Recently I was in a Personal Branding workshop, and I was faced with the quote below:
Everything communicates, all the time.
That got me thinking, and I could not help but wonder: could that be true?
In the last 20 years we all have been introduced to a new social dynamic. While the internet has been around for many more years, it was around 2004 that what we call Web2 started to make an entrance into our lives, and we were not only the consumers anymore.
I mean, we all were given the opportunity to be the main character on our own story, ONLINE! From emails, research engines, and, well, it was all that the internet used to be, it was also very concentrate in the hand of few people the power to CREATE THE CONTENT. But this has been changing throughout the last two decades, and now we all have at least one account in one platform that allows us to post a video, a quote, or just a few pics from our last vacation.
And with our walk into the new era of the digital world, how should we communicate ourselves in the offline & online at the same time?
Well, the answer can actually be very simple: theres just one path.
When I was presented with the statement that everything that we do, wear, say, is communicating a message to the people around us, we start thinking if the person the has been perceived by other people is actually who we are. That is because, is everything communicates all the time, so should I wear a mask and control my emotions and actions 24/7? Or should I, for once, stop and reflect if the image that I have been showing out is actually aligned with the person that I want to be seen as.
Here is how I can help you to summarize the whole concept of offline & online being just one line:
Our Personal Brand is one of our most valuable assets. That is because we can work in how we show up in different scenarios of our lives, and if all goes well, all these different personalities that we get to explore comes down to being just one person: you. When you are a dirty talk lady in your building, a funny friend with the people that you are close with, and a very serious/well spoken/elegant lawyer at profession - and your Instagram only have pictures of your dogs, can you see how it can be confusing?
That is not to say that you should not be you, or should pretend not to be who you really feel like just because of others. But working on your Personal Brand will help you to realize that all these different personalities that you carry within (as everybody else does) can work together to express the best of you.
That is saying, aligning your actions, how you dress, places you go, and how you show up (guess what?) on your Instagram matters, because we are communicating to the world who we are all the time.
The biggest goal when paying more attention to your Global image, is to make sure that you get to be and express yourself exactly how you would like to be perceived. Not pretending, not getting misread, or not getting lost in different point of views when it comes to your business. You are one person, in the online AND in the offline. Just one person.
For this reason, I challenge you to think: how have you been communicating yourself to the world, all the time?
xoxo
