The interesting fact about personal branding is that if you do not it for yourself, people will do it for you! It is an effort that, when consciously exerted, positions you by the personality that you chose for yourself. Each and every one of us has a unique fingerprint that has been the pillar for identity verification for decades. On the more perceptual level, personal branding is your chance for carving the closely curving lines of your fingerprint; it is the process of creating a consistent image, and I emphasize consistent, using elements of cloth, handwriting, manner of speaking and expression, and tone of voice, besides further elements to intertwine them into creating a unified impression that is triggered swiftly by the presence of any of the elements conjuring your personality.
Branding, in its simplest form, is a form of conditioning. Our brains, especially in early adolescence, creates connections between external/internal triggers and experiences that we go through to help create meaning to whatever we stumble upon in our daily lives. This process is termed by neuroscientists as ‘’ pruning. ‘’ Even though each and every brain of a human being is identical, the uniqueness lies within the connections that differ significantly from a human to another. A dog for somebody can be the evoking trigger of a hurtful experience or the evoking trigger of the most pleasant of moments for someone else. So, basically, when you brand, you condition; you manipulate a specific reaction by the consistent attachment of a precise experience to specific cues of place, smell, color, texture, etc. The keyword here is consistency because an effort to brand/condition can prove futile if you were not consistent enough over a long time interval that would allow the connection to be burned into somebody’s brain.
In the field of neuroscience there is a famous quote: neurons that fire together wire together. Meaning, when you flavor your house, for example, with a specific, consistent fragrance, you condition any person’s given brain to connect the fragrance with the physical location of your house, so that the fragrance that would have not referred to any physical location and remained neutral in meaning would now evoke nostalgia to your own house. It seems simple, doesn’t it? Surprisingly, however, the reason why many people fail to brand themselves and fall victim to the inferred branding of others is that consistency is a pain. It needs focus and that is by far, in our increasingly cluttered universe, the most strenuous and nerve wrecking mental exercise of all. People run out of energy before they reach the needed threshold, they divert and kiss consistency goodbye, pacing back and forth between disparate fashion trends, handwriting styles, manners of expression, and point of views.
Luckily, online personal branding is easier where you craft consistency through a unified biography across social media venues, a unified URL, profile picture, and a spectrum of other factors. It remains an effort yet significantly less demanding in an alternative reality where the most exhausting of efforts require multiple clicks, a tiny amount of patience in the face of a buffering video, and fast keyboard typing. It is consistency applied with ease. So, if it is of interest to you to stand out with a chosen personality that defines you, start laying down a strategy that would ensure the conformity of all online and offline touch points to a specific personality and enjoy being known for who you really are! To understand more, it would be of benefit to examine branding case studies and brand guides that states the qualitative and quantitative consistent elements of any brand. Just type in your query on any given search engine, and experience the ever-popular joy of self-learning!
