Is personal branding essential or artificial? Stand out by transcending the trend.
Personal branding is everywhere. It's no surprise that the concept has universal appeal. A great personal brand sells the promise of a higher income, bigger following, or better job title. From celebrities to small business owners, to anyone looking to climb the corporate ladder, it seems like everyone has jumped on the branding bandwagon.
I started really paying attention to my public image when I began blogging. Writing for my mom is great for my ego, but I was hoping to reach a broader audience. I thought the wisdom of the internet could help me grow my readership, so I researched a ton of articles and watched a lot of videos on how to do just that. Many of them offered advice on marketing myself as a brand, and I took some of that advice. Personal branding is all about identifying the core parts of your identity that are uniquely you - and then refining, packaging, and marketing those characteristics to the right audience in an effort to bolster your success and grow your sphere of influence. It sounded straightforward enough, so I got to work on it right away.
I set up my profile on Instagram, started following and reaching out to people, revamped my website, and re-wrote my bio. I got really into it at first. But then I started feeling anxious about writing and blogging. My feelings of inspiration and creativity began to erode, and I found myself thinking more and more about my brand, instead of focusing on the thoughts and ideas I wanted to convey. My original intention for blogging was to have a creative outlet, and to genuinely connect with my readers. Yet this new process felt stifled, stressful, and disingenuous.
If you've read this far, then you're probably already questioning the value of a personal brand. Like me, you may have even put some time and effort into developing your own. Is it just another false advertisement? Or is there any merit to all the buzz around crafting the perfect public image? Who's right and who's wrong here?
Personal branding is not all bad. To some extent, it encourages self-reflection and greater social awareness. Both are excellent skills to develop. But here's where it starts to fall apart for me: managing a personal brand involves defining the public self through a narrow lens and then operating within those rigid parameters to increase sales, build an audience, or develop a professional reputation. Decisions on what to reveal or conceal about yourself are guided by sales metrics as a form of validation. Within this context, the focus shifts away from sincere reflection for the purpose of self-improvement, toward public image-crafting, quick results, and manufactured image manipulation for personal gain. That's exactly what happened to me. Even though my personal brand started out as a real, honest reflection of who I am and what I stand for, managing my behaviors and decisions based on that brand (instead of my core sense of self) was detrimental and inauthentic.
Can a personal brand ever be authentic?
Personal branding experts know that Authenticity is trending in 2019, and they're doing their best to bridge the dissonance between a self-marketing campaign and real sincerity. Maybe that explains the common format of many personal branding articles: first, start off with a sales pitch, then offer the audience a handful of practical tips on how to build your brand, and finally close by reminding the audience that the best personal brands are completely authentic.
Personal branding is sold as an authentic extension of the self, but does the person take a backseat when marketing the persona? Personal brands are intended to be a version of you that is massaged into something more consumable. So no, I don't think that managing your personal brand is being truly authentic. If you could just be yourself then why bother with a brand? At the end of the day, being truly authentic means being congruent with yourself, and you are an evolving, complex, nuanced, whole person. A brand, however, is about selling a commodity.
I think there are better ways to spend our time instead of carefully crafting a brand, and I'm not alone in questioning whether personal branding is the best place to put all that energy. I find that people with a grounded sense of self, who are highly self-aware, and who understand their impact on others, naturally project strong personal brands without worrying about their image. Their public personas are genuinely authentic because they've already put in the real work of self-improvement. As a result, they are not managing their brands through a set of strategies - they are just managing themselves. If they aren't happy with what they're putting out into the world, they strive to make real changes instead of concealing aspects of themselves that betray their brands. The added benefit of focusing on real personal development is that improvements aren't just contextual and confined to the public or professional sphere, but also translate to private experiences at home.
I can see where personal branding might offer some value - maybe as a starting point, for example. There's nothing wrong with asking yourself what you believe in, defining your most prominent traits, and identifying strengths. I also agree that, from time to time, we should examine ourselves through the eyes of others and get honest feedback about what impressions we're giving off.
But we should reach farther than leveraging that information for a commodified public image. Why not strive to actually be a better version of yourself, if that's really who you want to be? That should be the gold standard. Self-reflection, identity development, social awareness, and intelligent self-disclosures are the real deal. Personal branding is the knock-off being packaged and sold.
In my own case, I don't just want to get people to read my blog; I want to be a better writer so that I can offer something useful or entertaining to the reader. I don't just want to streamline my bio in order to portray a clearer public image; I want the reader to better understand where I'm coming from and how to connect with me. Personal branding is not the magic pill or shortcut it's often portrayed to be. Focusing on myself as a person has been a much more authentic, sustainable, and fulfilling experience.
Don't be fooled by get-rich-quick schemes, and don't settle for a trend. Putting too much emphasis on your brand can shortchange the dynamic range of who you are and what you have the potential to be. Focus on understanding who you are now as well as who you want to be, and work on developing the real skills you need to get there. The rest will take care of itself.