Great article Tac. I'm glad you see personal branding as something positive instead of negative. If all you do is promote yourself, you will push people away instead of drawing them in. Personal branding works as a way to get people's attention and interest based on the value you can contribute to them.

I do see personal branding as not just a positive but a necessity. Unfortunately, like many good things, it gets abused and misused. You're absolutely right that the equation has to be based on value or it doesn't work.

I just don't understand why the same people who go on and on about “your company is what google says it is” and “you never really had control, you just thought you did” are the same people who keep talking about “building a strategy to grow your personal brand” and “influencing the influencers”. It's the same thing. Shut up and get back to work.

That's the difference between personal brand and personal spam

In order to have a personal brand, you have to have a brandable quality or take; something memorable and meaningful to somebody. Absent that, is there anything to brand?

You call it spam, but to me it's more like meeting an empty suit. Only online.

Excellent post here, Tac! I know too many people attempting to establish a personal brand who always talk about themselves and what is interesting to them. It's about time that some personal brands starting focusing on their target audience.

I bow to you, sir: evocatively stated. I read the post, read the comments, then asked myself: so what about my friends, what can I do for them tomorrow, literally? And immediately came up with a couple of things I had been overlooking that are not only “personal brand-aware” but smart business moves.

This is a very useful focusing point, thank you for sharing it with us.

You have nailed the paradox of personal branding: in order for it to work effectively, you have to get yourself out of the way! As a teacher of more than 15 years, I witnessed too often in students both young and older try way too hard to “brand” themselves when all they needed to do was relax and just BE themselves! It's a funny time we live in, but a tremendous time…one filled with opportunity to help others differentiate themselves from the crowd and lead authentic, abundant lives. Great article! Thanks.

I'm thinking the “The Empty Suit” is the east cost version of “All Hat, No Cattle.”

Forrest, thanks for the comment. And I'm sorry that I'm about to say this because you probably hear it all the time but you have to have the coolest geek pop culture last name http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kobayashi_Maru

Isn't it amazing how focusing on helping your customers is always a smart business move?

I think the paradox stems from the conflicting motivators. Most people aren't motivated to establish a personal brand with the intent of helping people. Yet most people who start off intending to help people aren't thinking about but are usually in the best situation to establish a personal brand.

Agreed, business can be good like that. But the trigger in your post is making it personal on the customer side. Changing the perspective from relationships between entities to relationships with friends highlighted different opportunities.

We know this. We just forget sometimes. Thanks for the reminder!

Great approach Tac. I share your thoughts and personal branding is about sharing with others what you can do for them and what have others done for you as well to take you to your primary goals and objectives. Is not about you, is not about me, is about building a community of people interested in a specific topic/business area and share the passion for that!

To add some interesting resource to this conversation, I recommend all readers to share thoughts, tips and advices on Startups.com Q&A

Hope you like it!