Tony Mai Online Personal Branding and How to Develop a Successful Strategy 0105-554-90 1 Online Personal Branding and How to Develop a Successful Strategy Tony Mai E. Philip Saunders Business of College, Rochester Institute of Technology Executive Summary Online personal branding has gained momentum over the past couple of years. There are many indicators of online personal branding success. These indicators can be categorized into seven key dimensions. The provided matrix shows the level of importance of each of the key dimensions and its related issues. The four most important key dimensions are “Personal Identity”, “Brand Management”, “Commitment” and “Presence”. A personal branding model was created based on the data from the matrix, which can be used to gauge one’s personal branding position against the different social media platforms and even against multiple competitors. The related questionnaire measures one’s online personal branding strategy and profiles it onto the model. The researcher scored well in “Brand Management”, “Judgment” and “Consistency”, but needs to improve on “Personal Identity”, “Commitment”, “Presence” and “Value”. The criteria that were put in place filtered out “Personal Identity” as the leading key dimension the researcher should focus on. The strategy was further developed with a focus around “Personal Identity”. Safeguards were put into place to ensure that the strategy gets carried out successfully. The fast-paced changing nature of personal branding and social media greatly increases the challenge of managing one’s online personal brand. Introduction Personal branding has become more and more prevalent in this age of information. It has been the buzzword in the internet for the past couple of years. Personal branding is the concept of creating an “entity” that revolves around yourself and who you are. With the increased ease of access to a network of information, it is important to create and manage your own online personal brand. Prior to taking any action, recruiters for jobs and potential clients often search online to get a better understanding of your skills, personality and values. Many people are taking a stab at branding themselves online. Rising to the top and standing out of the crowd is not an easy task to accomplish, especially with so much misinformation floating around online. When branded successfully, your value and worth to others will increase. There are two goals to this research paper. The first goal is to identify the key issues of online personal branding. This information will be used to develop a system of metrics and model to measure
Transcript
Tony Mai Online Personal Branding and How to Develop a Successful Strategy 0105-554-90
1
Online Personal Branding and How to Develop a Successful Strategy
Tony Mai E. Philip Saunders Business of College, Rochester Institute of Technology
Executive Summary
Online personal branding has gained momentum over the past couple of years. There are many
indicators of online personal branding success. These indicators can be categorized into seven key
dimensions. The provided matrix shows the level of importance of each of the key dimensions and its
related issues. The four most important key dimensions are “Personal Identity”, “Brand Management”,
“Commitment” and “Presence”.
A personal branding model was created based on the data from the matrix, which can be used to
gauge one’s personal branding position against the different social media platforms and even against
multiple competitors. The related questionnaire measures one’s online personal branding strategy and
profiles it onto the model.
The researcher scored well in “Brand Management”, “Judgment” and “Consistency”, but needs to
improve on “Personal Identity”, “Commitment”, “Presence” and “Value”. The criteria that were put in
place filtered out “Personal Identity” as the leading key dimension the researcher should focus on. The
strategy was further developed with a focus around “Personal Identity”. Safeguards were put into place
to ensure that the strategy gets carried out successfully.
The fast-paced changing nature of personal branding and social media greatly increases the
challenge of managing one’s online personal brand.
Introduction
Personal branding has become more and more prevalent in this age of information. It has been the
buzzword in the internet for the past couple of years. Personal branding is the concept of creating an
“entity” that revolves around yourself and who you are. With the increased ease of access to a network
of information, it is important to create and manage your own online personal brand. Prior to taking any
action, recruiters for jobs and potential clients often search online to get a better understanding of your
skills, personality and values. Many people are taking a stab at branding themselves online. Rising to the
top and standing out of the crowd is not an easy task to accomplish, especially with so much
misinformation floating around online. When branded successfully, your value and worth to others will
increase.
