Understanding Your Personal Brand

This isn’t a subject I often write about. It’s interesting and important, but there are people like Mitch Joel who are much better at it. In this difficult economic age, many of us ought to be following this important topic.

A few days ago, however, my friend Linda Netherton sent me a link that I couldn’t resist--thanks, Linda! It's fun and interesting and I want to pass on to you. It's an Online Identity Calculator. Not surprisingly, it’s a tool developed by consultants who have written a book and do training on the subject of building your personal brand. You'll get a polite email from them, but the results of the calculator are worth it.

The calculation takes only a few steps and the result is fun. I’m not showing you mine, because I’m all over the web as a result of books, so I’m going to get a high score by definition. What’s funny is that there’s a Stanford historian named Mary Louise Roberts who is active also, so you can well imagine that our name search results get all mixed up. Point is that you need to keep an eye on these things.

So try the calculator, see how you score, and see if it meets your stated goal. If not, what should you be doing to bring your score into the quadrant where you want it?

It’s important to pay attention to the advice of the experts, to keep an eye on what’s being said about you with Google Alerts, and to manage your personal brand as you would your corporate brand!

That’s good advice any time. It’s even better advice when the economy is putting so many jobs in jeopardy!