Reflection on Personal Branding

When it comes to personal brand, in the past, I only connected this concept with celebrities and entrepreneurs, who are well known and enjoy a high reputation. Thanks to the development of communication technology, today, everyone can get a “superstar” treatment on the Internet by establishing his or her own personal brand through social media network. This is a tremendous transformation for it not only shows the charming of social media platforms, but also makes personal brand a topic concerns everyone.

Personal branding is the process by which individuals differentiate themselves and stand out from a crowd by identifying and articulating their unique value proposition, whether professional or personal, and then leveraging it across platforms with a consistent message and image to achieve a specific goal. In this way, individuals can enhance their recognition as experts in their field, establish reputation and credibility, advance their careers, and build self-confidence. To put it simply, personal branding is basically the way we market ourselves to the world. Personal brand is what other people think of us.

When marveling are the significant power of personal brand, some negative critiques and argument of this concept also raised, which made personal brand a controversial topic. Some people, including Seth Godin turned a negative perspective towards this term just because of the world “brand”, since this word regards people as products, which make personal branding a tactic of product-promotion. Other critiques lie in that in those online platforms, everyone can contribute to establish your personal brand, even if you don’t agree on other people’s description of you.

Facing with these two challenges, I think that firstly, the word doesn’t matter. Brand is just a vivid description of personal image and characteristic. Actually, personal branding is unavoidable. When we interact with other, people will automatically form mental associations that connect us with certain labels, often within the first few seconds. I can’t avoid being labeled, and other people can’t avoid labeling me. Secondly, it is true that everyone can participate in establishing our personal brand whether we like it or not, so it is important to hold the initiative in our own hands. Although on the Internet, personal branding is sometimes outside our control, we obviously have some influence over it. Always keeping an eye on how others talking about us on social media platforms, and on how we are tagged in other individual or organization’s profile can help us improve and correct some negative information immediately. I “Baidu” (Chinese Google) myself every month to see any update of myself. Fortunately, all the information is just about me (because I have a really special Chinese name and I believe this is the only one in China), among them, some information is edited by myself, others are posted by my formal schools, companies, and the event I have been involved in.

Since all the challenges and negative factors of personal brand can be appropriately explained and solved, I absolutely embrace personal brand and will spare no effort to build a unique brand for myself. As Brogan proposed, “A personal brand gives you the ability to stand out in a sea of similar products. In essence, you’re marketing yourself as something different than the rest of the pack”. Although just like “there are no two identical leaves in the world”, every individual is unique and irreplaceable in the world, to figure out what exactly differentiate me from others is not an easy thing. But this is the essence of personal branding. So, knowing myself, discovering myself and exploring myself is what personal branding urges me to reflect on. To this extent, personal branding is not only a strategy of self-promotion, but also valuable spiritual experience.

Social Photography, A New Trend

    Social photography is a fascinating topic for me. Although I am not a professional photographer and I don’t have an advanced SLR, I still exert tremendous enthusiasm towards photography, which is an ideal way to record our lives and detain the recollection.

    This week, I had a one-day-refreshment in Point Reyes National Seashore on Friday to refresh myself and I took some really wonderful photos for this one-day trip. Point Reyes is absolutely a natural sanctuary, a human haven. From its thunderous ocean breakers crashing against rocky headlands and expansive sand beaches to its open grasslands, brushy hillsides, and forested ridges, Point Reyes satisfied my desire of coming back to nature.

 On our way to the Point Reyes. I love the Windmills!

We saw a lot of elephant seal here！

This is my favorite shoot! Imagine you sitting on this lonely chair, facing the ocean and enjoying the beautiful scenery.

I was exhausted when I covered all these steps. But the scenery from the beacon is so wonderful!

My friend took this picture.

    With the prosperity of social media, photography is not only a way for individual recording, but also an efficient way for corporation to promote and brand. Thanks to social media, individuals and companies are conspicuously sharing stories and imageries about themselves every day. Among various functions, photo posting and photo sharing dominate the social media activities. Even on Facebook, the king of networks, people spend 17 percent of their time perusing photos according to a recent study. 

    So a lot of image hosting and video hosting online community  were created such as Flickr, Instagram and Pinterest. We cannot deny the role social photography played on social network sites. For individual, this is one of the most efficient, vivid and attractive way to share stories and catch eyes. For companies and brands, photos are the perfect social media marketing tool for them to stand out.

    I started a Flickr account these days and I found this is a great platform for me to post my own photos and share wonderful pictures from others. I particularly love the “explore” function, through which I can find some really awesome pictures according to my own interest and need. Under some featured “Sets”, stories are told, themes are developed, and junk is collected. There are also loads of groups on Flickr, full to the brim with wonderful things. Also I discovered that many companies are using Flicker to post photos and interact with their customers. Obviously, companies didn’t overlook the visual component of social media.

    Companies can use Flickr for listening: It’s possible to use Flickr as a monitoring tool to see what people are saying about your company. Search for a company or product name to find photos uploaded, you may find people praising it or you may find people uploading images of that company. This is a good way for a company to listening. Also, they should be sure to act appropriately on Flickr because people are talking about you!
    Companies can also use Flickr for talking: Flickr is an ideal tool to extend business brand. Tagging and geolocating images will help people find that company more easily and there are many groups a company can join to share their best shoots and discuss the theme of the group. In Flickr, branding business by itself doesn’t add extra costs; it requires consistent presentation.

     Companies can also use Flickr for energizing: Images provide a high percentage of incoming traffic to many sites, so if a company can energize their most enthusiastic costumers to post photos for them regularly, that will help increase the chances of attracting more visitors to their photos and their homepage. Give photos titles, descriptions and tags is a good way to energize enthusiastic costumers.

    




In a word, social photography is changing the way brands tell stories. Social photography networks featuring photo sharing, interactive forums, personalized profiles, and free endless photo storage are new places where individuals and companies can share their knowledge and learn from others and this will become a new trend for social media!