There are two goals to this research paper. The first goal is to identify the key issues of online
personal branding. This information will be used to develop a system of metrics and model to measure
Tony Mai Online Personal Branding and How to Develop a Successful Strategy 0105-554-90
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the success of one’s online personal branding strategy. The second goal is to utilize the developed model
to gauge the researcher’s current online personal branding position and to create a strategy to
successfully increase the position of his online personal brand.
Background
There are many aspects that can be used to determine the success of one’s online personal brand.
Some common terms when asked what makes one’s personal branding strategy successful include
“being known for what they do”, “easily found when searched” and “adding value to followers”. There is
certainly a lot more to this list. Many scholars and practitioners have different views and opinions on
which issues are the most important factors that contribute to a successful online personal branding
strategy. Some scholars use similar terms with different meanings, while others use vague and hard-to-
define terms. Furthermore, online personal branding is evolving at a rapid rate that new contributing
factors may form and previous contributing key factors may not be so important anymore.
Peters (1997, quoted in Labreque, Markos and Milne, 2011, p.38) first popularized the concept of
personal branding in his article “The Brand Called You,” and since then, the importance of personal
branding increased. In his article, Peters (1997, quoted in Labreque, Markos and Milne, 2011, p.38) goes
on to say that “everyone has the power to be their own brand and a person’s main job is to be their own
marketer”. Kaputa (2005, p.8) points out that if you do not manage your brand, someone else can and
“chances are that their branding description won’t be what you have in mind”. There are many other
motivators to manage your online personal brand. Schawbel (2011, para.2) simplifies the motivators
into one major reason, “people are already searching for you or people like you, and for every time you
don’t appear in a search for your name or a specific need that you want to rank high for, you lose an
opportunity”.
The challenge however, is figuring out where to start and how to successfully manage your brand.
With the explosion of the internet, there are many new opportunities, strategies, tactics and channels
that can be utilized. These new opportunities also come with new challenges. Shepherd (2005, quoted
in Labreque, Markos and Milne, 2011, p.39) states one such challenge; “suppressing stories that dilute
the branding message and eventually lead to branding failures”. Love (2011 p.40) points out a common
mistake: “assuming that just having a presence is good enough”. The mismanagement of one’s online
personal branding strategy may lead to a painful experience.
In this paper, the researcher will attempt to gather all of the identified online personal branding
issues to conceptualize a model that one can use to visualize existing issues within their branding
strategy.
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Research Process
In this process, the researcher identified all of the issues that contribute to development of an
online personal branding strategy. Similar themes were identified and all of the issues were grouped
into several key dimensions. Using the identified key dimensions, a model was developed to gauge each
theme that contributes to one’s online personal branding strategy. Keywords were identified to filter
through journal and practitioner articles that contain the necessary information for this research paper.
Due to the fast-paced nature of this topic, the researcher decided to put more emphasize on
practitioner articles. The keywords used in this research process includes: “online personal branding
mistakes”, “personal branding challenges”, “online personal branding problems”, “failed personal
branding” and “personal branding difficulties”. ProQuest and Business Source Elite were used to obtain
journal articles and Google Search Engine was used to obtain practitioner articles.
The gathered research was prioritized by the year the article was published under the assumption
that the more recent articles are more up-to-date and relevant to the topic and problem. The online
personal branding issues were extracted from each article to create a matrix, which provides
information on which issues are more important than others in regards to online personal branding.
Additional research was conducted until the matrix hit saturation of the field, in which additional
research no longer provided additional personal branding issues. Once the matrix was saturated, the
researcher categorized similar issues into key dimensions.
Based on the findings from the matrix, the researcher developed a model using the identified
themes and a questionnaire to gauge each of the key dimensions of the model. The researcher then
utilized the model to gauge the current success of his online personal branding and to develop an
improved personal branding strategy.
Tony Mai Online Personal Branding and How to Develop a Successful Strategy 0105-554-90
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Results and Findings
Online Personal Branding Key Issues Matrix
Figure 1: Matrix – Key themes and indicators of online personal branding issues
Figure 1 displays a matrix that show all of the leading issues that contribute to the success of one’s
online personal branding strategy. Individually, certain issues were mentioned more frequently than
others by scholars and practitioners, but when grouped together, each key dimension had similar
amounts of mentions. Issues that were mentioned more frequently were regarded as of higher
importance in relation to personal branding.
