How To Brand Your Name

The fuzzy line between personal and corporate branding

2008-09-01T20:38:00.002+01:00

Shel Israel has a post up where he talks about the effects a personal brand has on corporations and how they are still felt after the individual has left (while the individual maintains their personal reputation and brand irrespective of the organisation).

He uses the king of web personal branding Robert Scoble (arguably the best at leveraging his personal brand on the web for his professional needs) as an example.

It's a win-win situation for both parties if done right.

More useful tips on getting noticed

2008-09-01T20:32:00.004+01:00

Jeremiah Owyang has some tips on getting noticed, whether you're a company or an individual.

While some of the points are geared towards start ups and are typically more easily applied in technology hubs (e.g. Silicon Valley), he does provide some good general advice.

The comments in his post also contain additional useful bits and pieces.

Identity brand theft

2007-07-16T19:12:00.001+01:00

I read a story this week regarding a different type of identity theft. It is not the type you commonly hear about where the result is a direct financial loss of some sort. It has to do with reputation damage. In other words, damage to your personal brand.

I won't go into too much detail about the story because you can read about it yourself by clicking the link above. The obvious issues are around how you recover from something like that. When someone does a search, they end up thinking you are a movie star...and not the type that most people want to be known for.

The lady in the story has taken legal action, but it does not mean she can easily clean up her personal online identity brand. It'll take time to fix that. It's unlikely that the search engines will bother listening to her and have the entries removed from the index unless ordered to do so by the courts. In fact, that may be the only way to get around the issue within any reasonable amount of time. Otherwise, it's a matter of trying to put up entries online to outrank the existing, offending links...and those types of links are difficult to outrank because they are constantly linked to by other sites, thus keeping them high up on the search rankings.

The short story is, barring any legal directives from the courts, she's going to have to either hire an SEO expert (unless she happens to be one herself) or procure the services of a company such as Reputation Defender (I've heard mixed reports about services like this, and very frequently they are on the negative side). So in addition to the personal cost to her good name and reputation, she's now got legal fees and clean up fees.

It's a bit of a mess. This is a prime example of why we need to monitor and protect our personal brand, especially in the online world.

When is a strong personal brand not the best idea?

2007-07-16T18:59:00.000+01:00

Perhaps when you are a high profile executive (or more specifically the CEO) of a large conglomerate as this article from the Wall Street Journal points out.

Even though it is arguing against having a strong personal brand as a CEO, it correctly points out that it has worked well for Martha Stewart, Oprah Winfrey and Sir Richard Branson.

Perhaps in certain cases, it may not be ideal to have a CEO "outbrand" the company. The most obvious consequence is that it may cause internal company politics that the organisation could do without. Then again, almost all startups and small companies trade on the brand name of their CEO or founders. Why? Because it's the best way to get press.

So the summary is, brand yourself well unless you are the CEO of a large company AND your executive team are a bunch of sensitive, jealous, prima donnas...in which case, shouldn't you as a CEO be doing something about "re-deploying" them anyway?

That said, how many of us are CEOs of large corporate monoliths? Enough said.

Time to start blogging

2007-04-21T01:44:00.000+01:00

If you're still hesitant about whether to start that blog to help your name brand, there's been some recent discussion about one's blog being your resume (started by this post that got onto Techmeme). This original post from Adam Darowski served as the original inspiration. Have a read of the posts and the subsequent discussion threads for various opinions and form your own.

Getting a job aside, blogging is also the best way to show the world who you are. You don't need to blog about work. Just blog about something you're passionate about. Why? Because you won't run out of things to say...and you may even sound like you know what you're talking about.

So what are you waiting for? Start one now. Blogger or Wordpress are good starting points.

Personal branding has legs

2007-04-03T16:59:00.000+01:00

For those still wondering if there's any point to this whole personal branding thing, check this article out.

If people can build their consulting business around such a concept, it's got legs. Unfortunately, it's not immediately obvious to most that we're brands in our own right. The sooner we wake up to this fact, the better we're going to do for ourselves.

