This week I have changed my Twitter identity to AndersSporring instead of cityrat59 as a part of my strategies to brand myself in a better way. Although it’s a lot of work it only has advantages for my future work and possibility to get assignments. I have already talked here about the importance of branding your person, but I will talk a bit more about this again now.
Use your own name
Using a nick is only good if you want to be a bit anonymous, but otherwise it’s not a good practice. Your Own Name is the brand you should show to the World. It’s the key to who you are and who you want to ‘sell’ to employers, customers and friends.
Register your name
Register your name – It’s the same as if your were a company or an organization. If you don’t register it, someone else might do it and cause you a lot a damage pretending to be you.
Try to do so on the most common services ( Twitter , LinkedIn, Flickr, Slideshare, Google etc)
Personal brand stands out!
A personal brand gives you the ability to stand out in a sea of similar persons. This way, you’re marketing yourself as something different than the rest of the crowd out there. Is this something you need? Or do you want to keep yourself hidden in the crowd?
Advice to newbie’s
Your name = Your Personal brand, always keep that in mind. Use your own name if possible (sometimes other have the same name, and therefore you can’t register it. ) Be there and be the first to register your name! If you need an advice, don’t hesitate to contact me, maybe I can help you out.
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I think you´re on the right path, but way off the line
It is a huge simplification to say that your name is your personal brand. It might be a important step in the process, but hey, let´s face the fact, what about thoose who have the same name, Anders Andersson? Let´s start there: building personal brand must include the work to defining your identity in which you can include the logo – a symbol and a name, for a person it might be their own name. The work then building and profiling – to actually make your brand get value and get the work done with identity and image getting close match. Phhuuu, a name is a name, a symbol is a symbol, a logo is a logo and a brand is a brand, personal or companywise. And at the end of the day, it´s not who you are – but what you do that builds long lasting brands 
Thanks Bill for your comment. Of course and I agree with what you're saying. “building personal brand must include the work to defining your identity” but lets face it, not all have done some work that can represent them and in that case they have to start off fresh. And I know not all cna registrer their own name, in Sweden the most common surname is Johansson for instance and all of thos have problems. What I wanted to draw attention to was the fact these nicks (like my own old cityrat59) tend to be the brandname instead of your personalname. And then it starts to live its own life.
Things could get a little bit complicated if you as people I work with have several personal one-person companies with totally different services and/or products. They really need to differ theese different brands and identities, so they can act and do marketing and sales activities with clear messages to eaxh target group. In a simplified world – one could say – be yourself – be your brand – be one brand, but that´s easier said than done, the market rules are not that simple. And then we of course as human beeings have at least three lifes: a public life, a private life, and a secret life. Smacking all of this business life and private life into ONE single brand, your personal name, is that really even possible and why?
Of course the Branding has to do with what kind of work you do, but in this post I was mainly discussing from the point of being a person and not a company. Btw, I cant find you anywhere, so where's your brand/company/Persona hiding Bill?
As I wrote above, we of course as human beeings have at least three lifes: a public life, a private life, and a secret life. This is not stipulated by the media, as many “social media experts” are forecasting that social media force you to a life without beeing able to be anonymous. This is a chapter in the human behaviour and psychology, so I´m not hiding, I just think that my name and persona was not important. I really like and appreciate your ambitions, and applaud you for your tips to newbies. My opinion and we don´t have to agree upon that, is that you should have left the complex branding issue outside the name vs. nickname discussion and simply just explained why you think one should use own name and not nick.
Without involving any social media factors and thinking to this discussion I think everyone who wants to know a little bit more and put (personal) brand, branding, brand image, brand identity in right context – should get familiar with “personal branding” and “online identity management” as phenomenas, one could read following, which gives a clue that this is not a simple question about names vs. nicks:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_identity_ma...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_branding
Okay Bill. I don't think there are anything that we can call “Social media experts”, the landscape is in a constant change so how can there be? And I don't think we're in disagreement either, we might have different points of views but in all we say the same things. Complex issue, yes but it's a complex World although when looking at it first it seems simple. For me in the beginning I only moved my Social behavior out online, now I'm pursuing a career in marketing, and I will not call myself an expert ever I think. I have know-how yes, and I know how to run a successful campaign using the tools. I end this by quoting my father: “If you stop learning, you stop living.”
Okay Bill. I don't think there are anything that we can call “Social media experts”, the landscape is in a constant change so how can there be? And I don't think we're in disagreement either, we might have different points of views but in all we say the same things. Complex issue, yes but it's a complex World although when looking at it first it seems simple. For me in the beginning I only moved my Social behavior out online, now I'm pursuing a career in marketing, and I will not call myself an expert ever I think. I have know-how yes, and I know how to run a successful campaign using the tools. I end this by quoting my father: “If you stop learning, you stop living.”
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