The key dimensions identified are “Personal Identity”, “Brand Management”, “Judgment”,
“Commitment”, “Presence”, “Consistency” and “Value”. “Personal Identity” is the most important key
dimension in personal branding issues with 15 out of the 23 scholars and practitioners referencing it.
“Brand Management”, “Commitment” and “Presence”, all came in second place with 14 references.
“Judgment”, “Consistency” and “Value” followed by closely with 10 references each. While these three
themes are of lower priority, they still play an important contributing factor to personal branding
success. (For a matrix on the importance of each individual issue, refer to Appendix A and Appendix B.)
The identified key dimensions were used to create a model (found below in figure 2) that can be
used to gauge the level of one’s personal branding development.
Key Issues ->
Bei
ng
ind
iffe
ren
t/n
ot
bri
ngi
ng
ou
t a
per
son
alit
y
Iden
tify
ing
a q
ual
ity,
ski
ll o
r st
ren
gth
th
at y
ou
are
wel
l kn
ow
n f
or
Un
pro
fess
ion
al la
you
t d
esig
n o
r p
ort
raya
l of
self
Faki
ng
it t
ill y
ou
mak
e it
/no
t b
ein
g w
ho
yo
u w
ant
to b
e N
OW
Selli
ng
YOU
inst
ead
of
you
r ab
ility
to
do
a s
pec
ific
job
Tryi
ng
to b
e lik
e so
meo
ne
else
/un
auth
enti
c
Mis
con
stru
ed f
irst
imp
ress
ion
s b
ased
on
ava
ilab
le in
form
atio
n
No
t o
pti
miz
ing
mes
sage
s w
hen
bra
nd
iden
tity
ch
ange
s
Per
son
al b
ran
din
g ar
ou
nd
a s
ingl
e jo
b t
itle
Ove
r se
lf-p
rom
oti
on
/flo
od
ing
or
spam
min
g em
ails
an
d s
oci
al m
edia
ch
ann
els
Po
sts
or
com
men
ts t
hat
oth
er c
on
nec
tio
ns
mig
ht
no
t ge
t (i
nsi
de
joke
s)
Del
etin
g co
mm
ents
th
at y
ou
dis
like
or
dis
agre
e w
ith
Lett
ing
som
eon
e u
ntr
ain
ed t
o m
anag
e yo
ur
soci
al m
edia
acc
ou
nts
No
t m
easu
rin
g re
sult
s
Thin
kin
g it
is a
sta
nd
alo
ne
task
inst
ead
of
com
bin
ing
it w
ith
net
wo
rkin
g an
d h
ard
wo
rk
Bei
ng
afra
id t
o a
sk f
or
hel
p
Insu
ffic
ien
t b
ran
din
g th
rou
gh c
ho
ices
of
info
rmat
ion
dis
clo
sure
Segr
egat
ing
aud
ien
ces
for
pro
fess
ion
al a
nd
per
son
al id
enti
ty
No
t kn
ow
ing
wh
o y
ou
r au
die
nce
is
Po
or
jud
gmen
t
Den
yin
g yo
ur
bra
nd
/wh
at y
ou
did
Po
stin
g in
app
rop
riat
e co
nte
nt
Mak
ing
it a
ll ab
ou
t yo
u/n
ot
serv
ing
oth
ers
Ove
rlo
oki
ng
loca
l su
pp
ort
/sp
on
sors
in s
earc
h o
f b
ig o
nes
Un
resp
on
sive
to
cu
sto
mer
s/su
bsc
rib
ers/
read
ers/
men
tio
ns
Po
stin
g a
lot
in o
ne
day
an
d b
ein
g id
le f
or
day
s at
a t
ime
Follo
win
g A
LL t
he
tren
ds
No
t ac
tive
ly m
anag
ing
you
r p
rofi
les
Am
ou
nt
of
tim
e an
d r
eso
urc
es r
equ
ired
to
man
age
No
t co
mm
itte
d t
o s
oci
al m
edia
an
d s
oci
al n
etw
ork
ing
No
so
cial
med
ia p
rese
nce
/bei
ng
mo
stly
idle
No
t co
ntr
olli
ng/
clai
min
g as
sets
wit
h y
ou
r n
ame
Ass
um
ing
that
just
hav
ing
a p
rese
nce
is g
oo
d e
no
ugh
No
t w
riti
ng
a b
log
Har
d-t
o-f
ind
an
d o
r o
utd
ated
vir
tual
res
um
e
Dilu
tin
g/sp
read
ing
you
rsel
f to
o t
hin
ove
r ev
ery
soci
al n
etw
ork
No
t b
ein
g aw
are
of
you
r o
nlin
e co
mp
etit
ion
Bei
ng
inco
nsi
sten
t/n
ot
set
on
str
on
g fo
un
dat
ion
al p
illar
s
Mis
dir
ecte
d c
om
men
ts f
rom
oth
ers
that
are
inco
nsi
sten
t w
ith
yo
ur
bra
nd
iden
tity
Hav
ing
no
pu
rpo
se/n
ot
add
ing
valu
e
Bei
ng
vagu
e o
r u
nfo
cuse
d/f
ailin
g to
em
ph
asiz
e d
esir
ed m
essa
ge
Hid
ing
beh
ind
cle
ver
titl
es o
r in
du
stry
-sp
ecif
ic ja
rgo
n t
hat
co
nfu
ses
peo
ple
Ove
rth
inki
ng
con
ten
t/n
ot
keep
ing
tho
ugh
ts s
imp
le
