Own Your Name, Own Your Brand Identity

At a recent networking event, I met an artist showing her work which I recognized from a previous occasion. In my conversation I found out that she had no website, did not own her domain name, trademark, or copyright for the purpose of selling and protecting her brand image which in her own words is her life and identity.

In a separate encounter, I spoke with a young attorney whose mother was a well-known community activist and philanthropist who made numerous contributions to the community. Her mother has since passed away and several organizations are using her mothers name for fundraising events without the consent of the family. I explained that her mother represented a brand, of idealism, integrity and a trusted identity that people associate with leadership. If she wants to manage her mother’s legacy she needs to control her brand identity and own the domain name and trademark.

These two examples may not be the typical product or services you would associate with branding or marketing like Coca Cola or Patriot  Bank. In today’s entrepreneurial market and recent networking experience, I find more people selling their own “Brand identity,” meaning their brand of individual skills and experience in a service capacity.

Brand identity matters and many of the marketing principles still apply in today’s virtual world.  The relevance of your product and/or service, translates into knowing your business and using your brand identity as the differentiator from the sea of competition.

Brand marketing is crucial, regardless of what type of media outlet you choose, print, web, Facebook, Twitter, or presentations. Your message must be consistent, so next time you want to post that half-naked picture of yourself from a party you attended in South Beach on Facebook, which has a link to your law firm you may want to take a pause.  Every person you meet has the ability to see your Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn pages.   Which brand identity are you selling, the professional you or the “hey let’s party” you?  Be memorable and position yourself for success and the first step may be by owning your name brand identity.

By the way, the two women mentioned above took my advice and now own their names and brand identity.  

The key question you need to ask yourself today is; do you have a professional brand identity and do you control it?

http://blogs.harvardbusiness.org/erickson/2009/04/did_i_really_need_to_hear_that.html

Great article on when to keep your mouth shut, so let’s take this article one step further and add the social media perspective.   In a recent round table discussion of my peers, the conversation was not who you were connecting with on FB or Twitter, however who people were hiding or disconnecting because of boring banter.  If we follow Dr. Albert Morabian’s graph, on the impact of a message;  7% are words, 38% are voice tones and 55 % are facial expressions and body language then those words need to be pretty concise when using social media.   The consensus at the end of the discussion was that people need to learn to EDIT themselves before they ruin their credibility.  Some people share too much information and forget that this is a vast audience that may impact them professionally and personally.  This all goes back to branding yourself, if your posting random thoughts just because you can… then be prepared to enjoy the positive feedback as well as the negative that are now associated with your name.    Facebook  and Twitter are suppose to be fun, however never loose sight of when sharing too much inforamtion  may cause disconnects or hides that may come your way.