I’ve been working on my personal website for a long time.
Not that I wasn’t happy with what I had before, but the truth is that I didn’t feel like the previous versions of my site truly reflected the entirety of how I view myself – and more importantly, how I need others to see me.
The Importance of Personal Branding
You see, people interact with people. You can’t “talk” to a business because it’s an abstract concept. You talk to the people that work in that business.
So, if I want to have an authentic interaction with an organization, I need to understand that I’m always going to be dealing with people…and that means I need to always put my best foot forward. People, in general, act towards us how we present ourselves to them initially.
As the adage goes, you can’t make a first impression twice.
Online Presence
When I first started developing websites, I actually didn’t consider my own personal website. I developed cassusmedia.com before anything else because I viewed that as the brand in which people would be interacting with primarily.
Boy, was I wrong.
People wanted to work with ME. They didn’t care about the name of my business, its logo, or its color scheme.
They wanted an authentic business relationship with me personally – Cassus Media stood simply as a vehicle in which I could legally do business with others.
So, learning this, I decided to focus more on my personal brand…as it turns out, it’s a lot more work than creating a business brand from nothingness. Anyone can create a logo, website, and put pretty pictures online, but to present oneself authentically and without apology is risky, scary, and exciting all at the same time.
LinkedIn, YouTube videos, and other digital mediums allow me to brand myself and control how people see me to a certain extent.
We can never control the opinions of others – although many media outlets do try to influence them – so it’s important in my opinion to simply be authentic online.
