Jul
8




Challenging Integrity: Personal and Professional Branding

With social media marketing becoming a household term – even its own well-known acronym (SMM) – and “branding” becoming a concept that even teenagers grasp, I have been thinking a lot lately about the challenges that come from having so much of my life visible online. All three of my kids have Facebook pages, MySpace pages, email accounts and more. My wife and I work diligently to monitor their activity and ensure their safety, and we discuss with them the potential dangers of revealing “too much”. Specifically we have outlawed school names, street addresses, and other items that might give the wrong people clues to their whereabouts or schedules. I think we would all agree that children sharing any personal information online is a dangerous proposition. But what about adults? How much is “too much” for you and me?

Employers keep tabs on their employees or Google potential hires to see if there is anything damaging about them online that may prove harmful for the organization or detrimental the person’s character.

A few quick searches and I can tell you if my neighbor has a criminal record, a parking ticket, or some other interesting tidbit of information.

Heaven forbid I add you to my Facebook account and possibly see pictures of you in embarrassing situations or hear about how wasted you got over the weekend.

So lately it seems there is a strong move toward (and sometimes even company policy for) employees, students and anyone else to create and maintain two separate online identities: a professional and a personal “branding”, if you will.

As a freelance web designer this has become a relevant topic for me. Most of the business that I do is so strongly connected to the use of online tools, profiles and media that it seems the wise thing to do would be to follow suit and have a website, social media presence and online identity that is purely professional for bkmacdaddy designs, while having a separate personal “Brian McDaniel brand”. But as soon as I began considering this I realized the challenge it would create for the maintaining of my own personal integrity. That’s what I want to write about in this article.

I don’t presume to be right. In fact, this may just be my own little soapbox and very few passersby will stop long enough to hear what I have to say. But if you have been wrestling with some of these same thoughts, or perhaps by the end of this reading you will be struggling with them now, I would love to hear what you think about all of this separation of personal and professional and how it challenges your own integrity.

I once heard someone say that integrity is how you behave when no one else is around. Over the years I have held fast to that definition and often hold it up as a litmus test for decisions I make. So I have begun to look at that concept when contemplating the idea of separate online identities.

As a freelance business person, I want my clients to know without a doubt that I am honest, my rates are fair, I consistently provide the best quality and personal service within my capabilities, and I treat my clients with the utmost respect, just as I desire to be treated.

If I were to have a separate, partially protected or hidden personal online brand or identity, how would that convey all of the characteristics that I just listed? To me it would appear that there are parts of my life I don’t believe my clients either should know about or have the right to see.

While I absolutely agree that my clients, my friends, even my family should not have complete 100% access to every thought or moment in my life, I am wondering if there should be a different question:

What kind of life am I living that I need to keep parts of it hidden?

I’m not talking about personal information like phone numbers or street addresses or credit cards.

I’m talking about the whacky or not-so-flattering pictures that end up in a Facebook photo album. Or the tweets about how much someone had to drink last night. Or the mean-spirited complaints about a person I wrote on my personal blog. Or whatever your online tool of choice may be.

At what point do we stop attempting to protect ourselves by hiding the not-so-attractive or socially respectable parts of us, and instead address our own character and refrain from doing those things that we really don’t want people to know we do?

The next question for me is this: what is the determination of where the line is drawn?

No reasonable person would ever post anything online about illegal activities, knowing that it would come back to haunt them if it ended up in the wrong hands. But what is the barometer of what is acceptable for everyone to know about me?

If you were thinking about hiring me to design your website, what would you have to find in the online archives to steer you away from my services?

I think the answer is that everyone has their own lines based on upbringing, culture, religious beliefs, socio-economic status and so on. So how in the world am I going to manage all my online identities to ensure that I don’t offend anyone?

For me, that approach sounds impossible.

For me, the answer is simple.

I am confident in who I am and my ability to maintain my integrity both in the presence and personality I portray of myself online and in my every day personal interactions with my friends, clients, colleagues and family. I will make mistakes, but doesn’t everyone?

For me, there is no separation.

There are not TWO bkmacdaddy/Brian McDaniel’s.

This is me. Take me or leave me. Love me or hate me. Hire me or discard me. The choice is yours.

I realize that this approach may not be the best route for you and your business or professional life.

But for me it enables me to sleep at night knowing I’ve done the best I can do being the best me I can be. All ONE of me. The guy that works hard to deliver quality web and graphic design services is also the same guy who’s a father, husband, friend, and fun-loving maniac with stretched ear holes, tattoos and a faux hawk.

I think I can live with that. How about you? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Some other articles related to this topic you might want to read:

Categories Social Media, Wanderings | Tags: , , , , , , , ,

You may also find these related posts interesting

No related posts found

  • Pingback: Challenging Integrity: Personal and Professional Branding | Branding

  • Steve

    Very relevant topic. While I don’t have clients per se, I am a corporate manager, and as such must be conscious of what I say and how I act around co-workers and direct reports. Social Media has blurred the lines between personal an professional lives. The off-color joke that I might tell amongst friends could get me in trouble in a work environment. An un-popular political view that I may want to post on Facebook might offend one of my employees.

