Personal brand: why is it so important in protecting personal and corporate digital identity?
Creating a personal brand helps generate a reputational shield that establishes and promotes what we want to be seen regarding who we are and what we represent. A personal brand is the unique sum of qualities and experiences lived as a professional and as a person—in other words, the essence. We will not only communicate what we have done and who we are, but also what differentiates us from other professionals in our field.
Having a personal brand consistent with our values, with a level of dissemination appropriate to our objectives, helps us present ourselves as we wish to be found.
How to protect our personal brand through the protection of corporate and personal digital identity?
- Monitor (digital surveillance) and calculate the risk level of search results appearing about us on the internet.
- Remove, de-index, or deposition risky content that does not align with the desired image.
- Create a digital identity consistent with your own values and life experiences.
- Recalibrate the brand strategy monthly based on the results seen in monitoring and risk assessment.
Monitor and calculate the risk of your results on Google, Bing, and Yandex
The first step is to monitor personal and corporate identity and understand the position in search results. Search the internet to find out what third parties see when they look for a personal or corporate brand. Is it necessary for them to see our bikini photos from Menorca? Or the video from last Christmas with the family? Alongside a professional presentation in Google Video results, or an old, outdated blog about martial arts…
Identifying the level of exposure, dissemination, and strategy of those search results or the content appearing alongside your personal or professional brand name can either enhance or damage your reputation.
onBRANDING utilizes monitoring and content categorization systems to obtain personal and corporate profiles. Its team of analysts reviews, classifies, and assesses results based on their level of notoriety, notability, and criticality, using reputation, security, and privacy criteria.
Removal, de-indexing, and depositioning of critical search results and social media posts
Our team, combined with the hundreds of software solutions we use depending on each case and need, helps us detect and classify content that adds no value and eliminate what detracts from the goal of protecting personal and corporate digital identity, such as:
- Unprofessional or poorly handled actions.
- Unfortunate publications.
- Illegal or reprehensible activities.
- Potentially criminal history and behavior.
- Polarized or radical opinions, or those directly related to religion, politics, race, gender, or potentially controversial customs.
- Explicit, intimate, or private multimedia.
- Verbal aggression, violence, or bullying.
- Scandals with the potential to “explode” in a short time.
- Privacy lapses.
- Security lapses.
- Potential Fake News generated using your own online content.
- Toxic digital relationships.
- Detected trolling or harassment (from others toward your professional or personal brand).
What do you want to be associated with you?
Once threats are neutralized, you can define what you want to be associated with you and your personal and professional brand. Protecting your brand online, better known as onbranding, will help ensure you are not targeted for reasons you do not desire.
As in any personal coaching process, you must stop, feel, and rethink whether you are living the life you want and if it is represented that way on the internet. We can help you with a few questions:
- Who are you?
- What differentiates your personal profile from others?
- Is your digital identity reflecting this about yourself?
- What are your personal and corporate brand objectives?
- How close or far are your current results from the personal and corporate brand objectives you have?
- Do you move by instinct? Perfect, you are one of us. However, we always say: follow your instinct—your reptilian and limbic systems—but let the cortex accompany them.
- Who do you want your audience to be? Are you already reaching them? Who would you be able to help?
- Can you create a WOW effect with your professional and personal experience?
- Do you come across as trustworthy? Are you perceived as transparent?
- If so, what examples and testimonials do you have?
Do not be shy; showcase your qualities, achievements, and testimonials
If you had to list examples where your performance was a 10 or highly successful and noteworthy, which ones would you include? Let’s do an exercise together:
- Write down in a document which examples make you proud of your team or yourself.
- List those moments and, if they have been recognized by others, accept your strengths. If the information is not confidential, find a way to make it public; otherwise, anonymize the cases before publishing them.
Let’s move to the first action: establish your headquarters and your main online assets
- What will be your base of operations? Secure your own domains and reserve your own usernames; we will then plan together how to use them.
- Which satellites will help you spread your message and build relationships?
To carry out the rest of the personal brand strategy and digital identity protection plan, please contact us.
