Saturday, May 8, 2010

Privacy in the Wild West: Personal Branding

Almost every day lately, there is a new and alarming post, from a trusted source, illustrating how much of our privacy we have lost. That's just nutty - to have lost it, we would have had to have it first.
You can't lose what you never had.
Nothing on here is private. This is the Internet, Cowboy! This is more of a Wild West than the actual Wild West was a Wild West - we're smarter now and we brought bigger guns and craftier ninjas.
Understanding and respecting that is the first step to making sure you have a good Personal Brand. yea. That's some craziness, huh? We have to mind our Personal Brands, for real?
Yep. It's time to move on past the whole lack of privacy wah-party and graduate to what we can do to make it better. Given the easy availability of personal information on the Internet we now live in a world where anybody (friends, mates, family, employers, government agencies...) with good digits can and probably will Google you to see what you've been up to.
If you allow yourself the occasional drunk-booking (facebooking after cocktails) and wake up with a Sharpee mustache on your face, you'll get over it.
But, if a quick snapshot of your activities online yield habitual patterns of nastiness, unpleasantly regrettable photographs and other unsightly and not delicious things, you probably need to re-think your strategy.
Since you know it's not private and there's a really good chance people are learning all about you without even getting to know you in person - tend to that.
Make sure you like the photographs of you that have your name on them. Clean up any copy that you may have written and tune it till it's tight and follows all the rules of convention. A good online Personal Brand is as valuable as a good handshake and a sincere smile in person. Be happy and positive.
You are brave and funny and smart and strong, all you have to do is make sure that much is apparent.

copyright 2010 moemasters

1 comment:

motherwort said...

Like this Mo. Like your style too. Iconoclastic and very you, I think (not really knowing you, this is just a guess).

Can't wait to see what you'll write next.