Personal Branding is an important tool in order to introduce and further promote one’s self to a target market in an effective and decisive manner. Industry guru, Colin Bates says, “A brand is a collection of perceptions in the mind of the consumer.” But the concept of “brand” does not apply – as we are often led to believe – just to companies, their products and their services, but also individuals, regardless of the profession they practice.
It is important to keep in mind that strategies for personal branding often revolve around three main tactics:
- Competence – analyze and improve the characteristics and attitudes of your own persona by producing value on the market.
- Visibility – stand out from the crowd through communication strategies, which may be coordinated both online and offline.
- Networking – be consistent with your own personality, while being open to dialogue and exchange in order to further broadcast yourself and create your own network of contacts with whom to interact.
Ultimately, a personal brand that is strong and empathic is built by offering uniqueness and originality: it is necessary to orient your public and target audience towards values that are positive and consistent at every level. In order to successfully accomplish this it is necessary to establish resources, along with a consistent and constructive dialogue with others.
Different social media outlets are ways to create one’s personal brand. Specifically, Tumblr offers a very unique way for people and brands to express themselves. It’s a relatively new type of blog that features all types of small niches; something for everyone to find. It’s a little bit like a more informal Pinterest. One chooses to follow certain blogs, and only posts from those blog show up on one’s “dashboard”. It’s also quite interesting because unless you know someone’s Tumblr URL, there is no way to search for anyone specifically. One finds pages they like through tags and going to the pages of people they follow to find other people and tags.
This makes me think of the book, “The Filter Bubble” by Eli Pariser. In this book he talks about how people have “click signals” when they use the Internet. For instance, everything that shows up on one’s Facebook news feed is due to their click signal, as well as all of the advertisements. Facebook saves information from what one clicks on, to what one likes, to how long one is on a certain page, and uses this info to create one’s Facebook home page. Meaning one only sees information that is filtered for them; only information click signals believe they will like. This creates one to be more close-minded due to the fact that they only see things they prefer to see, and not things people with different opinions post. I believe Tumblr somewhat breaks the filter bubble though, because even though one chooses which blogs to see, there are very few blogs that only post one specific subject. Most blogs have a variety of different types of posts, from movies and music, to science and politics, even adult entertainment. Unlike Pinterest, there aren’t specific boards one can choose to follow on another’s page; instead it shows everything that user posts. So even though one follows a blog because they see a post they like, chances are they are going to see a variety of other things as well.
Although Tumblr is still gaining awareness and users, it is still a fun, new way to express one’s personality on the Internet in a truly unique way from the rest.
IMC Hawks Blog 