Selling by yourself !!
You may have heard the term "personal branding" and wondered what it was all about. You may have also thought that whatever branding was, it didn't apply to you. If this was the case, you couldn't have been more wrong. This is the age of social media. Communications are quick and to the point. Impressions matter because, more than ever, time counts. Clicks, views and likes define who sets trends and who follows trends. In this world of instant expertise, branding matters. It matters a lot.
So, why should you care about branding? Well, we are all interconnected like never before. One person has the potential to reach thousands of other people with the flick of a finger and without every leaving home. One result of this is that a pointed comment, a funny joke or a helpful piece of information has a naturally larger audience with a resulting greater reach. This increases the power of personal communication. This is just a fancy way of saying that social media has increased the power of you.
Today, no matter what you do for a living, no matter what your interests and no matter your goals, you are selling yourself. That's right. Each time you use social media to communicate you are pitching others to like your ideas, your outlooks and you abilities. Whether you like it or not, your personality and lifestyle have become a commodity. This is not necessarily a bad thing.
Before the internet, and the age of information and communication, personal reach was limited to the people who you could physically contact. This small circle of people might have considered you the smartest or the funniest or the most persuasive person they had ever met. However, this was about as far as your direct reputation could go. Of course, your circle could mention you to other people they knew, but you had no way of influencing those people directly. Because they had never met you, they could form no opinion as to your abilities. Therefore, you're potential fame or ability to make money or influence opinion was limited by the fact that you could only personally reach so many people in one lifetime.
As we've discussed, this has all changed. In fact, the vary nature of our social game has changed. We "know" people in a much different way than the previous generation. Our reputations are based upon more and, at the same time, less. The concept of "friendship" is broader and, simultaneously, weaker. In this world, you are selling yourself. You are a brand. The sooner you realize this fact, the more successful you will be.