Today we live through a time when we are the product be it in business or in the job market or in the society. Social Media has given a whole new push to the concept of Personal Branding. Even if you don’t plan to do anything with it, building your Personal Brand around what you love to do is a good pursuit in my personal opinion.
The Personal Branding landscape has changed a long since I first heard it probably in the 2000 when I was working in Dubai. A customer of mine who was the Financial Advisor for a large Automobile company put the idea in me. I had this habit of having long conversations with customers. I was pretty young and that was in a way my learning process.
This gentleman told me that he had registered a domain with his full name. As I listened he explained to me that in the future we will need a way to be recognized by our name beyond people we really know. That day back in office I went ahead and registered this domain vinodnarayan.com.
I did not do anything on that for a long till I started blogging, first on blogspot and then over time moved on to wordpress and did the domain mapping. After which the Social media came and slowly I started appearing there.
A few years before I also realized that when someone types my name on Google this blog appears. That is if I keep updating, if not it can change.
That said today it is not just about a domain and blogging, it is also being a subject matter expert (SME) in the area that you work or pursue to work on and using all available platforms to do the same. Have a plan, iterate and be honest and truthful and transparent.
Accept what you don’t know and also acknowledge when you make a mistake. You are a learner first and then a branding person. At least that is my philosophy and I am not a brand creator. But I think it is our duty and responsibility to talk about ourselves and what we can offer and contribute along with out duty to listen to others.
A while back I had also created a micro course on personal branding. Click to Malayalam Course on Personal Branding
Categories: Business, Career, Career & Work, Social Media, Writing, Writing Project
Penpositive 
I’ve been reading this book “The Zen of Social Media Marketing” by Shama Hyder and honestly she echoes a lot of what you wrote. Personal Branding is really unpredictable and we, as people are the product. In every way we move, what we say, what we post, what content we like. It’s interesting.
Thanks Lamont