Tips to help your blog-brand

2007-03-17T15:02:00.000Z

I don't claim to have all the answers...that's why I still read as much as I can. So when I find something useful, it's only fair that I should share it around.

One of the blogs I subscribe to is "Creating Passionate Readers". Today's post by Kathy Sierra contains a set of simple, easy to read slides that summarise the types of things you should be thinking about if you want to get your blog-brand to the masses...and as a result add value to your "name brand". While it won't give you all the answers (any deep understanding of a topic usually requires work on your part - fact of life), it's a good start to get the brain ticking over...and hopefully keep the points in your subconscious for future reference.

Moving countries

2007-03-14T13:58:00.000Z

For those that are unaware, I'm in the process of moving from Sydney to London as we speak so forgive the lack of posts. I'll try to find time to get some stuff posted, but please bear with me until I settle down in my new surroundings.

Do you need a logo?

2007-03-09T16:53:00.000Z

A part of branding involves creating an image. In the business world, a company's logo represents what they're about. This includes the colour scheme they use for the logo. The logo is their identity.

For the average person who's trying to brand their name, this is not as important. You don't really need a logo. Your presence online is your brand. You don't need to promote brand awareness through marketing that's centered around your logo because your personal brand is not about what people see visually. It's about what people know about you. Your reputation. What you're all about. Your values. Your expertise. Your passion. None of these things require a fancy logo. You ARE the logo.

That being said, it doesn't mean you can't have some fun with it and design yourself a logo. If you're creative, it's a good thing to have a logo for no other reason than to show your skills. Maybe you want to show a different aspect of your personality. Maybe you want to add some individuality to your website or blog. Or maybe you just want to demonstrate that you understand everyone is a brand in their own right and this is a symbol of that understanding. Whatever your motivation, don't take it too seriously. Have some fun with it. And if you want to add some personality to that logo and can't figure out what colours to use, have a look here for some inspiration to understand what the colours you choose might be saying about your brand.

Survey says Gen Y are a bunch of narcissists

2007-03-02T18:01:00.000Z

It's not such a surprise to see what the survey says about Generation Y. It echoes what I have said in the past. They do not need to be told that they need to be branding their name. They already do it through all their incessant blogging and social networking online - it's second nature. The difference is this:

Pre Generation Y need to be told that they need to brand their name. Once educated on this fact, they tend to be more careful about what they put out there because they're much more conscious about their privacy and anonymity. They're also more careful not to put the wrong type of information out there. This can result in not building a strong enough brand, but it's still better than what a lot of Generation Y are doing.
Generation Y grew up (and are still growing up as we speak) wanting to be celebrities. They want to be the next Justin Timberlake, Christina Aguilera or Beyonce Knowles. The problem is many of them also want to be the next Paris Hilton and those that don't still see that she's famous for being Paris and nothing else. Why is this an issue? Apart from all the questionable behaviour she indulges herself in (if you're wondering what I'm talking about, do a search on any search engine and I'm sure you'll figure out what I mean), she seems to think any publicity is good publicity. With Paris, it's almost always negative. A lot of Gen Y don't care...they just like the fact she's famous. Her fame sends out the message that you can be famous even if you have no talent, aren't very smart and spend all your time partying without having to work a single day in your life. She's famous for being...well, famous. The message this gives is that you just need to get your name (or image) out there and be known for just being known. It doesn't matter what you're known for. In real life, this is a REALLY bad idea. Miss Nevada losing her title at the end of 2006 as a result of photos posted of her at a party is one such example of what can happen if you're not careful.

We all need to know how to brand our name. On top of this, Gen Y also need to learn how NOT to brand their name.

Don't get caught being a liar

2007-03-01T10:20:00.000Z

Let me start off by apologising for the negative tone of this post. I do so to stress that I'm totally against blatant lies about yourself. It's unethical and it also makes it almost impossible for you to back up your claim if someone challenges you (unless you're an extremely good bulls*&$ artist). That being said, almost everyone bends the truth a little. I've seen few profiles, portfolios or resumes that don't. In some areas, it's almost impossible to do so (in art for example), but generally, you can. This is the most prolific when it comes to writing resumes or variants of resumes.

