Personal Branding Defined At ConvergeSouth
October 01, 2010
Wayne Sutton and Patrick O'Keefe gave a great session on Personal Branding Online, describing what personal branding means, and gave some super case studies.
The session reminded me of the earlier controversy this year regarding Josh Hyatt, who wrote an article about personal branding and working at a large company on money.cnn.com. The piece has caused a lot of controversy because Scott Monty, the social media guy at Ford, was featured in the article. To some, the article appeared to paint Scott Monty as an egotist, and because they have so much respect for Scott many people have criticized Josh's article.
I wanted to ask Wayne and Patrick if Personal Branding has a brand problem, and what does the term really mean?
I changed my impression of the term by thinking through the controversy, and doing some due dilegence. The tips Patrick and Wayne described around personal branding illustrated to me that personal branding is all about principles not about ego.
(see my article on the Scott Monty personal branding controversy.)
The discussion in the session regarding being "on" online and in real life was interesting. Wayne recommended that you take your brand and principles, and project the same impression in real life that you have online.
Wayne mentioned that you should always be positive, but I wonder what about constructive criticism, isn't it okay, and the right thing to do to provide your own ideas and thoughts, especially where you disagree. Isn't it more about being respectfully critical?