Taki
ng
sho
ts a
t th
e co
mp
etit
ion
rat
her
th
an p
rogr
essi
ng
you
rsel
f
Mis
con
cep
tio
n t
hat
a p
erso
nal
bra
nd
is a
logo
, slo
gan
or
on
line
pro
file
Copcutt, P., 2012
Corcodilos, N., 2012
Duron, M.E., 2012
Huhman, H., 2012
Simard, J., 2012
Babbitt, M., 2011
Bordonaro, K., 2011
Junio, G., 2011
Labrecque, L.I., Markos E. and Milne, G.R., 2011
Love, J.E. 2011
Schawbel, D., 2011
Silver, E., 2011
Wells, B., 2011
Ambron, P., 2010
Elmore, L. 2010
Gadook, 2010
Lee, H., 2010
Levinson, M., 2010
Schawbel, D., 2010
Furman, E., 2009
RDJ, 2009
Vitberg, A.K., 2009
Mai, T. 2011
Personal Identity Brand Management Judgment Commitment Presence Consistency
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Value
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Tony Mai Online Personal Branding and How to Develop a Successful Strategy 0105-554-90
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Online Personal Branding Model
Figure 2: Model that shows the level of importance of each of the seven key dimensions of online
personal branding
0
20
40
60
80
100
BrandManagement
(16.09%)
Judgment(11.49%)
Consistency(11.49%)
Presence (16.09%)Value (11.49%)
Commitment(16.09%)
Personal Identity(17.24%)
Being inconsistent/not set
on strong foundational
pillars
Misdirected comments from
others that are inconsistent
with your brand identity
Having no purpose/not adding value
Being vague or unfocused/failing to emphasize
desired message
Hiding behind clever titles or industry-specific
jargon that confuses people
Overthinking content/not keeping thoughts simple
Taking shots at the competition rather than
progressing yourself
Misconception that a personal brand is a logo,
slogan or online profile
Unresponsive to
customers/subscribers/readers/
mentions
Posting a lot in one day and
being idle for days at a time
Following ALL the trends
Not actively managing your
profiles
Amount of time and resources
required to manage
Not committed to social media
and social networking
Being indifferent/not bringing a personality
Identifying a quality, skill or strength that
you are well known for
Unprofessional layout design or portrayal
of self
Faking it till you make it/not being who you
want to be NOW
Selling YOU instead of your ability to do a
specific job
Trying to be like someone else/unauthentic
Misconstrued first impressions based on
available information
Not optimizing messages when brand
identity changes
Personal branding around a single job title Poor judgment
Denying your brand/what you did
Posting inappropriate content
Making it all about you/not serving
others
Overlooking local support/sponsors
in search of big ones
Over self-promotion/flooding or spamming emails and social media
channels
Posts or comments that other connections might not get (inside jokes)
Deleting comments that you dislike or disagree with
Letting someone untrained to manage your social media accounts
Not measuring results
Thinking it is a standalone task instead of combining it with networking
and hard work
Being afraid to ask for help
Insufficient branding through choices of information disclosure
Segregating audiences for professional and personal identity
Not knowing who your audience is
No social media presence/being mostly idle
Not controlling/claiming assets with your name
Assuming that just having a presence is good enough
Not writing a blog
Hard-to-find and or outdated virtual resume
Diluting/spreading yourself too thin over every social
network
