Recent questions people are asking on Twitter about personal branding.

What is a personal brand?
Ryan Waters Ryan Waters, @cwind, asked: Hey guys, what’s a personal brand and why should I protect it?
Jacob Share A personal brand is the impression you want to leave on people, the way you want to be remembered. Everything you do and create to reinforce that impression is also part of your personal brand.

Protecting your personal brand means protecting your investment in yourself.

Most important part of a personal brand
Benson Mensah-Bonsu Benson Mensah-Bonsu, @bmbonsu, twittered: What is the most important part of your personal brand?
Jacob Share Your capacity to convince people that you are what you say you are.Ideally, that means having an authentic personal brand, one that is just you being you. However, there are people who are quite capable of projecting a personal brand that is an act.

My first reaction was to say ‘the quality of what you do’ but there are many examples of top-notch people who had to be “discovered” because they weren’t very good at marketing themselves i.e. building their personal brand.

Personal branding on Twitter – a big no-no?
Sara Hyléen Sara Hyléen, @SaraHyleen, asked: Is twitter good or bad for your personal brand?
Jacob Share That all depends how you use Twitter, which is just a tool after all. If you use it consistently to build your brand by helping other people, answering questions, sharing links and building relationships with people in and out of your sphere of activity, Twitter will be very good for your personal brand.

Should you only build your personal brand outside of work?
Christine Perkett Christine Perkett, @missusP, asked: Is buldng your own personal brand the new “moonlighting?” How do you keep it from interfering w/ day job? Love employee & employer/HR views.
Jacob Share As someone who has been both an employee and an employer, I can say that the response isn’t too different.An employee wants what’s best for them – which is fine – and an employer wants what’s best for the company. If it’s a good company, what’s best for the company is also best for the employees, so as long as your personal brand doesn’t involve activities detrimental to the company (even indirectly e.g. via incriminating photos on facebook or flickr), you shouldn’t have anything to worry about by continuing to build your personal brand.But perhaps your question is more about specific brand-building activities like blogging that require lots of time and as a result, might affect your performance at work. In that case there are a number of things you can do:

  1. Find a day job that overlaps with the personal brand you’re building.
  2. If you can’t or would prefer not to find such a job, then organize your time and your brand so that there’s minimal overlapping. For example, don’t use your work email address for social media profiles, and keep a tight schedule on your brand building outside of work.
  3. If even that is too challenging and you’re willing to spend some money for your branding, get a personal branding mentor to help design and manage your branding activities and/or outsource some of your branding activities so you don’t show up to work tired from another late night.

The importance of avatars
Dave Kirkwood Dave Kirkwood, @SwimmingThrough, asked: Are avatars personal brand marks?
Jacob Share If you’re consciously trying to build your personal brand, then yes, your avatar should be a personal brand mark and part of a larger strategy using your imagery on and offline. It doesn’t have to be exclusive though- you can still have a personal monogram or logo as well.

If you enjoyed this article, you might also enjoy my ebook The Ultimate Twitter Job Search Guide, available as a free download for subscribers of my free job tips newsletter.

I originally published this article on the terrific Personal Branding Blog.

Branded? Subscribe to JobMob via RSS or email and follow me on Twitter for more personal branding questions and answers related to your job search.

--Jacob Share

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  Tags: avatars, personal-branding, twitter     Category Filed under: Must-Read Tips