Web 2.0 Wednesday: Uncover Your Personal Brand

For this week's Web 2.0 Wednesday activity, I'm turning to an interesting post by Steve Woodruff, where he says:

People often question if they “need” a personal brand. Here’s the news - you already HAVE a personal brand. The only questions are, what is it? And are you projecting it effectively?

When people see you, think of you, and relate to you, words and images and feelings come to mind. That is your personal brand. If people who know you think “friendly,” “diligent,” “kind,” when they see you and talk about you, you are well on your way to possessing a positive personal brand. Of course, you can easily see the flip side of this as well…

So, you have a brand. Do you know what it is? What distinguishes you from the teeming hoards of humanity? What are you known for?

This suggests, accurately, I think, that our brands are not necessarily made, as much as uncovered. That is, we're already creating a brand by how we behave, what we write about online, etc., so the question is, what brand are we projecting? And if it's not the brand we want to sell, then what do we need to do about it?

Here's how we're going to turn this into a Web 2.0 activity. There are a few possibilities for you to pursue:

• Create a tag cloud of your blog. You can use TagCrowd or Wordle or any other tag cloud software you want. Then identify the top 5 words---this should give you an idea of the brand image you're projecting.

• Poll your readers. Ask them to identify the top five words that come to mind when they think of you. What do they value about you as a blogger? Or poll your off-line colleagues--what words would they use to describe you? Then write a post about it.

• Record a podcast--Use an audio recorder or get yourself a GCast account and use your cell phone. Ask a few friends or colleagues to describe you in 30 seconds and record what they say. Upload to your blog.

• Make your own 30 second commercial--Record an audio or video version of  a 30-second commercial on yourself. Here's an article on how to do this (PDF). Post to your blog and then get feedback from your readers--what do they think? Have you adequately captured the essence of who you are?

No matter which method you choose (or come up with one of your own ideas), be sure to leave me a link in comments when you post. Also tag it with "web2.0wednesday."  Have fun with this!

Comments

[May]

http://wordle.net/gallery/wrdl/177001/May%27s_Machete

That was pretty interesting!! I had no idea that so much about food would come up!

[Erica McGillivray]

Using Wordle is a great idea for a quick answer.

[Michele Martin]

So May, does this mean that we should expect some good meals from you? :-)

And Erica-- I agree that Wordle is a fun way to visualize and get quick impressions. I also like that it's pretty. :-)

[Shannon]

I tried the Wordle exercise with my main blog first and I really didn't like the results. Then I tried it with my semi-private journaling blog and liked it much better. I think it's because the first is focused on what I am doing now, and the second is about what I want to do. That should tell me something.

Here's my post about it: http://sturlington.wordpress.com/2008/09/11/exercise-identifying-a-personal-brand/