dan schawbel

This is a guest post by Dan Schawbel. Follow him on Twitter.

Most people online are building “a brand,” but sometimes people forget whose brand they are building and if they are making the right strategic moves. For instance, if your Twitter handle reads “@fastcar,” then you aren’t building your own personal brand. When people retweet you, they are viewing @fastcar and not your full name. So stop for a second and consider what brand you’re trying to build and why. Are you looking to become an industry expert, or are you focused on establishing your company’s name, or both? We’ve seen a lot of successful personal brands explode online because they’ve either thought about how they would like to be perceived or they have slowly grown into their current roles, by experimentation, luck and hard work. I could write a post explaining how to use TV advertising or radio to build your brand, but most of you won’t shell out thousands of dollars for something that most people will ignore anyways. Social media, on the other hand, allows you to connect directly with the audience you want to target, on common ground, and build relationships.