Day 27: What Do You Communicate About Your Personal Brand Through Commenting?

Online personal branding is becoming a big deal. The more active we are on the web, the more we communicate about who we are and what we do. Many of us may have considered that our blogs are a way of communicating about our "brand," but what about the comments we leave? Dauwd Miracle recounts an experience he had with comments as a form of personal branding. Take a look at his post and then write a post about what you think you may be communicating about your personal brand through your comments. For bonus points, think about some of the other commenters you’ve encountered during the Challenge and write about about what you think their personal brand is based on their commenting behaviors.

The links in this challenge took me to very interesting blog post. I must say that I have not thought about "Personal Branding" in the past, but as I read these posts I realize that I have created a personal brand somehow with Langwitches

Michele Martin defines Online Personal Branding on her blog The Bamboo Project as:

What Is Personal Branding?
In a competitive job market, everyone needs a clear sense of their personal brand–what are their unique selling points? What do they want to be known for in their profession and what value do they bring to an employer? A personal brand incorporates the key marketing messages you want to convey, particularly if you’re setting up an online portfolio or using your blog to market yourself.

I do use my blog Langwitches as an online portfolio for my professional development. What I write reflects on who I am professionally. I use my blog to define who I am in the Educational Technology arena. Looking at the categories that tag my posts gives you a pretty good idea of what I am interested in and where my passions lie.

Now the challenge for today is to look at our comments and what kind of personal brand we are communicating through them.

I know that I have had trouble being consistent in branding my identity in the past, when leaving comments on blogs. On Twitter I have stayed consistent with my "Witch and the Globe" avatar.

I have created a logo for langwitches that I use as an avatar in most of the Social Network places. On Twitter the use of an avatar seems to be particularly important. At least for me, I seem to recognize avatars before I recognize usernames or names of Tweet authors. I even get confused when someone switches their avatar according to a holiday or their mood.

Sometimes I sign in as "Langwitches", sometimes as "Silvia Tolisano", sometimes as Silvia and sometimes as Silvia aka Langwitches. I need to pick one form.  I think that my brand should be ok in a sometimes confusing gender issue department. Witches are per say feminine. After reading through the many comments on Dawud Miracle’s post , I think I should settle for the branding signature of Silvia Tolisano aka Langwitches.

I met for the first time other educators face to face that I had previously only known through the online world, when I attended FETC (Florida Educational Technology Conference) last January in Orlando. I had to think about how I was going to introduce myself to them. Most of them would not have known me or be familiar with my first and last name. I ended up introducing myself as " Hi my name is Silvia Tolisano, I blog as Langwitches". I even considered before hand to create a button or a T-Shirt with my langwitches logo to make it easier to recognize me.

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Posted: 20. June, 2008 at 2:49 pm. Filed under: Blogging.
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