I met my former boyfriend Jim, the rocket scientist, on Match.com. Nobody believes me. People still think online dating is for serial killers and depressed, obese women who lie and say they look like Halle Berry. The truth is that 1 in 8 couples married in the U.S. in 2006 met on the Internet, so I’d say the odds are pretty good that you can find a normal person to date online. It was totally random that I met Jim because I had posted a dating profile, but I’d been really passive about checking my email to see who’d “winked” at me or sent me messages. One night I logged in and saw that this guy had marked me as a “favorite.” I was flattered, so I looked to see who it was, and here was this guy who boasted on his profile that he was a lot of fun, close to his family and loved salsa dancing. I’d like to say that I was taken by his personality, but without having met him yet, I have to admit that it was his incredible smile that blew me away.
When we talked on the phone the next day, I told him I was a blogger. He told me he was a rocket scientist. I didn’t believe him, so I Googled his name. Turns out he was not only a rocket scientist at NASA, but he was in the top of his class and won several scholarships from prestigious universities and foundations for his academic ability. I was impressed. On our first date, he took me out to a Spanish restaurant for dinner and salsa dancing. We drank mojitos outside on the patio. Afterward, he told me that he’d Googled me, too. He wanted to make sure I wasn’t really a man. He was relieved when he found my blog on Change.org with my picture next to it and bragged to his friends that he was dating someone “famous.” I didn’t correct him. On our six-month anniversary last week, we were reflecting on what brought us together. He said that I was the first woman he’d dated for this long that he’d met on the Internet. If he hadn’t found my picture on my blog online, he would’ve thought I was too good to be true.
Elizabeth Clawson, one of my fellow Nonprofit Millennial Bloggers Alliance members writes brilliantly about nonprofits and communications. But I disagree with one of her comments in a recent post she wrote about nonprofit job searching and personal branding (my bold emphasis):
Applications themselves took up only a few hours of my job search each week. I spent easily twice as much time on Twitter, my new blog, Brazen Careerist, LinkedIn, and other sites, building up my “personal brand” and trying to become a recognizable face in the sea of job candidates. One prospective employer said in an interview that he’d found my Twitter feed…and liked it. But no one fanned a contract in my face just because I tweeted something witty. (In fact, I believed before this, and still do, that personal branding is a lie.)
I strongly disagree with that statement. Building my personal brand has helped my career more than all of my education and work experience combined. Personal branding helped me snag a rocket scientist for a boyfriend.
Sure, I agree with Elizabeth that one tweet won’t land you a job or launch your career. It’s the cumulative effect of personal branding that creates a positive image of who you are. And as with any terminology, there are a few problems with the phrase ‘personal branding,’ namely that it can have negative connotations for people that see it as marketing yourself in a sleazy, inauthentic, car salesman kind of way. Same thing with a term used in leadership theory called “impression management.” But it doesn’t have to be like that. Personal branding is really just another way of saying, “professional reputation.” What do people think of when they think of you? In 1997, Tom Peters wrote a manifesto titled “The Brand Called You” on Fast Company, asserting that:
Regardless of age, regardless of position, regardless of the business we happen to be in, all of us need to understand the importance of branding. We are CEOs of our own companies: Me Inc. To be in business today, our most important job is to be head marketer for the brand called You.
Social media makes it so easy to do this, to market ourselves with professionalism and authenticity. In the nonprofit world, Facebook and Twitter are really rising in popularity as outlets for this among organizations and networks engaged in social change. I have been offered jobs and consulting opportunities that I didn’t even apply for by organizations contacting me by email, Facebook, and Twitter because they connect in some way to my personal brand. The problem is that most nonprofit leaders – especially young professionals – don’t spend enough time building and promoting their personal brand. Many Generation Yers are still afraid of Twitter and Facebook as tools to market themselves and network in their field. This semester, none of the nonprofit grad students I taught in my marketing and fundraising class were on Twitter. Not one. I was shocked and appalled. Because what Tom Peters said in 1997 is even more true today. I offer you his advice:
Start right now: as of this moment you’re going to think of yourself differently! You’re not an “employee” of General Motors, you’re not a “staffer” at General Mills, you’re not a “worker” at General Electric or a “human resource” at General Dynamics (ooops, it’s gone!). Forget the Generals! You don’t “belong to” any company for life, and your chief affiliation isn’t to any particular “function.” You’re not defined by your job title and you’re not confined by your job description. Starting today you are a brand.
Personal branding is also a weird little concept in that even if you don’t see yourself as a “brand,” other people do. It’s like when celebrities say that they don’t think of themselves as “role models.” Well, when you’re in the spotlight and you’ve got kids watching your movies and music videos and football games, you really don’t have a choice but to be seen as such. Same thing in your nonprofit career. You may not think so, but you’re always in the spotlight, even if you don’t want to be. It’s up to you whether you want to be conscious about that or not. As Tom Peters points out that:
When you’re promoting brand You, everything you do — and everything you choose not to do — communicates the value and character of the brand. Everything from the way you handle phone conversations to the email messages you send to the way you conduct business in a meeting is part of the larger message you’re sending about your brand.
Partly it’s a matter of substance: what you have to say and how well you get it said. But it’s also a matter of style. On the Net, do your communications demonstrate a command of the technology? In meetings, do you keep your contributions short and to the point? It even gets down to the level of your brand You business card: Have you designed a cool-looking logo for your own card? Are you demonstrating an appreciation for design that shows you understand that packaging counts — a lot — in a crowded world?
The key to any personal branding campaign is “word-of-mouth marketing.” Your network of friends, colleagues, clients, and customers is the most important marketing vehicle you’ve got; what they say about you and your contributions is what the market will ultimately gauge as the value of your brand. So the big trick to building your brand is to find ways to nurture your network of colleagues — consciously.
So even when you ask someone to act as a reference for you when you apply for a job, they do a quick gut check for how they feel about your personal brand. They decide whether they want to be aligned with your name and what you stand for, because their reputation is on the line, too. This is why getting recommendations on LinkedIn can be so powerful. Look, I’ll prove it to you. Here’s what I’m going to do. This week, I’m going to share all my best advice, resources, and examples to help you do three things:
- Build your personal brand
- Grow your professional network
- Become a nonprofit expert
…all through using social media. So, even all my fellow introverts can participate. I’m calling the series Shine While Your Light’s On: Part II, after the personal branding blog series I did earlier this year inspired by Estelle’s song with the same name. To make sure you don’t miss any of the posts in this week’s series, you may want to grab my RSS feed or subscribe by email to get new blog posts delivered right to your inbox. You should also follow me on Twitter!
I also strongly suggest you read the entire Tom Peters article, The Brand Called You. It’s a really great read, especially if you’re skeptical about personal branding like my girl Elizabeth.
Up Next: Shine While Your Light’s On: 16 Personal Branding Tips for Young Nonprofit Professionals
Photo of me and Jim taken by a random tourist on our vacation this summer in Hawaii
I’m blogging every single day this month for 31 Days of Giving to celebrate my 27th birthday on December 31 and asking all my friends to donate $27 to benefit the Young Nonprofit Professionals Network of Washington DC. Will you give? Your gift would really make a difference for young nonprofit leaders in DC!
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