It's expected that people bend the truth when writing resumes. Hiring managers and recruiters build that level of skepticism into their thought patterns when reading them. But if you skew your facts to the point where they are a blatant lie, then that's just bad form and complete stupidity on your part. It's perhaps not as bad on your resume because very few people ever see it. As a result, your reputation is only damaged in the eyes of the recruiter or the hiring manager of the company that was probably not going to hire you in the first place. Not a big deal in the scheme of things.

Do this in the online world however, and it's easy to get caught out...especially if you take into the account that having social networking aspects at play can give away more than you expected (you'll see what I mean in my example below). Not only do potential hiring managers and recruiters see your lies, but everyone else with access to the Web can also catch you out. There goes your reputation...and I mean your whole reputation, not just your professional one.

I'll use the LinkedIn profile of one of my "acquaintances" as an example (no, I'm not going to link directly to it - that would just be bad form, although this person completely deserves it). For those of you that are not familiar, LinkedIn profiles start with your name and a description of what you do (this is usually the title of your current role). If you want to get to the details, people usually have short descriptions of their job titles and job descriptions in reverse chronological order further down the page. At the end of the profile, there's a section on the education you've had.

People skimming profiles usually look at the name and short description. If it looks interesting, they read on. This person I'm using as an example has the following in their profile:

Their Name
Director, job they do, company they work for.

Personal Summary
description, blah blah blah.

Experiences
job they do
company they work for
dates they worked for the company
description, blah blah blah.

job they used to do
company they used to work for
dates they worked for the company
description, blah blah blah.

Education
postgraduate degree they have (equivalent of a much higher, more prestigious degree)
undergraduate degree they have

I'd like to bring your attention to the red text above. First of all, notice they've called themselves a "Director". When you read the details of the relevant job, you realise they are nothing of the sort. They do not even dare to name themselves as such when it comes to the detailed description. Now look at the education section. They've made it a point to put in brackets that their postgraduate degree is the equivalent of a much higher level degree. For example, saying "Masters of Psychology in really really technical stuff (PhD equivalent)". No matter how technical your masters might be, it's not a PhD. It's just a blatant lie and anyone with half a brain will catch you out. And to top it all off, this person got a friend of theirs to write a glowing recommendation about how great they are...except if you look at both their job histories, you'll notice that their professional paths never crossed (without the social networking aspects, you would never know this).

This example says the following about this person:

They are arrogant - they think they are so smart that no one will catch out the blatant lies.
They are stupid - they left big holes in the story that most people would be able to fly a commercial plane through.
They are a liar without a sense of ethics and will do anything to get ahead.

Unfortunately, it also tarnishes the reputation of the friend who is knowingly contributing to the lies. From the friend's perspective, they're just doing the right thing as a friend. Little do they know, they're damaging their reputation in the process.

Fake your friends

2007-02-28T10:39:00.000Z

Here's one from the unethical bucket...at least in my opinion.

The New York Times wrote an article about a site that lets you buy fake friends so you can "look popular" on your social networking profile. For example, it lets you add fake friends to your MySpace profile so you appear more popular and also to have a circle of friends that are really good looking. How? Apparently they use pictures of models.

I don't need to write too much about exactly why this is a bad idea but right at the top of the list of reasons:

It's a form of fraud. You are misrepresenting yourself.
It will only damage your reputation in the long run because you're not telling the truth.
People who find out what you're doing will view you as a "loser".

Remember, your name is your brand. DO NOT do anything that will damage it. Fraudulent behaviour is a sure-fire brand killer.

The Age has an article about online identity

2007-02-28T10:35:00.000Z

Read the full story here. It echoes some of the things I've been talking about relating to the risks and privacy issues involved and gives some real life examples.

Update: The Sydney Morning Herald has the exact same story here (Makes sense - both the Age and SMH are owned by Fairfax).

