Let’s take a look at the 2010 Personal branding predictions from some of the industries top minds. I thought it would be interesting to do a blog post and include two of my colleagues Dan Schawbel and William Arruda both of which are well respected in the personal branding industry. Take a look at the world the way we see it and add your thoughts, comments and predictions.
2010 Personal Branding Predictions: Top-10 (A New Decade) (by Hajj E. Flemings)
Predictions: Video Version
Hajj E. Flemings is the Founder of Brand Camp University and author of ‘The Brand YU Life’. He has been featured on ESPN.com, BusinessWeek.com, and BlackEnterprise.com. His client list includes Walt Disney, Ford Motor Company, and numerous colleges and universities around the nation. His book was selected as one of Fast Company Magazine 2008 Readers Choice Business Books of the year.
Blog: Brand Camp University
Book: The Brand YU Life
Twitter: @HajjFlemings
1. The Rise of Digital Personalities – With the rise of social search (Bing and Google search engines) brands will be directly impacted and forced to participate in the real-time conversation that is happening online. Personal brands will have to be active to be relevant which will provide an opportunity for their digital personalities (online component of your personal brand) to gain in influence.
2. Growth of Female Personal Brands – Males have long dominated or been the voice of the social media space. I believe that you will start to see the growth of female influence in social media and personal branding. The demographic data shows there are larger numbers of women online in Twitter, Facebook, and the other major social networks. It is a great time to be female and to be web 2.0 savvy. (Note: In Twitter and Facebook women outpace men (Twitter: Women – 60% and Men 40% and Facebook: Women – 57% and Men 43%). Female centric groups mommy bloggers, Blogher.com, etc. will become more influential and prominent.). Twitter List of Influential Women in Social Media Women
3. Sports Industry and Athletes seek Personal Brand Strategist – Some of the most interesting personal branding stories (Tiger Woods, ESPN and Michael Beasley) in 2009 were been centered around athletes and the sports industry. Athletes and their agents will start to identify social media and personal branding strategist to manage their online personal brands. The social media policies that impact the human capital of sports teams, commentators, and other personnel will evolve as well.
4. The Focus on Character will Increase – The importance of character gains momentum, the Tiger Woods saga reinforces the importance of character in personal and corporate brands alike. Facebook and Twitter will continue to be character references and will grow in importance in validating social behavior.
5. Education Influenced by Personal Branding – Personal branding and social tools will continue to impact the learning environment. The subject of personal branding will continue to evolve on college campuses. Workshops and classes alike will continue to grow on college campuses, like Michigan Technological Universities ENT3976 Personal Brand Management.
6. Privacy is Dead – The concept of privacy will go the way of the dinosaur, in other words it is dead. With geo tagging, status updates, social search anyone can identity where you are at and what you are doing at all times. Your online habits will communicate to an employer, potential business partner, or sports team everything they need to know about you as a person. Your life will exist in a stream.
7. Mobile Influence on Personal Brands – The hub of the personal brand will center around mobile devices like iPhone and the Android phone. These devices currently constitute 75% of the smartphone web traffic. The growing number of apps, social search, and the ease of content upload will stimulate personal brand interaction thru their devices.
8.Identifying your Inner Genius – Identifying your passion will be critical. With increase in unemployment, job downsizing, and workload increase people will be forced to identify what they truly love doing and what they were created to do. Success has was defined by high profile, high-paying jobs as those opportunities start to reduce people will be forced to think about what they love doing and will tap into their inner Genius.
9. Corporate and Personal Brand Conflict – Social media polices (David Armano six trends of social media 2010) and graying lines between corporate and personal brands will require individuals to navigate their activity in social networks more carefully whether their on the clock or off. The person and the corporation will have to be responsible in managing and monitoring online personal brand activity, this will be a hot topic.
10. Developing your Personal Brand with Full-time Job (Grustle) – Personal brands will be developed after hours or as entrepreneurial projects. With the decrease in employer loyalty people will start to focus on developing their personal brand passively while maintaining a 9-to-5 job, known as the GRUSTLE.
10 Personal Branding Predictions for 2010 (by Dan Schawbel)
Dan Schawbel is a personal branding expert for Gen-Y, author of Me 2.0 and founder of the Personal Branding Blog®, which was the #1 job blog by Careerbuilder in 2008. Presently, Dan is a Social Media Specialist at EMC Corporation, which is one of the leading technology companies in the world.
Blog: Personal Branding Blog
Book: Me 2.0
Twitter: @DanSchawbel
Predictions: Video Version
1) Transparency across the web from social networks to search engines and back.
Social search, a term that represents the shift in search capability to include social network participation and engagement, is going to really heat up next year. Google has already announced that they will be partnering with both Twitter and FriendFeed, but not Facebook, to deliver “social search results” to the user. Facebook, on the other hand, will be tightly aligned to Microsoft’s Bing search engine, which is no surprise because they already had a partnership from before (and Microsoft hates Google). This means that Facebook status updates will appear in Bing search results, but only if the user’s privacy setting permit it. For instance, if you select to make your profile private, your status updates won’t appear in Bing and in other search engines in the future. Yahoo! will be in the game soon enough because competitively, everyone has to transition to what the market demands.