Not being aware of your online competition
Tony Mai Online Personal Branding and How to Develop a Successful Strategy 0105-554-90
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The matrix in Figure 1 displayed the level of importance of each key dimension of personal branding.
The model in Figure 2 utilized that information to measure how well one’s personal branding strategy is
doing in regards to the seven key dimensions. The percentage next to each key dimension signifies the
level of importance in the overall strategy. The percentage level is derived from the number of mentions
of each key dimension divided by the total number of mentions for all key dimensions, including the
researcher’s own input.
The research compiled a questionnaire (refer to Appendix C) which focuses on all of the issues that
contribute to each of the overlying key dimensions, The questionnaire can be used to profile and map
out one’s online personal branding issues onto the model in Figure 2. The weights on the questionnaire
for each specific issue are determined by dividing the number of mentions of each specific issue (refer to
Appendix A) by the total number of mentions in the issue’s respective key dimensioned and then
multiplied by 20 (resulting in a 100% grade in the 5-point ranking system if the evaluated personal brand
receives a perfect score). The higher the total percentage value, the less problem one’s personal brand
has in that dimension.
This model displays information on the key issues that are preventing one’s personal brand to be at
its desired level. To maximize the value of this model, one can utilize it to map out their respective
online personal brand across multiple virtual worlds to look at the success of their brand in specific
worlds. One can also use this model to map out their online personal brand against multiple competitors
to see which dimensions they should focus on improving first.
Tony Mai Online Personal Branding and How to Develop a Successful Strategy 0105-554-90
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Personal Diagnostic and Next Steps
Online Personal Branding Diagnostic
Figure 3: Model that gauges the researcher’s online personal branding issues in each of the seven key
dimensions
76.67
74.12
80.00
55.63 48.89
44.62
56.47
0
20
40
60
80
100
Brand Management(16.09%)
Judgment (11.49%)
Consistency (11.49%)
Presence (16.09%)Value (11.49%)
Commitment (16.09%)
Personal Identity (17.24%)
Being inconsistent/not set on
strong foundational pillars
Misdirected comments from
others that are inconsistent with
your brand identity
Create a purpose and add value to your brand
Stop being vague and emphasize or focus on a
desired message
Keep thoughts and content simple
Post more often and distribute them
through a schedule
More actively managing your profiles
Dedicate more time and resources to
manage your brand
Be more committed to social media
and social networking
Bring out a personality
Sell your ability to do a specific job instead
of just YOU, but don’t brand yourself
around a single job title
Optimize your messages when your brand
identity changes
Identify a quality, skill or strength that you
are well known for
Portray yourself in a more professional way
Look for local support, too, while
searching for big ones
Serve others more than just yourself
Start measuring results
Reevaluate choices of information disclosure
Better manage segregating audiences for
professional and personal identity
Start writing a blog!
