Personal branding: What’s wrong with being who you are?

Sage Business Expert, Janice B Gordon discusses personal branding and the contrast between creating meaningful content and creating popular content.

Would you spend your limited energy contributing to something important and valuable or creating anything recognisable and popular? I know which I would choose. The reality is personal branding has become a commodity that values superficiality over substance and tends to favour a certain people. Articles tell how personal branding is the promise land and will:

• Help you to stand out – maybe, but what for?
• Grow your social influence – perhaps, but what for?
• Get you more clients – maybe, but why?
• Grow your business- maybe, but how?
• Get you that promotion – perhaps, but what for?
• So think of yourself as a brand – why, you are not a box with uniform features?

Perhaps I should give you some definition of the personal branding magic pill:

• Joseph Liu is a brand consultant, states “A brand is the collection of functional and emotional benefits delivered to an end consumer. Similarly, your personal brand is the collection of your skills and personality that comes through in your interactions with others and the work you do.”
• ‘Personal branding concept suggests instead that success comes from self-packaging’ source Wikipedia.
• “A personal brand, like any good brand, needs to be consciously managed and controlled throughout our lives,” says marketing expert Jim Joseph

Tom Peters wrote, “Personal branding has devolved into a barrage of self-promotion, something that’s less about strategy than about building networks of thousands of superficial connections.”

“It’s become de rigueur for entrepreneurs to blog, tweet, write a book, sell themselves to death, and yell as loudly and as frequently as possible – otherwise, they fear, they simply won’t matter. Of course, being the CEO of You sounds pretty empowering, but we’ve reached a saturation point of supposed thought leaders all hoping to become ambassadors of their individual brands.” Reports Beatriz Helena Ramos and artist founder and CEO of DADA.nyc

What is wrong with being who you are?

I agree with Ramos when she proposes we create something meaningful, stating “What sells us is our passion; what connects us with others is our authenticity and what helps us succeed are the very things we create.”

I do not know about you but I want to live in a world where people are rewarded not by how many followers they have, but by the contributions they make. I want to be with real people that are interesting and interested in others and not consumed by their controlling image.

I have created an online course Skyrocket your PERSONALITY, for People wishing to make more of what they have and achieve more with what they’ve got. I believe everyone should have the life and business that they want and not live in a box that limits your creativity.

I truly believe you have all your need, however, you do not always see what you have. It is not just about your skills, knowledge and experience it is your values, your perspective, your belief and your psychology, it is your whole self.

Do you want to be remembered when you are not in the room or do you what to be recommended to new opportunities by like-mind people? This is PERSONALITY: Create the Opportunities You Want.