Are you trying to Manufacture or Authenticate? That is my question.

There are so many people wondering what is the best way to build personal or corporate brands, in other words: to gain visibility or eyeballs to their content. To me, it’s plain and simple. There are two main methods that I see used most frequently . One is referral and paid based traffic directing. I think that’s trying to manufacture. Not to say that it’s never appropriate. I’d be a fool if I thought that. I think it comes in time and after a personal brand identity is established. As a starting point, I know it’s worked very well for a very long time way before 2-way web communication was mainstream and here to stay. Many people have been very successful building their brand that way. I now think a huge paradigm shift is happening and it’s changing the way personal branding is successfully built. I think it’s going more by the way of authentication, or in other words putting your personal identity out on the internet. I believe this is the future to long term relationships. Some people will like who we are and some won’t. In the end, we all decide for ourselves if we want to engage with anyone and anything, or not. Whether it’s through online introductions or meeting face to face, it’s a means to a new friend. TO me, that approach is the definition of authentication. It doesn’t produce results near as quickly, but it also doesn’t force feed someone into a direction in order to go on a statistic based result model. I think in the long run, people you want to find will find you, and those whom don’t won’t. In the end the human interaction and emotional connection win the long term friendships and therefore build your brand slowly and with foundation that cannot be bought.

Like I always say, “I’m just a jewelry salesman”, and am learning more everyday. Please let me know your thoughts in the comment section below.

Thanks

DG