10 tips to start branding your name

2007-02-28T08:10:00.000Z

The first order of business should really be to start giving you ideas of how you should go about branding yourself so here goes (these are my opinions so you may not agree - if you don't, please leave a comment):

Decide on the brand - Seems quite easy. It's your name right? Not always. If you have a common name, your name alone will not suffice (ever tried search for "John Smith"?). You may need to use your middle initial/s as part of your brand name. Perhaps you can extend it to include your area of expertise. It's really up to you. Be imaginative. Whatever it is, remember to stick to it everywhere you want to brand yourself.
Start a Blog - This gives people an insight into your personality and what you're passionate about. If you can be bothered blogging about it, it probably means something to you. In a way, it's like giving an interview to anyone who can be bothered to listen. I'm not saying you should restrict this to the professional arena, but if you're going to talk about personal stuff, just be careful what you say.
Register your brand as a domain name - Sure it cost money, but it's not that expensive. Don't eat out this week. Find a way to save yourself $20 to pay for the registration. It's not a big deal. I have ianyip.com. Give people an easy way to get to you. It's your "online branding card"...kind of like a business card. Also, there's no use registering it if you just let it point to the default page your domain registration provider uses. It'll more than likely be some useless page with affiliate links so commonly used by cybersquatters. Redirect it to a page you have. If you don't have time to host a proper page with your details, more often than not it's good enough to point it at your blog. Some blogs provide you with the means to change the relevant DNS records and have your domain name point at your blog. For example, my blogs are hosted on Blogger but I've used the provided functionality to have blog.ianyip.com point directly at my Blogger hosted blog and have this updated on Google's DNS servers (Google owns Blogger). In other words, instead of a simple redirect from blog.ianyip.com to ianyip.blogspot.com, you actually see blog.ianyip.com in your browser when you go to my blog.
Actively comment on ideas and other people's news stories and blogs - DO NOT leave spam comments. Leaving a useless comment or one with just your name and a link to your online presence is going to be detrimental in the long run. It ruins your reputation. The only reason to leave a link to your blog or something similar is if you blogged about it and would like to point people at it rather than repeating yourself. Add something constructive to the discussion. If you can't, think of something. And if you still can't, you're reading the wrong types of news stories and blogs. Rethink your "passion".
Put your portfolio online - I say portfolio on purpose here. If you are an artist, put your art online. If you are a professional, put your resume online...even if it's a brief one. The best site to use as a professional in my opinion is LinkedIn.com. Guy Kawasaki has some good tips on how to use it here and here. If you are a musician, put your music online...or at least a sample of it. By far, the most commonly used site for independent artists is MySpace. It has launched many a career of late.
Give people a place to go to for things about you - This statement can be a little confusing. Let me try to give an example. If you have a page which you could point people at if they want to know what's out there about you, that would make it easier for them. You don't necessarily have to own the pages you link to, it just has to be about you. Maybe you wrote a book. Link to it on Amazon.com. Sure, they could go to Google (or any other search engine) and search for you, but they would more than likely have to filter out all the stuff that is NOT about you...or worse still, they may think that something is about you when it is not! You could try to do this on your blog, or create a static page which you update as you find new things. Of course, this opens itself up to fraud by having people claim to "own" content when in fact they don't. There's a few people out there trying to address this. I don't think anyone's really solved it completely because it's not easy to solve. The guys at ClaimID.com have made a good start in attempting to do so.
Submit articles to online news sites - This may be your local newspaper, a web site you like reading and so forth. More commonly in the online world however, this is probably sites like Digg, Reddit, StumbleUpon, Newsvine, Tailrank, Technorati or Netscape. This is also not a definitely list. Just a sample. The trick in these sites it to get people to vote your story to prominence. That is an art in itself and I won't be covering it here (because I'm not exactly an expert on it).
Answer people's questions - This is a little similar to posting comments. I make the distinction because it is a lot easier to make a comment than to answer a question to someone's satisfaction. Nothing gets you credibility points like answering questions correctly and to be known to be a subject matter expert in an area. People will seek you out when they need an answer. Examples of site that do this are discussion forums (too many out there to list), Yahoo Answers, LinkedIn Answers and Jyte (although Jyte is a little different - it's about making claims and discussing them - kind of like a debate).
Learn about Search Engine Optimisation - Traditionally, this has been the realm of online marketing departments with big budgets who want to get their sites ranked higher. A whole industry has sprung up around search engines, especially since the advent of Google. Learn about what makes the search engines tick so you can at least make an attempt at optimising your blog and your sites to rank higher. Also a good way to push down the stuff out there about yourself that you want to make harder to find. A few good sites that deal with SEO are as follows: Search Engine Land, Search Engine Journal and Search Marketing Standard. This is by no means a definite list. I've just listed a sample. There's many others out there.
Monitor what the search engines say about you - Periodically perform searches about yourself, both on websites and on blogs (Technorati, Google Blogsearch and Bloglines are examples of some engines that just search blogs). You need to use variations of your name. Perhaps add your area of expertise to the search along with your name. Some search engines give you the ability to get alerts when something new relating to your search term appears in their index. An example of this is Google Alerts. If you can't find anything about yourself, you may want to join a few social networking sites. Doing this allows for there to be more online entries about yourself. Don't forget, most people still use search engines if they want to find you online. The more there is out there, the easier it is to find you. In the longer term, it may become a hassle to keep all your profiles up to date, but what you ideally want initially is to get your brand name out there. It's probably a good idea to not have embarrassing materials about yourself on the social networking sites you join, but leave enough information so that people can at least figure out that it's you. Common social networking sites? There are so many out there I don't know where to start. Here's a sample: MySpace, FaceBook, Bebo, Hi5, Friendster, LinkedIn.

