Global Geek News Blog

Greetings readers!

As those of you who listen to the Global Geek News podcast know, on last weeks episode with special guest Alana Taylor, toward the end of the show, we got into a discussion on names and personal branding. Other than what I said on the podcast, I didn’t give much thought to the topic of personal branding until the next afternoon on my way home from work.

It got me thinking about what personal branding is, what is my personal brand, and what is a personal brand good for. After giving the topic a lot of thought, I had two ideas. I can either dedicate a special segment on the next podcast to the concept of personal branding, or write a several part blog on the topic of personal branding. Since you are reading this, you know which idea I chose.

I decided I will start out with today’s post answering the question, “What is personal branding?” Much like a common brand that everybody has heard of such as Walmart, Dell, McDonalds and countless others, a personal brand is something unique that identifies you and something you create with your unique self. You may not be the only person in the world with you name, but that doesnt mean you have to be just another ‘John Smith’ that nobody knows from all the other ‘John Smiths’. Depending on how unique your name is, you may or may not have an easy time creating a person brand around the name that you were given as a child. The internet allows you to take what is you and wrap it in another name to identify yourself to the rest of the world.

That is the essence of a personal brand, a name that you create which makes you unique and gives you a distinction from everybody else in the world. This is just a short introduction to the topic of personal branding, but it can give you an idea of where this weeks blog is headed.

Now that I have defined what a personal brand is, over the next several days, I will cover the topics of do you have a personal brand, why should you have a personal brand, how do you create a personal brand and how can you exploit your personal brand?

If you enjoy anonymity on the internet, you may find this series enlightening but probably not very useful. If you are a content producer and are looking make a name for yourself in the blogosphere, viral video sites or anywhere else on the internet, this is a must read series. Tomorrow, I will address the question, ‘Do you have a personal brand?’

-Jeremy “pcnerd37” Bray