By Claire Cooper
Blog Buddy: Namgay Zam
Building a personal global brand can be an essential part of any career, especially journalism, in which an individual wishes to spread influence or change certain facets of life on a great-than-local level. However, building a personal brand, particularly a global personal brand, does not come without risk- loss of privacy, excess scrutiny and being expected to produce content constantly to maintain and build an audience for the brand are some of the factors that could be considered negative and risky when establishing a personal brand.
Why it’s good
For personal branding, a sense of self as key, and many articles have been written on the benefits of branding for public personas and for entrepreneurial types, to help market themselves as well as their product.
Building a personal brand can be the best summation of you as a person- how you operate, your passions, experience and goals all in a concise, well-presented manner, as illustrated in this chart from Jay Palter, a social strategist, on LinkedIn:
Personally, I think the personal brand is one of the best ways to get hired- but that doesn’t necessarily cover international branding. At this point, I would say I’ve established a local ‘brand’ for myself through my work as a journalist, and some of it has gone national and established myself in certain ways, such as my work with News 21, after which I received emails from marijuana-interested parties all over the nation wanting me to work with them and pitch their stories to my editors because I had gained a reputation as a marijuana reporter.
But at what cost?
With my profile and personal information displayed for News 21, my stories gained a lot more traffic than they would have if we didn’t put personal brands out with the company ones, like our fellow profiles that we published on the News 21 blog. However, now I’m done with it- and I have no long-term interested in being a marijuana reporter. To the companies and individuals who are reading my stories, however, it doesn’t really matter– they’ve seen my multiple marijuana stories and they reach out to me because of my past with it, even though it’s not what I want to continue, which is a risk of personal branding.
Another risk is bad press that can lead to a lasting negative impression of an individual and the brand that they stand for, not to mention the impact on the company behind the individual, if there is one.
Overall, however, the potential benefits of creating a global personal profile far outweigh the potential risks. The publicity, ability to easily market yourself as a commodity and reach a worldwide audience is an irreplaceable asset in today’s world, despite the risks.
