Is Personal Branding a Load of BS?
Anyone with a Twitter account or an RSS feed of a few business blogs knows exactly how popular the buzzword "personal branding" has become. Every three seconds someone is claiming it's the key to success. Now someone else is countering with an assertion that it's utter BS. I like this guy.
You have prevented me from having fun for the last time... Your job is done, I'm moving on now. Because really, all that you've ever really taught us is stuff we already knew. Did we really need someone telling us how to be authentic or respectful?The man has a point. What does personal branding really amount to but what used to be known as earning a solid reputation through good work and decency? As Miceli points out, if you're failing to convince people of your worth, the issue is probably more about substance than style.
Don't tell me about those drunk girls that upload their pics on Facebook for everyone to see, or about those employees that publicly say that they hate their job. In reality, the problem is those people are just being themselves. The problem isn't, "You're awesome but because of that photo of you peeing on a dog while getting high, the company decided to go another way." You were a mess to begin with.For the grand finale, the post offers "the two most harmful consequences of Personal Branding." What are they?
This is not Personal Branding; this is common sense.
- It makes you afraid.... Personal Branding bases most of its points on not upsetting potential contacts, your interviewer, your boss, or anyone else who will decide if you "live or die financially," depending on what they find out about you online. To hell with that: authenticity means upsetting people. Only by disagreeing and even fighting others will you do something worth talking about. This does not mean being scandalous, this means being human.
- It has made us so calculated, that I wonder how many people are able to live up to their online personas. Meeting online contacts in the real world has been very disappointing in many cases. What's interesting is that the people who haven't played the personal branding game, have been amazingly fun, interesting and wise.
(Image of manure warning by ktylerconk, CC 2.0)