Does your name really need branding?

2007-02-28T07:35:00.000Z

The answer is YES! Most definitely, undeniably, emphatically YES!

In today's technology focused world where people "Google" themselves (also known as a vanity search) and other people, it's important that you know what's out there on the big bad Internet...specifically, what can people find about you. I've seen it most commonly referred to as your "Personal Identity Brand" and "Online Identity Brand". Ultimately, it's about how you want to be perceived by someone who does not know you. For the more risk averse out there, it's also about your reputation and how you want to protect it.

The big technological shifts on the Web today centre around social networks. At the sociological level, it's conceptually been around forever. What the Internet has done however, is to make it easy for people to model social networks at at alarmingly fast rate and with ease. Unless you've been in a bunker for the past year or so, you would have at least heard about the various social networking services around. Anyone who has a MySpace profile will know what I mean...and if you don't but have heard of MySpace, you may know that it's the biggest social networking site out there. What does this mean? It means if you have an account on a social networking related site, your profile is more often than not out there for all to see.

The focus of this site will not be on social networking. I used it as an example of the proliferation of our identities on the Web and just how much of an issue it will become if you don't take into consideration that EVERYTHING you do online which leaves some sort of public footprint (e.g. comments on a blog, public profiles on site) can affect you and most importantly your reputation. I'll also talk about the various proactive measures you can take to ensure the brand you leave out there is the one you want to portray. This can include things like signing up to the right sites, leaving the right sorts of information about yourself out there and also doing the right thing and ensure it can be traced back to yourself. This is the exact opposite of what most people try to do on the Web. We treasure our anonymity online and don't like to think that what we do can be traced back to us.

Well, I have news for you. Anonymity online is a false assumption. You computer can give you away simply by being online. How? There are many many ways which many online security experts can tell you all about (I may cover this in a later post if it makes sense to do so). The most obvious example is your IP address. Every site you visit has the means to track your IP address if they please (there are actually ways around this by using things such as proxy servers to give you some level of anonymity - it is not foolproof however as your tracks are potentially stored at the proxy server depending on which one you use). In these days of broadband where many of us have static IP addresses, it's not particularly difficult to track your IP back to your real identity. Granted, there are privacy laws in place that protect us from this, but it is not beyond the power of the courts and the governments around the world to get this information if it is in "the best interest of national security".

