“These are the years in our life where we are supposed to screw up and get things wrong” – I forget that sometimes. Thanks for the reminder.

Hmm.

I think who we are makes us endearing. I also think that if we do social marketing for brands (which many do) we do have to be careful, even on personal pages. When I write stuff on LAF, on my Twitter, on Facebook – I remember that I not only represent myself, but I represent a myriad of different things. It was obvious when I worked at Mensa that I was the PR/SM person, as well as the spokesperson. For the brands I work on now, it's also obvious. It's the reason I don't curse, talk about every little thing – it's smart transparency in my opinion. What I do reflects those brands every single day.

You and I judge other people, whether we like it or not. It's neither good nor bad, right nor wrong. It's human. We have feelings, we have opinions, we have personal beliefs.

Your actions, your words, your appearance, your decisions, they all affect my judgements of you. You can call your actions and words and appearance and decisions your “personal brand.” Or you can just call them you.

Either way, they're here to stay. You'll continue judging me and I'll continue judging you. We'll recommend each other based on these judgements, we'll make business decisions based on these judgements, we'll decide whether or not to pick each other for our kickball teams based on these judgements.

I'm me. You're you.

I'm constantly confused when folks take personal branding efforts for “being someone you aren’t”. I see it as the polar opposite. Personal branding is about being exactly who you are. Here is how I define the path to building a “personal brand”: Be real, constantly improve, connect meaningfully, help others. That’s it. Nothing fake, nothing contrived, not even an eye towards what is “right”, necessarily. I honestly think it is just the term “personal branding” that gets people all freaked out.

Also, I have to debate your notion that age is a factor in the discussion. Building a “brand”, even for century old companies, is an evolutionary process. A process that includes bumps and bruises, and one in which mistakes are inevitable. Whether 24 or 104, we are all going to screw up. And so what? Whoever said personal branding was bound by perfection?

Lastly, I’ll leave you with the real irony here, which deserves more attention. Lots of folks (like yourself) that denounce personal branding actually tend to have some of the strongest brands around. Seems strange, right? But it makes sense. You feel personal branding is a forced, contrived activity because you already do it naturally. Your web presence, writing skills, networking ability…all have lead to an unintentional personal brand that is stronger than any manufactured brand. Take that as a compliment, but realize that not everyone possesses those natural abilities or innate understanding of why they are important. Hence, the necessity for personal branding…and the reason I like to write about it so much.

These anti-personal branding posts are popping up regularly. I agree 100% that the “be yourself” component is important. I also agree that employing common sense is a good practice for the public side of the equation. What always seems to get ignored is the part of branding that should be going on in the background.

In traditional branding, the outward facing component is the easy part. The valuable part of branding is the intense thought that goes into introspection. Distilling the essence of both where a company is and where it wants to go is imperative before any of the other stuff gets worked on.

The next step in the process is internalizing everything that came out of the first process. More thought. More time.

The second most valuable part of the branding process is figuring out how to connect the corporate DNA to the public through some form of communication. Just as the introspection, this typically requires multiple people with great brains.

It isn't until we go through 3 rigorous sets of processes that we get to the dissemination of the messages themselves.

So yes, I also agree with “Your personal brand is YOU”. However, the assumption that one's common sense is a good enough substitute for the processes that traditional branding would invest 70% of their resources in figuring out seems short-sighted. Granted, some people already know exactly what they're all about and are good at communicating it. But I'd suggest that that is a rather small minority.

Personal Branding is not just about being yourself, it's about figuring yourself out. …introspection first, and becoming an excellent communicator second. If that groundwork had been done diligently, then (and only then) do I think it's okay to ignore personal branding as you suggest. Skipping those is the easy way out and results will typically be commensurate with the effort.

Judy Garland said “Its better to do a first rate of being yourself than a second rate job of being someone else.” I wholeheartedly agree and think you have done a wonderful job of articulating that in this post.

Here's to being “stupid” a little more often. I think we all can get in the habit of taking ourselves too seriously.