Don’t spread yourself too thin over every social
network; choose the more important/beneficial ones
Be aware of your online competition
Increase your social media presence and activity
Start actively claiming assets with your name; even if
you won’t be using it
Tony Mai Online Personal Branding and How to Develop a Successful Strategy 0105-554-90
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1. Where Are You Now?
Using Hair’s (2011, p.1) checklist diagnostic tool, the researcher only scored a 20/40. While this
is a generalized tool, it is a good indicator than the researcher needs to put in more work in order to
increase his personal brand image.
In Figure 3, the researcher utilized the developed model to gauge his current personal branding
strategy to see where his is right now with the information obtained from the questionnaire (refer
to Appendix D). This model shows that the researcher is doing relatively well in brand management,
judgment and consistency. The researcher’s personal identity and presence is mediocre, and lacks
commitment and a strong value. The model in Figure 3 also displays the specific issues in each key
dimension that the researcher needs to work on. This information is pulled from all the low-scoring
(0-2) issues in the questionnaire. The researcher’s total weighted score (sum of key dimension
personal score * level of importance) is 61.53%.
A quick search on the internet reveals many competitors for the researcher. Not only are there
many internet marketers globally, there are also many “Tony Mai’s” out there, due to the
commonality of the name. The amount of competitors makes it difficult for people to find the
researcher.
In summary, the researcher is only doing a decent job branding himself at best. He is doing
particular well in the areas of “Brand Management”, “Judgment” and “Consistency”, but needs to
work on having stronger “Commitment”, “Values”, “Personal Identity” and “Presence”, especially
when there are so many competitors.
2. Where Do You Want To Be?
The researcher’s overlying goals that he wants to reach are:
Increase his total weighted personal branding score to at least 65% by the end of March
2012.
Increase his total weighted personal branding score to at least 70% by the end of June 2012.
Increase his total weighted personal branding score to at least 73% by the end of September
2012.
Increase his total weighted personal branding score to at least 75% by the end of December
2012.
Tony Mai Online Personal Branding and How to Develop a Successful Strategy 0105-554-90
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3. How Might You Get There?
To increase the “Personal Identity” score, the researcher needs to bring out a unique
personality, sell his skills and abilities, optimize his messages to parallel his identity, identify a quality
that he is well known for and portray himself in a more professional manner.
To increase the “Brand Management” score, the researcher needs to start measuring personal
branding results, reevaluate what information to disclose and better manage separate audiences for
his professional and personal identity.
To increase the “Judgment” score, the researcher needs to keep potential local support in mind
and serve others in his content.
To increase the “Consistency” score, the researcher needs to be set on strong foundational
pillars and better manage misdirected comments from others.
To increase the “Presence” score, the researcher needs to start writing a blog, choose effective
and important social networks, be more aware of online competition, increase his social media
activity and start to actively claim assets with his name, even if the researcher won’t be utilizing
some of those assets. The researcher should start looking into actively claiming assets to all common
and remotely-popular social media channels and actively use beneficial ones (refer to Appendix E).
To increase the “Value” score, the researcher needs to create and maintain a purpose that adds
value to his brand, focus on a desired message and keep content simple and easy to understand.
To increase the “Commitment” score, the researcher needs to post more often and distribute
his posts more evenly, be more active managing his profiles, dedicate more time and resources to
managing his brand and be more committed to social media and social networking.
4. Which Way Is Best?
The researcher felt that the key dimensions that scored over 70% on his personal branding
diagnostic are in good standing and have less priority. For this reason, the “Brand Management”,
“Judgment” and “Consistency” dimensions were deprioritized. The (higher) level of importance of
the key dimension was chosen as the second criteria and the (lower) key dimension scores was
chosen as the third criteria (refer to Appendix F).
