I put brand in quotes there, because I’ve always thought the idea of a personal brand is a little odd. To me, a brand has always represented the promise that a can of Diet Coke in New York will taste like a can of Diet Coke in Los Angeles, etc.: i.e., that different iterations of the same product or service by a company will have the same attributes. Seems a little odd to apply that concept to a unique individual person, but let’s leave that aside for now.
On his AVC blog today (“Own Your Online Brand”), Fred Wilson wrote,
A few years ago, I bought the internet domains of all three of my children’s full names. My two daughters now operate active blogs on their domains (I link to them on the upper right of this blog) and both of them come up in the first page of search results when you google their names. They still spend way more time on Facebook than their blogs but they are building their online brands at a young age. And they can tightly control what goes on those pages.
I asked Fred in the comments how he would describe his daughters’ brands, based on a glance at a few pages of their blogs (a recent post from one of the blogs: “It’s fucking cold outside but i’m wearing my Acne shoes!”). Fred responded that they were building their personal brands around things they loved: photography, fashion, NYC. I guess that would help in applying for a fashion job (though, realistically, I’m guessing his daughters will get more of a tailwind in whatever they do from their father’s status and contacts than whatever they post on their blogs), but what if they decide they want to do something else when they get out in the world? If there were blogs when I was a teen, I can’t imagine anything I would have blogged about then would have accrued to my benefit later on.
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