What this means for your personal brand: This is a sign that transparency will flow across the web. Your participation online will be seamless and widespread to a point where anything you publish will appear everywhere and have more eyeballs on it. You need to think twice before you publishing something as insignificant as a tweet now. Your job, your business and your personal reputation is at stake with every published status update, tweet, blog post, etc.
2) More people understanding their brand
What a lot of people don’t realize is that Twitter lists just made personal branding easier to understand. For example, if you review the 1,000+ lists I’m on, you’ll notice that most people categorize me in social media, HR, and branding lists. This means that people perceive me as representing these categories and that’s what I’ve projected to the Twitter community through my profile page and tweets. In Me 2.0, I explain that you’re doing a good job branding yourself when self-impression is equal to perception (how you describe yourself is how other people describe you).
What this means for your personal brand: Twitter lists is one way to verify that you’re coming off the way you had planned. If you want to be classified as a personal finance expert but everyone categorizes you into marketing lists, then something is wrong.
3) The new employment contract
Most companies are still trying to figure out social media, how it plays a role in company culture, if they should block social sites and how they should handle employees who have large followings. Recent data has come out to prove that personal branding can have a financial and branding impact on a corporate brand. eMarketer reports that 71% of employee bloggers have increased visibility for their company, 63% have converted prospects into purchasers through their blog, and 56% have seen their blog bring their company recognition as a thought leader in the industry. It’s obvious that visibility transfers from personal brand to corporate brand, but probably not as much the other way around.
Although, companies see the power of employees influence, they also are concerned that they aren’t as productive, that another company might snatch them and that it might infringe on employee legal contracts. Jeremiah Owyang (2008 Personal Brand of the Year) wrote an incredibly detailed post about how you should verify your employment contract because your company might own your social accounts. It just shows that the employment contract is going to have to evolve because the relationship between employer and employee is changing fast.
What this means for your personal brand: A personal brand is transferable, so that if you switch companies, your influence and network strength still hold. This also makes you more valuable and a “hot commodity.” Before you accept a job offer and if you currently have a job, you need to be sitting down with your manager and discussing how your brand can mesh with your role.
4) Your voice becomes stronger than your resume
The boundaries of online participation have fallen over the past five years, which means that your “current” voice is becoming more important than your previous experience. eMarketer reports that 25% of people have used their blog as a resume and have sent it to potential employers. If someone searches for your name online and they verify that you haven’t actively participated in industry discussions, then you are perceived as having less value as someone who has. A resume depicts where you’ve been in the past, with less indication for where you may end up in the future. Your online voice, whether it’s status updates or full blog posts, gives people a better sense of who you are, what you do and what you bring to the table. In most cases, your blog will appear higher in search results than your LinkedIn profile, so employers will be more keen on that resource than a “resume.”
What this means for your personal brand: Instead of concentrating on putting chrome wheels on your resume or adding a navigation system, invest time in sharing your voice online. Your voice can carry online and if you have good ideas, people will become aware of your brand and opportunities will be there for you.
5) People being forced to take niche’s
Anita Campbell of Small Business Trends recently pointed out how competitive it is to be successful in social media. She notes a 2009 Technorati State of the Blogosphere study, which shows that it takes three to ten posts per day to compete with the top blogs. The reason is because established blogs have created barriers to entry, such that they have a high Google PageRank and their brands are well-known. It’s hard to convince readers to go elsewhere when there are already trusted sources! Also, the sheer amount of posts the blog posts publish makes it hard to compete because Google values page freshness and it’s more content that people can spread through social networks.
What this means for your personal brand: You are going to have to be either very specific with both your topic and audience or you’re going to have to have a superior product. If you feel that you’re the Madonna of a certain topic, then you will eventually be able to compete with the big blogs because of your confidence, hard work and content that will spread.
6) Video becomes a brand-standard
According to “The Global Web Index,” from Trendstream, with research conducted by Lightspeed Research, early this year 72% of US Internet users watched video clips monthly—making video bigger than blogging or social networking. Video is being used for humor and music, but in 2010, we’ll see people use it more for job searching (video resume) and for their websites/blogs as introductions to their worlds. Michael Gerber is one of a handful of people who are using video as an integrated part of their websites. If you land on different pages of his website, a video image of him comes out to talk to you about that content. Video has many different uses, from employer branding to sales pitches to resumes. As more and more people become comfortable with it, it will end up becoming part of the career/resume arsenal.
What this means for your personal brand: Video is the best way to connect with your audience because people are getting to know you before meeting you. If you don’t get good at video then you will suffer a disadvantage because your competition will put out video.
7) Monetization through branding becomes clear
There are 325 million Facebook users, who use the site a combined 8 million minutes each day. 94% of the companies will be maintaining or increasing their investment in social media tools next year. In 2010, about 12 billion dollars will be spent on online advertising. These numbers should verify that people are going to start making serious money off of social networks and blogs in 2010 and beyond. Companies are allocating more of their budgets to online spending and the amount of users and readers that sites have right now are adding up to traditional mediums, but the online world is easier to measure.
