Get Yourself a Reputation: Blogging for Personal Branding

You have probably noticed that I do not mention the name of the nonprofit I work for anywhere on this blog. Sure, you can find out where I work through a three-second Google search, but I purposely make it a point not to appear to represent my organization here. And why should I? I am not my nonprofit organization. Michele Martin blogs about personal branding at Beyond the Glass Ceiling, giving us a concise definition (my bold emphasis):

In the world of organizations, a brand is the total perceived value of that organization, relative to competitors, as viewed by a particular audience. In other words, a brand is how people view an organization in comparison to other, similar organizations. Your personal brand, then, is the perception that people have of you, as compared to other people in similar positions. Obviously the goal of personal branding is to create a consistent, positive message about who you are and what you stand for that will make you stand out from the crowd.

In my opinion, personal branding is the only leg up that young professionals have in a working world that is currently dominated by baby boomers. For those of us that aspire to be leaders of organizations, it’s important that we are perceived as responsible, knowledgeable, and professional, instead of as “those darn kids” who are spoiled and think they know it all but don’t know diddly squat. Since we don’t have years of experience, our reputation is all we have, so we better make it a good one! I was in a group discussion yesterday where I was the only non-baby boomer and there were some interesting comments made about my generation:

My 28 year old director thinks she just knows it all and I can’t stand it!

I can’t figure out Myspace or Facebook! What are you supposed to do when you get on there, anyway?

Young people have to learn how to communicate face to face as well as they do online. You can’t just say “gotta go” in person like on IM. You have to notice body language when people are uncomfortable.

If you guys are going to take over our jobs, we have got to find ways to honor the knowledge of the people who came before you.

There are a lot of perceptions and unfortunate generalizations about younger generations by our older colleagues, which makes it all the more important for us to be clear about who we are and what we stand for. Trista Harris at New Voices of Philanthropy even gives us some tangible ways to manage your professional identity and make sure people see you in a positive light. But some things are true of younger workers. Yes, as Generation Y-er, I want the opportunity to be a leader without paying my dues for 20 years, but I’m also willing to work very hard at my job when I am in a position of leadership. And sure, I’d prefer to work from home and utilize technology to get my work done faster and cheaper, but I also recognize the importance of relationship-building and personal contact. I do relish the fact that even though I don’t have all the answers, I can find out most everything about a subject by spending a 1/2 hour on Google unlike many of my older colleagues, but I still find ways to honor their wisdom and experience. Even though my generation is different, we are not that naive. We know that we have to balance our new ways of thinking with tradition and the knowledge others have already built up.

I started this blog seven months ago with the hopes that it would help me find my own voice beyond my organization. As a young person who is also not the face of my organization, it was hard to network and flip the perception of me as the youngest person on staff as just “administrative support” versus a future leader who want to develop to her full potential. And, frankly, there are things I care about and want to say as Rosetta Thurman, not as a representative of my nonprofit. To be completely honest, there were many people in my field that I admired that would hardly glance at me at events, preferring to chat with my boss over the rubber chicken dinner, understandably. But since I’ve been blogging, these same leaders now recognize me and actually approach me at receptions, commenting on a blog post I’ve written or congratulating me on my exposure. Seven months ago, I was practically a nobody in the nonprofit world. Through blogging, I now have a reputation. What I’m saying is that no matter how brilliant or talented or dedicated you are to your work or your cause, no one will see you if they can’t see you. If you don’t have an online identity, you could be limiting yourself to the small network of co-workers and other people connected to your organization. And that’s fine if you want to wait until you’re gray to be the boss or a influential leader in your community. That’s how the baby boomers did it, but younger generations are different. If you want to get ahead, you need to first get seen.

Through my blog, I have had many opportunities I would not have had otherwise:

• Being featured in the Chronicle of Philanthropy’s recent issue in the article, “Inching to the Top”
• Speaking opportunity on a panel about African American nonprofit leadership
• Invitation to join the blogging team at the Stanford Social Innovation Review
• Opportunity to be a guest on an upcoming episode of NPR show News and Notes
• An upcoming feature article in Uptown Magazine
• Opportunity to plan and facilitate a career empowerment retreat with my favorite blogger Michele Martin
• Opportunity to be a columnist and webinar presenter for Workfornonprofits.org
• Access to an awesome network of other young professionals, bloggers, supporters, peer learners, colleagues, and social change agents that keeps growing and growing!

I can’t wait to see what the next seven months has in store for me in terms of new contacts, learning and embarking on new projects that will strengthen my leadership skills and help me to be a better nonprofit professional. Need one more reason to work on your personal brand? In one of the Beyond the Glass Ceiling Ning community forums, Jen McCabe Gorman shared a powerful piece by Bruce Rector about how the future will require us to create our own personal brands:

It’s over. No more vertical. No more ladder. That’s not the way careers work anymore. Linearity is out. A career is now a checkerboard. Or even a maze. It’s full of moves that go sideways, forward, slide on the diagonal, even go backward when that makes sense. (It often does.) A career is a portfolio of projects that teach you new skills, gain you new expertise, develop new capabilities, grow your colleague set, and constantly reinvent you as a brand. As you scope out the path your “career” will take, remember: the last thing you want to do is become a manager. Like “résumé,” “manager” is an obsolete term. It’s practically synonymous with “dead end job.” What you want is a steady diet of more interesting, more challenging, more provocative projects.

Do you have a reputation?

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