In 2019, you are no longer just a person. As I make clear in my last book The Memo, you are now also a brand. You are your own value proposition. Now, what are you doing with this brand of yours? Managing it, growing it, or helping to destroy it — little by little over time. In this video at John Hope Bryant Live, I address two important aspects of this, and a bonus point:
- You are NOT your social media profile.
- Everything you publish or comment on is now a part of your digital footprint.
- Everyday, you are either creating value for your personal brand, or generating greater levels of liability for your personal brand.
A troubling recent CNN article talks about how young people (and older ones too) now want to try to literally become their social media image of themselves. They don’t like the way they look, and possibly not even themselves — they want to become (through plastic surgery and whatever else it takes) the real like character of their make-believe, made-up self. And this is really sad.
As I outline in detail in the above live video session, watch what you comment on and what you post online. Your digital footprint will follow you for the rest of your life.
To not believe that potential employers, and potential investors, are not going to conduct a global social media checks on you — how you comport yourself in both your personal and your professional life — before they hire you or invest in you, is naive of you.
Remember, solid people talk about their ideas, and move to execute on them. Other kind of people — talk only about other people. And mostly, that talk is in a negative light. No one really wants this second group around anything important. And smart leaders also say to themselves, quietly, ‘if they are saying this and that about Joe, Mary and Sue, what do you think they will saying about me in time — their new employer, boss or investor?’
Just save yourself some grief, and follow the Golden Rule. Do onto others as you would have them do onto you. Just now apply this rule online too.
I just want you to win. This is part of it.
Let’s go….