What this means for your personal brand: It means if you’re entrepreneurial, even in the slightest, you have the ability to make money doing what you love online. It could be a blog or your own social network that could put you in a position, where you’re making money, while in bed, blogging.
8 ) Social media being used more for career development
A lot of studies have shown that social media tools and networks are primarily used for social conversations and less business and career type conversations. In 2010, there will be a lot of pressure on individuals to stand out (unemployment rate is at 10% right now). A lot of people are going to turn to the internet for support (and answers), which means that social media tools will have a clear purpose for any serious professional. Our society is going to start putting a lot more pressure on people that aren’t taking advantage of social media next year. We are past the early adoption curve and now the late majority will show up next year.
What this means for your personal brand: To stay current with your industry and to be found online, you need to become an active contributor. Social media tools will become your resume, your background check and a means for your to climb your own corporate ladder.
9) More people working for free to build brand equity
The NACE reports that companies are hiring 7% fewer College graduates in 2010. Any smart college student should be searching online for influencers, who they can support, without any pay. At the same time, students will have to have regular jobs in order to pay loans and any other expenses. Aside from students and recent graduates, if you’re unemployed or you’re looking to switch careers, working for free (even if it’s 5 hours a week) is something you should seriously consider. The experience isn’t going to come any other way.
What this means for your personal brand: Experience is more important than education and if you can’t get a job, you need to do whatever you can to gain experience, even if it means working for free. On your resume, you don’t list how much you get paid anyways!
10) Online identities becoming as routine as employer drug tests
In 2009, Careerbuilder reported that 45% of companies are using social networks as background checks. I’m going to go with 75% of companies for 2010 and then 100% of companies in 2012. Just like a drug test, going online to review an applicants brand is easy, cost effective and can save headaches later. There are issues that arise such as possibly losing good talent because of one Facebook picture or judging someone based on their picture and not on their credibility.
What this means for your personal brand: Everyone is going to have to be very careful with what they put online. Go through your online presence right now to make sure it best represents you as a professional. Try and see your profiles through a companies eyes too.
Personal Branding Predictions: Top 10 for 2010 (by William Arruda)
William Arruda is a sought-after speaker on the topics of branding, career advancement, social media and employee motivation. Combining his twenty years’ corporate branding experience with his passion for the people, he founded Reach, the global leader in personal branding. William engages, motivates and inspires audiences with his unique blend of wit, story telling and humor.
Blog: The Personal Branding Blog
Book: Career Distinction
Twitter: @WilliamArruda
1. Video, Video, Video
Thanks to greater bandwidth, cheaper storage, and a proliferation of products and services that make shooting, storing, viewing, and sharing video easy (Flip video, iPhone 3GS, YouTube, vimeo, blip.tv, vodpod, etc.), video will be king in 2010.
Video is ideal because it allows careerists to deliver a complete communication and convey their personality—a critical component of branding. More services like videoBIO (a Reach Personal Branding partner) will make it easier to cost-effectively build a powerful and positive brand image using video.
2. Hiring Process
Companies will be hiring brands rather than employees. They will use social networks and Google to source talent, filter candidates, and validate credentials.
“What’s your brand?” will become as standard an interview question as “Tell me about yourself.” Google is already a main reference check in the job-search process. Hiring managers and executive recruiters expect serious professionals to have a powerful online identity. Google and other social media will be an even greater part of the talent-search process.
As the number of candidates for each open position increases, Google and social media will be used more often to eliminate candidates. Lack of a virtual identity or poor-quality online content will prevent you from getting the job, regardless of your credentials, connections, and experience. In 2010, if you don’t show up in Google, you don’t exist!
3. Branded Partners
Often more traditional in their approach to marketing and delivering their services, professional-services firms (accounting, law, consulting, etc.) are going to jump on the “brandwagon” with reckless abandon in 2010.
Two years ago, I started working with the partners of one of the Big Four accounting firms, helping them build their brands. In the past year, two of the other three firms contacted me about doing something similar.
That trend is going to increase with big law firms, consulting organizations, and other professional-services firms joining the fold.
It’s a no-brainer: For professional-services firms, people are the product. But those firms (often, private partnerships) can be slow to innovate. In 2010, personal branding will be integrated into all levels in a firm—from hiring through becoming partner.
4. For-Credit Courses
Personal branding is a critical part of preparing students for successful careers.
Over the past year, I have worked with the career-services and alumni groups at many universities. Interest in personal branding will grow tremendously in universities, and for-credit courses in personal branding will be available as part of business programs and as electives.
With the jobless recovery and fewer job openings for college students, schools will focus more on helping students succeed beyond academics to find the perfect job. You will see more collaboration between university career-services organizations and academic departments as schools start to understand their role in preparing students to obtain jobs, not just skills.
5. Unified Search
We are already seeing many new services, such as addictomatic.com, that combine search results from many different search engines.
Such tools will become more common while Google, Bing, Yahoo, and other search engines will combine traditional search results with real-time content (from tools such as Twitter) and video results—making searching easier and more accurate.
