Online Personal Branding
November 25th, 2009 | by Ridhima Suri |
Living in a networked world
In a world so wired and so connected it is impossible to have privacy. Having said that another angle to look at the issue is ‘who wants privacy?’ About a decade back if someone did something interesting he would share it with friends and family via letters or verbal discussions. Many times the ‘news’ shared was stale and not interesting. Fast forward to today’s networked era. Many folks are connected online on Facebook, MySpace, Geni, LinkedIn, Orkut, Twitter, Youtube and other social/professional networking platforms. ‘News’ means ‘now’. ‘News’ means changing Facebook and MySpace updates @ ‘now’. ‘I am having a coffee at Starbucks’ or ‘I am waiting for the Caltrain’ or ‘I am in a conference’ or ‘I went clubbing till 4 am’ or ‘I am going dolphin watching’ are very common status updates. Hence, there appears to be a seachange in the way news is shared today as compared to a decade back.
- People can be tracked by their Facebook ‘bar codes’ so to speak. Compare a person’s social profile to a package sent via post. The package has a tracking code and can be tracked easily. It is easy to check the delivery status of the package. The online profile is the same. It is estimated that out of 300 million active Facebook users, almost 50% log onto Facebook everyday!
- This means that privacy is ‘bunk’ (at least in the demographic of 15-35 ) and there is a constant urge to share ‘news’ with friends & family. Active social networking users frequently use these platforms to communicate with their social and professional groups.
While this may appear trivial at first, there is a huge opportunity in social networking especially for people/organizations who want to brand themselves online. This article covers what online branding is, why it is becoming increasingly important and how to build a personal brand online using social media services.
Online presence
In simple terms online branding is the use of online media to brand a product, service or person. Branding a person!??! Yes, absurd as it sounds, that is exactly what users and celebrities around the world are doing. Everyone is on some social or professional network. Models and actresses are on Facebook. President Obama used Youtube to communicate his vision and goals. Many entrepreneurs are using social networking to promote their skills, products & services via photos, videos and applications.
How to do personal online branding?
Online branding is a new art and has not been validated quantitatively. However there are bits of useful information that can be used to develop a model of online branding. First look at the following Facebook stats:
- More than 2 billion photos uploaded to the site each month
- More than 14 million videos uploaded each month
- More than 2 billion pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photos, etc.) shared each week
- More than 3 million events created each month
- More than 45 million active user groups exist on the site
2.2. New planning theories in North America
For the past decade or so, new planning theories have emerged in North-America. Smart Growth, New Urbanism and Transit Oriented Development (TOD) have influenced not only urban planning theory and practices but also some urban policies. The main ideas behind these planning theories are that urban growth has generated several negative social and environmental impacts along with traffic congestion. In order to mitigate these negative impacts, a new model of urban growth is deemed necessary characterised by increasing density, mixing land uses and linking urban development with transportation planning. This movement has become increasingly accepted by planners and is now commonly thought in North American planning schools. NGOs and advocacy community groups have lobbied for these principles for more than a decade now and the media are commonly talking urban issues and the alternative solutions suggested by these recent planning theories.
However, these new planning approaches have remained at the margin of the bulkiness of urban development and growth in the United-States and Canada. Yes, significant smart growth, new urbanism and transit-oriented policies are implemented here and there. There are also some exceptions: New York City is as dense as it can be but also Portland in the US and Vancouver in Canada have already adopted several smart growth and new mobility principles. But the current reality is that suburban revolution is still driven by a majority of citizens who prefer to live in low-density communities, regional politics remain fragmented and competitive, infrastructure planning and expenditure are still focusing on roads and the market based approach still tend to follow the demand for suburban development.
Tags: brand, online advertising, online branding, online marketing, online personal branding
2 Responses to “Online Personal Branding”
By Priyank on Nov 30, 2009 | Reply
Very nicely written article. Surely, internet is now converting into place where it is no more about ranking some webpages but rather ranking the knowledgeable individuals who can spread their insights/opinions/voice quickly with the rest of the world using all these different kinds of channels. Social search is going to replace the traditional Web 1.0-ish type of search soon. Traditional e-commerce is converting into social-commerce where individuals of similar types help each other to make better decision about their online purchases. I feel more & more companies are now able to figure out how to put all this social media for the benefits of the society.
By Ridhima on Dec 1, 2009 | Reply
Thank you for the comment..:) I really think internet has opened a vista of opportunity for individuals and organizations to take branding and advertising to a new level. All the social networking platforms are a great platform for individuals to market their products or services with just a few clicks.