What is the unique in personal branding online?
I take my experience on personal branding from starting back in 2011 as a SEO practitioner till my present activity, being a worldwide recognised and featured member of Google Create Community Member. It is a user case and here are the leading takeaways:
- From the moment I aligned my words to action and my action to clear evidence back across my profiles I reached a rocket boost in engagement both in terms of followers and conversion. My followers increased with 1000 people on Google plus. More engagers connected with me across other channels.
- The algorithm does idex personal profiles in the same ways as brands and businesses, so you need to care about authority, trust, consistency, variety, velocity, visibility and all aspects of reputation management.
- Your presence across platforms should be authentic.
- Google+ post with my featured presentation is an honour and a valuable link, which I refer occasionally by a QR code.
- The web activity expands inner feelings. You might not get the whole picture about the person’s situation and you stay connected for just one emotional reflection. It is exactly THE one that you have in your personality, whether you recognise it or not.
While the first three items are doable and one can refer to valuable resources, the[Tweet “emotional intelligence is a new challenge to all entities on the web”]. To make it simple, it is exactly as offline, in the real world: finding one’s unique superpower, the sole personal skill and ability, either a set of these that no one else has and make it an unconditional success.
Conclusion: being open minded and building a personal brand online connects you with a whole new universe, the core of which is your inner world and unique superpower.
What is the awareness about personal branding to remember?
First, understand these words: “absolutely everybody on planet Earth needs to start working on his personal brand”
The responsibility, security, addiction, timing and many other behavior activities online do not depend upon groups, communities, companies, badges etc. I’ve been part of a social experiment of 50 years total control system, where we had a regime during our student years designed for balance: fitness every morning, balance of study and game, music, theater and vacation. It could not survive for the lack of freedom of personal choice and individuality.
Therefore be wise about the castles you live in online! Unless you provide value, bringing your unique powers and receiving benefits, the personal branding will be just another label to the long list of lessons learned and time lost.
What does it mean to have a verified Google personal profile from the standpoint of digital identity and semantic search?
Here are the answers of power users and experts on the net:
Stan Bush: Do what you love doing, no matter what! You will never ever learn all of it, because you simply can’t. It is always new.
Omi Sido: As a digital marketer, I should probably say that the benefits of verifying a social media profile bring to the table credibility and it may prevent identity theft.
On the other side (being honest as usual) so far I haven’t noticed people really paying attention to whether a social media profile is in fact verified or not. I personally don’t care at all. A badge will not make me trust somebody more. I kinda know straight away if I am talking to a real person or a brand. Your profile was never verified but I do know that I am talking to a real person – not entirely sure about this one when it comes to David – come on he is always online, always polite and always smiling and never and I mean never getting older…. lol :-).
David Amerland: Nina, interesting question. Common marketing sense says that a verified profile is indeed the person you are talking to and it goes some way in terms of providing social proof when it comes to that all-important first contact. But that is really old thinking by new web standards. Really, it should make no more difference than follower numbers. Either you connect with a person because they have something to say that interests you or you don’t. As Omi said, badges never move the needle of trust one way or another if the person behind them is not being more or less real than we expect. In the early days of G+ verification was important because Google had made it the identity layer to all its products and services and there was the contentious “Real Names Policy” that sparked off the “Nom Wars”. Then semantic search took off and data mining became a thing and Google quietly backed off since it no longer required us to supply a real name or even a real identity. In the transparent online world of the now, it is really, really hard to hide. Since it’s hard to hide it’s hard to pretend to be someone you are not for very long. It is way too exhausting, which makes being you all that much easier- verification tick next to your name or not. Classic example check out Iblis Bane (https://plus.google.com/u/0/+IblisBane) he’s just awesome and he’s never had a real picture or a real name, though his every comment can hardly be made to be more real.
Teodora Petkova: A verified profile is nothing but a verified profile and on a deep (or higher) conceptual level this can be read as – some kind of authority decides who is verified and who is not. And a link appeared in my mind: in a free market, the invisible hand regulates things. No need for a central authority to decide who is to be trusted. This is a very raw parallel, but you get the point: the lesser “regulations” on the Web of People (!) the better off the free exchange of ideas.
More and more professional and businesses realise that “humans are the puzzle” and management is in transformation to human-centric approach. The new scientific research are providing knowledge and evidence of changing our mindset towards leadership on the best roles we can manifest for personal and professional growth.
I’m now extraordinary glad to know Google Plus connectivity API, just released, take chance to contribute to projects in collaboration with creative professional I get to know on Google Plus, place the QR and badges and share across my profile for the simple fact that it is what I love doing, helping professionals with their digital communication skills.
Nina Trankova says
Jeannie Hill, thank you, appreciate your comment. I’m glad this resonates with you.