Despite the term’s current wow-factor, personal brands are not a new thing. In fact, we all have one. While some may have developed their personal brand on purpose, for some it has built itself based on their behaviour.
Personal brand simply refers to how other people perceive us, and everything we do builds it, starting from the way we dress and speak, what kind of hobbies and points of interest we have, what we do for living, what kind of political views we have, and what kind of things we do online.
By the rise of digital platforms, the need for a digital personal brand was created. Suddenly, meeting people online and never in person was a possibility, and people’s opinions of us were based on what was passed through online channels.
Many faces of personal brands
Personal brand or online identity often brings us to think of politicians, business professionals, YouTubers, people who are active on LinkedIn and Twitter, or other people who want the audience to recognize their name and face. A personal brand can, however, be a faceless, almost anonymous person hiding behind a screen name, often using platforms like Instagram, Twitter, and Tumblr, with their personal brand built around the content they produce, not their real-life persona.
In fact, our personal brand can differ a lot from our offline persona.
In digital it’s rather easy to show what we want for the public to see. We can easily focus on one single part of ourselves and our life, leaving out the parts we don’t find relevant or we are not confident with. Digital platforms give us the possibility to separate us from other people with a barrier, even though they are only a hashtag and Internet connection away. That gives many of us a boost of confidence; we find it easier to say things we perhaps wouldn’t dare to say to people’s faces.
We all manipulate our personal branding but not all do it in a bad way. In fact, pretty much all of us do it without any higher purpose. We share when we are on our funniest or smartest; when our breakfast looks fantastic; when we are on our way to a vacation; when we have something to say on a matter we are interesting in; when our dog or kid looks extremely cute; when we ourselves look ten kilos slimmer than we are; when a new episode of our favourite tv show has just aired; or we have amazing new GIFs to share.
