get business cards and stuff like that.
I'm working on the business cards even now. But the consuming passion stuff, that's always been the source of my fears. If I pick the wrong passion, do I close doors behind me? Do I have to give up the other stuff I like?

Labels:

posted by Ron @ 4:00 PM

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home