With your brand that is; your personal brand. What are you doing with it? Do you have your objectives set up?
Since the first times I have been following a lot on personal branding and self-marketing, it’s rather interesting to see how little has changed and how much is repeated. Often times I will stumble in and read something I see that is new but in reality I am reading the same tips and suggestions over and over with different wording. To be quite honest it gets kind of frustrating.

For the sake of clarification here are some of those points. Engage on Twitter, Engage on Facebook, build recognition though a blog, and for those in a more professional setting; enhance the use of your LinkedIn network. Now, that’s all fine and dandy but if you’re not entirely new to this gig, like me, reading the same thing gets tiring and overwhelming.

I love the Student Branding Blog, an offshoot of the Personal Branding Blog. But the thing is, I’m tired of reading tips I’ve been hearing from my parents and college advisors. Every once in a while I will come across something interesting that I have yet to read, but that is a rare occasion. With no disrespect to the author, I would like to look at this post at the Student Branding Blog: Facebook: Personal Branding Friend or Foe?. I just have one comment on this; the whole post is almost one big, “no s*** sherlock”. The points are obvious, points that people already know, but yet students obviously still haven’t caught on to efficiently. I still see my friends’ pictures with beers and bongs thinking, “are you stupid?”, not to mention on a 100% public profile too!

When all is said and done, I implore many of you personal brands, and aides to personal brands to advance your techniques and posts. Don’t repeat the same information for a professional personal brand for a student. It IS different, there are differences that should be addressed, that have not been explored to their full extent.

So I ask you again; where are you taking your personal brand? Are you advancing in the way you want to? Where is your focus?

Image by DigitalParadox

The buzz about the buzz is buzzing (cheezy I know but I had to). This week I had the luxury of seeing two great releases applied to me. As many of you know those two releases are 1) Facebook’s new layout, and 2) Google’s Buzz.

Facebook

I’m not going to say that I dislike the new layout because the truth is I do like it. The layout is simpler, just as easy to follow, and it doesn’t change things around so much that the users will have some new kind of heart attack causing groups of hundreds of thousands to whine and moan about it.

Pros

• Just as simple, easy to follow, it has good flow.
• Everything you need is within the first left column or on the top bar.
• The search bar becomes more prominent, easier to find, and still just as great to use.
• More focus on the real-time news feed, and the option to control it better

Cons

• It’s a little bit too blue. I don’t know if I’m colorblind or what, but the three icons next to the Facebook icon, are hard as hell for me to see. I will definitely not use them as much.
• Message inbox isn’t as noticeable. I like using the inbox, private messages are helpful. But now accessing the inbox is a little bit tougher by creating a non-top bar icon and moving it to the mix of the left column.
• It’s a hair slower, my connection here in my dorm sometimes isn’t tip-top, so when it slows down and comes to a crawl, it’s noticeable.

I have my opinions, about it but all-in-all it’s a new layout. I don’t think that it will cause too much controversy.

Google Buzz

I’m normally a late adopter finding about things behind the curve and even more so becoming accustomed to using them.  But before I give my opinion, read this, it’s a funny bashing of Google Buzz (no I’m not 100% against it).

The new Buzz feature isn’t new. As Microsoft and Yahoo have recently been doing by belittling the new tool explaining that they have had the feature for over a year now, this is nothing new, but the dominant market of social-medialites has normally been associated with Google. The shear fact that this expectation arrives out of Google immediately offers it up to a larger and more target market. Buzz will just stick more with the people who want it.

Now I don’t like that Buzz provides me a number (like unread emails) from people I don’t follow, such as commenters from people I do follow. It’s annoying and when I read my friend’s posts, I will then look at the comments, I don’t want to see 587 Buzzes when I actually only have 20. It’s annoying, I don’t want that. Oh, and make the settings a little more prominent while it’s still new.

I like on the other hand, that there is not as much of a character limit, like Twitter. This will lead to better search linking especially if it turns into real-time search results. It’s easy to use, just like Twitter and FriendFeed it’s simple to figure out and won’t take long for people to use Buzz almost in a way to connect their other social media sites. Google’s Friend Connect also incorporates well into this!

Overall good things, I like new changes.

What do you make of all the new releases?

Image by ayche_em_ayche