The level of importance of the remaining dimensions (from highest to lowest) as follow:
Personal Identity
Commitment
Presence
Value
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Since “Personal Identity” comes up first under the researcher’s personal branding criteria, the
researcher should focus his strategy around this dimension. That is not to say the other three key
dimensions are not important and should not be looked it. The criteria filtered out “Personal
Identity” as the most important according to the researcher’s current online personal branding
situation. Without a strong personal identity, efforts in improving commitment, presence and value
may be wasted effort.
The researcher should focus his strategy (from Question 3) on improving his “Personal Identity”
score before redirecting his strategy to the other three dimensions. The researcher needs to identify
ways to bring out a more unique personality and develop his qualities. If the researcher achieves a
satisfied score for the “Personal Identity” dimension, he can and should refocus his strategy on the
next dimension (“Commitment” in this case).
5. How Do You Ensure Safe Arrival?
This step is the most important part of the process. There are multiple challenges in trying to
increase the researcher’s personal branding position. The researcher will need to keep an activity
log of all his attempts and the success of each activity. Without a set of measurements to record
events, it will be hard to determine success. The researcher should keep the criteria of the specific
dimension (“Personal Identity” in this case) he is improving in mind. The online personal branding
scores need to be reevaluated once a month to see the researcher’s progress and if he is on track
with his strategy. The researcher should also keep the limitations in mind when pursuing the
strategy.
Limitations and Further Research
The data for the matrix came from a small pool of scholars and practitioners. Although the personal
branding issues have reached saturation in the matrix, increasing the amount of research and data for
the matrix will increase its accuracy, Furthermore, the majority of the research was conducted through a
limited number of databases. This might have narrowed the variety of experts available in this field, but
should not be of huge concern.
Additionally, there are many ways to categorize all of the online personal branding issues into
overlying key dimensions and the researcher decided to categorize the issues into the aforementioned
seven chosen key dimensions based on the similarities he found. Other patterns can be determined,
which would result in different overlying key dimensions. Some issues may be applicable under more
than one dimension, which can slightly change the importance of each dimension. There are also
different processes that can be used with the identified issues to achieve other just-as-valuable results.
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The researcher’s self-diagnostic only briefly covers an overview of his own online personal branding
strategy. While the overlying strategy is good, more research and analysis should be conducted for each
level of the 5 questions to ensure a more accurate and successful implementation of the whole plan.
Lastly, while the researcher has conducted in-depth research in this area and implemented tools to
make the model more future-proof, online personal branding is constantly evolving and changing at a
fast pace. When using this model, the researcher recommends doing additional research on recent
trends and making any necessary updates to the model and questionnaire before utilizing it to profile
online personal branding strategies.
Conclusion
The matrix was a really helpful tool to visualize all the issues of personal branding, but it was only an
intermediate step in the process of this research paper. The visualization showed the second key
dimensions, which are “Personal Identity”, “Brand Management”, “Judgment”, “Commitment”,
“Presence”, “Consistency” and “Value”. This matrix was used to create a model that can be used to
profile one’s online personal branding position, determine which dimensions are in good standing and
which dimensions need attention.
The researcher utilized this model and cross-referenced it with his criteria to develop a personal
branding strategy. The model enabled the researcher to determine his biggest key issues, which are
“Personal Identity”, “Commitment”, “Presence” and “Value”. “Personal Identity” is currently the most
important dimension for the researcher and a strategy was developed to focus on this dimension.
While the personal branding model is a helpful tool to gauge one’s personal branding issues, one
must be aware of the limitations of this tool and take them into account. Online personal branding is
constantly evolving and personal branders must keep track of new social worlds and networks, new
competition and new trends to stay on top of the game.
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References
Ambron, P., 2010. Bad Personal Brand Examples: Sarah Palin’s Personal Brand Image. Brand Yourself.
Available from: http://blog.brandyourself.com/personal-brand/personal-brand-interviews/bad-
personal-brand-examples-sarah-palins-personal-brand-image [Accessed 2 February 2012].
Babbitt, M., 2011. Personal Branding Without Purpose: A Job Seeker Black Hole. The Savvy Intern by