This new era of the Web represents a paradigm shift in the way we must look at our behaviour online. We are no longer anonymous and we need to be proactive about what we do and how we do it. If you don't want someone to know something about yourself, don't put it out there. It's generally your fault if something you don't want to make public gets out there (not always, but for those of us who are not celebrities, this is usually the case).

Of course, there is also the issue of ensuring that things out there on the big bad Internet are true. There's nothing worse than finding something out there about yourself that isn't true. If it isn't true, it probably wasn't put out there by you. Someone else may have done it out of spite or simply to damage your reputation for their own personal reasons. On the web, content owners have full control over the information they publish and will generally not remove the content unless threatened (usually via legal action). This means that we have little to no control over things people say about us. All we can do is ask nicely for it to be removed and threaten legal action as a last resort...as that's for the information we DO find. What about the stuff we don't know about? There are a few groups and organisations out there trying to address this problem and I'll mention them as I come across them.

Money! The root of all evil...well, sometimes. But this fascination with money for some people is also a good reason to brand your name. How do we get money? Usually by working or providing a service. Your reputation goes a long way towards what job offers you may receive. This is especially true if you do freelance work instead of working for an employer. What most people don't realise is that your reputation may also affect your current employment situation. What happens if your current employer finds something out about you that you didn't want them to know? It's not hard to do on the Web if you put it out there. So, it's up to us to ensure that what we put out there presents us in the best light possible and can be found easily, especially from a professional standpoint. How else do you expect to get headhunted for that next great job? Ever wondered how people get headhunted? Word of mouth. That's how. On the Web, it's even easier to do. The number of times I've had people contact me after viewing my LinkedIn profile is astounding.

Generation Y will find this concept even more important. The were born in the digital age. They do not know a world without computers, the Internet and possibly even blogs and MySpace. The issue with this is, they are conditioned not to live in online anonymity. They write anything and everything they can think of on their blogs...right down to their deepest secret thoughts. They're all about sharing. This may come back to haunt them however, but it doesn't necessarily have to be that way. Sure, people will forgive something you did as a kid, especially if it was many years ago and you were still rather naive. It doesn't change the fact that their subconscious will still be worried about what they know however...nor does it change the fact that your enemies may use it against you.

I may on occasion tie this branding of one's name discussion in with technology and the work going on to make our online experiences easier, safer and more secure. I'll try to keep this to a minimum. If you want to read about the technical aspects of identity, go to my personal blog.

To get you started, here is a list of links to my rants on this concept of branding your name that I've written about in the past on my own blog:

To summarise this post:

Run yourself like you would a company - from an online marketing standpoint.
Be proactive about getting your name out there.
Monitor what information there is about yourself.

How do you do this? That's what this site aims to address as we go. It's a very new area to be talking about. No one's really worked it out...yet.

Why bother starting this blog?

2007-02-28T07:20:00.000Z

I've become interested in the concept of branding one's own identity, especially with respect to the Internet and digital media.

I've talked about this topic periodically on my own personal blog (http://blog.ianyip.com) but thought it was time to spin off a separate site mainly due to the fact that some people have told me that they read my blog posts only when it's not too technical, and some specifically only when it relates to this topic. I suppose it was their way of telling me that reading my posts on IT security, technology and Identity and Access Management (from an IT standpoint) put them to sleep. Point taken. On the other hand, if you like the technical stuff, head on over there.

I've been referring to this as your "Online Identity Brand" on my personal blog, but thought that was too boring a name for this blog. I've settled on "How To Brand Your Name" and have even gone to the trouble of getting the domain name to match. I thought I should as I'm talking about branding and it would be hypocritical of me not to follow through with my message.

Comments on this blog are also open to to all so you don't need to log in to comment. Please leave your name though. We're all about "branding your name" after all.

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Happy reading and please leave your thoughts. Blogs should not be one way conversations.