Thanks for starting the conversation for the upcoming Personal Brand Camp. It is quite an honour for us to occupy such a prominent spot in your first episode!

I really hope that folks take the time to review this post regarding Personal Brand:

http://humberpr.ning.com/profiles/blogs/20-questions-or-more-about

It contains the readings and videos that we cover as part of my course in social media for the post graduate students in Humber’s Public Relations Program. Joe refers to them in your vidcast.

When watching your video, I found myself zeroing in on Terry’s comments.

First, he articulates common discomfort with “personal brand”.

I think part of this discomfort comes from the misnomer “personal brand”. We deal with that in the post so go check it out.

There are many reasons why the traditional notion of brand is not a fit for the approach that I would recommend for managing one’s online identity. Terry hits on part of it – people are not products. I think there is more to it. Branding is really a broadcast concept. It is about narrowing down the time and space that it takes to relate concepts, eliminating complexity, establishing a single point of differentiation. Some of this just does serve an individual well in the online context. Increasingly, we may discover that it doesn’t even serve corporations as well as it used to.

Next – I bet most people believe (myself included, and particularly sheepish Canadians in general) that another source of their discomfort with the concept of personal brand is due to a disconnect between their personal sensibilities and the idea of broadcasting themselves through media.

Yet they are not being broadcast at all are they? Dave you have a large following for this blog & your twitter account. You may be approaching a broadcast pattern of conversation pattern, but for most of us, personal branding is not about projection. The focus is about being prepared to satisfy someone’s search in meaningful ways, once they have decided to take some time to learn about you.

It may be, that the source of our collective discomfort is just the adjustment that we are all feeling as broadband connectivity settles into our lives, to a point where the previously mundane and unexamined portions are available to anyone who might seek them out, and will inevitably help form others’ perception of us.

We are not advocating “personal brand”, so much as helping people realize that the world is radically different than when Tom Peters was suggesting personal brand back in 1997. Broadband over took dial up connections in 2004 and is set to triple every six months for the foreseeable future.

Before electric light, no night games. Now, by simply shifting their online attention towards you people are forming often indelible impressions of who you are. What is your plan to make that first impression a good one so that you can secure that increasingly precious face to face time?

I think the money quote in your video comes at the 2:22 mark when Terry demonstrates that he is a natural at all of this saying, “you want to enhance those attributes that you want push forward and maybe downplay those that you would maybe like to have less prominence,”. If you read the Harrison White material in the post, you will see that Terry is on to something there IMHO.

RT @davefleet Launching The Social Mediators Video Podcast [link to post]

– Posted using Chat Catcher

Watching the @davefleet Social Mediators Video Podcast about personal branding online [link to post]

– Posted using Chat Catcher

There really is a fine line between reasonable, common-sense guidelines and intruding on peoples’ personal lives, and it’s not an easy one to tread.

One other thing to remember – many companies’ employee guidelines already cover inappropriate behaviour, regardless of whether it’s online or offline.

I too look forward to your next episode: I Am Watching!

There are two guys with weird accents there… did you mean Terry or Joe?

Thanks for the suggestions – there’s certainly more room for us to revisit in future.

I’m participating in Michael Cayley’s Personal Brand Camp as well, as a mentor, and am looking forward to discussing further! See you fine folks there!

I agree with the guy with the fake accent. Many of us don’t have the same goals in mind when we play online as we do when we work (online or elsewhere). I’m not sure what T-F specific objectives are, but given that my own online hobby activities have differing objectives, I can’t imagine T-F objectives being vague enough to be “inline” with the most online activities.

It would be interesting to hear the definition of “inline” (does it just mean “in peaceful co-existence with”) and examples of specific objectives of T-F, of Dell Computers, of companies in different sectors.

Looking forward to episode 2