Personal Brand or Reputation? Which would you prefer?
November 7, 2008 by Colleen Coplick
Filed under Social Media
Internet famous. Rockstars. Gurus. All words that have been used to describe the people who are working a personal brand, rather than building their reputation.
Geoff Livingston has a fantastic post about the fine line between building your reputation or building your personal brand.
Some will argue that these two phrases are interchangeable, and yet, I have to agree with Geoff when he points out:
Reputation is built upon past experiences — good or bad, a real track record. Personal branding is often an ego-based image based on communications. [source]
When I look around at all of the people who are considered “internet famous” I have to wonder, based on this new
perspective, are they building a reputation or are they just fueling their own ego-driven image?
Chris Brogan, as Geoff points out, is frequently said to have a stellar personal brand, but what he’s actually done, is built a fantastic reputation. (Chris Brogan image source: (CC) Brian Solis, www.briansolis.com and bub.blicio.us.)
Compare that with iJustine, who in my opinion, is an amazingly nice person, but she’s got a personal brand. her reputation is based in goofy over the top giggly snippits of her life, rather than on a solid base of actual deliverables and value. (iJustine image source: (CC) Brian Solis, www.briansolis.com and bub.blicio.us)
In the upcoming months, when there’s so many economic concerns, concentrate on providing value to your community and build your reputation. Without value, your personal brand isn’t worth anything.
I agree. pretty straightforward. It’s harder to build a reputation!
Wow, I was just talking with a friend this morning about how I want to give value above anything else. Good stuff Colleen!
Reputation and it’s really not a competition.
Branding can be changed, branding can be modified. A reputation is something you build piece by piece and, if you were diligent enough, is really tough to take down. Hell, if you did really well, those that respect will will defend you without being asked to.
Can’t say the same about personal branding.
Colleen, you make a good distinction. It’s the famous-for-being-famous phenomenon. We need accomplishments backing us up, but that branding thing is important too. Without that, people may never know about your good reputation. I think we always need to maintain a balance, and that’s difficult.
Boy, that was concise. Substance = more! I love this write up. Well done, Colleen.
Great post. I would whole-heartedly agree with that distinction!
Your brand is what people say about you when you’ve left the room. Jeff Bezos said that, and without putting too fine a point on it, I’d like to suggest (for instance) that Chris Brogan has accomplished two (oh, likely a great deal more) things relative to this post: He has built a strong reputation that precedes him, constructed from the value he has delivered clients and peers. He also has a distinct personal brand, the kind of traits and characteristics that people associate with Chris–some (like me) whom have never actually met him in person.
His brand is like a stamp, and is part of what makes him unique. His reputation is the substance that supports the brand; the threads that provide the tensile strength to the t-shirt with the witty and astute slogan.
My thoughts–thanks for the opportunity to comment! Heather
I want to weigh in on the reputation versus brand debate. The first note is a distinction between the way professional social networkers use the web and the way people with jobs that don’t require them to be online use the web. There’s a real difference there and I fall into the latter group. In short what I’m saying is I understand the difference between a bunch of internet hype and a history of proven relationships but for many the two are very closely related and the real debate is not what one does versus the other but how one can be used to enhance the other. A reputation is a real-live human relationship and a brand is a projection of a person’s possibility. For example, I recently got online with Facebook and Twitter, I got out of university and decided that i wanted to be a part of what was happening in the online business world. So you can imagine that for the first while my personal brand vis a vis Facebook was unremarkable because my life hasn’t involved a lot of socializing with digital cameras in the past few years- I had very little meaning ful media to publish about myself, but once I got into a smart outfit and went to my friend’s house who is a photographer and had him take a bunch of photo’s for me to use as profile pics I soon had many comments about those photos and I had a real feeling that a personal brand had been born. Now, granted that brand rides on my reputation and my real relationships but the two are not mutually exclusive and for the best results get worked together.
Thanks for reading. I know it was long winded. I enjoy the Buzz Networker blog very much, thanks again.
Alison Dowsett