Ed Schipul, founder and CEO of Schipul - The Web Marketing Company (www.schipul.com) discusses the importance of personal brands and the role they can play in business success. He says we are all responsible for our personal brands. The challenge is having a consistent online presence that accurately reflects what you represent. Music provided by _AA_, http://anal0g.org/_aa_/.

https://www.tendenci.com

Hi I'm Ed Schipul, founder and CEO of
Schipul the Web Marketing Company

What's surprising people right now would
have to be, I think, the development

of personal brands because I think a lot
of people think that they're

mutually exclusive from the
profitability of the company versus the

self-interest of the individual to
promote themselves. A personal brand at

the most basic level is simply how you
are known, and we've always had a

personal brand. You've got your name and
you've got a reputation and over time

you build up social capital, your
standing in the community. In the past

we've relied on media to build that
personal brand and so one of the

interesting dynamics that's occurred is
that now we are all responsible for our

own personal brands whether we like it
or not. Facebook is affecting how other

people see us. If we post nothing but
Garfield comics on Facebook then they're

going to think differently about us then
if we post nothing but Wall Street

Journal articles, and so we've got this
this challenge of forming and

representing ourselves in a community in
a way that the personal brand represents

us so that when I go to a new social
network, because they're being you know

invented daily - when I go to a new one, when I
switch from Flickr to Facebook to

Twitter if I see your personal brand it,
just like if I go to a foreign country

and I find a coca-cola I know what I'm
buying. It's the same thing when I go to

a different land and I find your
personal brand I know what I'm engaging

I think the the promotion of personal
brands, which seems contrary, is actually

completely in alignment with profitably
growing your company