    Do I accept co-workers as friends or followers, knowing that I might have to edit what I post? Or as your blog postulated, do I maintain both professional and personal profiles. For now, I have chosen to be myself. I preach openness and transparency with my employees and co-workers and so, try to live by that principle. In the world of corporate political correctness, this can be risky…it only takes one person to be offended and you have an HR issue.

    Great topic

    • bkmacdaddy

      Thanks for the visit & comment, Steve. I am very interested in hearing different viewpoints on this. I agree that the corporate world presents even more of a challenge, but I also agree with your approach. I think the integrity issue is one that should be addresses in any situation, whether corporate or personal or as a self-employed person.

      Wishing you well in your pursuit of transparency and tru authenticity.

  • http://blog.webdistortion.com Paul

    Interesting topic Brian. I find that not giving myself personal branding but branding a “company” helps on this one.

    That said people want to work with people, not faceless corporations and giving a depth to your persona only helps and serves to portray the way you’ll approach a project.

    • bkmacdaddy

      I think you’re absolutely right, Paul. People want to work with people. And now with social media we all have the opportunity for deeper insight into who people are (or want us to think they are). Thanks for the visit & comment!

  • http://www.tkpartnership.com Leslie Carothers

    I LOVE this post, Brian. It is an issue I have thought about a lot-especially since I do SM work for a living and tweet on my own timeline @tkpleslie on behalf of my clients. As a result, both for them and for myself, we are CO-BRANDING as everything I might say is indexed on Google when I tweet!

    For me,there is almost no separation between who I am online and who I am offline.

    I think, offline, I might seem a bit more brusque sometimes to people as I get a bit harried since I’m usually trying to do more than I should, but, other than this, I am one and the same.

    Having said this, who out there is a saint in all aspects of their life? Noone I know (or want to know!) Most of us, at one time or another, have done or said something we’re not proud of or we were not a shining example of sobriety, etc. That’s just being human and it’s ok. I am not going to think someone is horrible if I see or read something like that once or twice. Now, if it’s a PATTERN OVER TIME, then that is a different story.

    One of the wonderful things about social media, if people choose to engage as real people, is that your friends on the different social sites get to decide what they think of you. You are what you tweet or post, etc. and if you post or tweet a lot, your real personality eventually shines through. It’s there clear as day for the world to see. So, as individuals, we don’t have to worry about it. It just IS.

    A fun and interesting thing to do is to go back over your own updates on Facebook or Twitter, etc. and read them as if you were an outsider who didn’t know you. What opinion would you form of yourself? Once you’ve done that, realize it’s more likely than not that that is what others think of you, too!

    We don’t control anything if we choose to engage in conversations online. The fallacy is in thinking that anything is different offline. It’s not.. It’s just that these opinions might take a bit longer to form offline because the interaction rate is generally slower due to our time limitations when meeting in person.

    Thanks for an insightful and thought provoking post, Brian.

    • bkmacdaddy

      Great suggestion, Leslie – about reviewing your past online discussions and posts. I will have to give it a shot soon. I must admit that I’m a tiny bit nervous about what I might find. Always good to try to see what others are seeing in and about me.

  • http://www.naturaworld.com Julia Rosien

    Very relevant topic!

    I think much of the fear comes from those who don’t understand that ANYTHING on social networks is part of the public domain. If you’re trying to hide something, you’re going to find out the hard way that it’s impossible.

    I have a rule – If I can’t say it to my Mom, my boss AND my friends, it doesn’t belong online. And if I can’t say it to all those groups then maybe I need to revisit why I feel the need to put it out there.

    That one rule allows me to join my personal branding with the company I work for – with no worries about cross-over. What you see on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. is pretty much what you’d see if we had drinks on the patio or I met you for a meeting in your office.

    Great article, Brian!

    • bkmacdaddy

      I like your rule, Julia! I tend to think the same way. I also want to challenge myself to address the behavior in question BEFORE I do it rather than afterward asking if I should share it online or not. Not an easy task, but that’s my idealistic personality. Trying to strive for 100% transparency. Thanks so much for the blog visit and response!

  • Pingback: Integrity is how you behave when no one else is around. (from bkmacdaddy.com ) - Twitoaster

  • http://artroxthinks.wordpress.com/ Nicky Tillyer (@artrox)

    IT’s a can of worms isn’t it. While I maintain my own personal integrity, I don’t want our young employees who are still at that drunken pics on facebook being connected with our corporate brand, so therefore I try and keep my personal identity separate from my employers brand.

    But I have an uncommon surname and it won’t be long before I am linked I am sure, how do I feel about that? Well like you I have nothing to hide (other than times I tweet when I should be working LOL). But I don’t necessarily want co-workers or or associates knowing too much about my private life, not out of embarrassment but out of privacy.

    Hmmmmm…a conundrum!

    Then there is the case of the FedEx employee who twittered about a place being a dump (or similar) on arrival in a town for a meeting, who lost the contract. That person was simply making a ‘pithy’ observation…I mean I don’t like every town I visit either…did they take offense too easily? Was that twitter account a corporate or personal account? Should they have kept their observations to themselves? What about all the Michael Jackson comments…I mean the negative ones, they’re offensive, some are humorous…depending on your view.

    What is the answer…I don’t think any of us know. In this politically correct time we live in where personal commentary needs to be censored at the best of times how much is too much, and how restricted is not being true to self?

    Great post…consider the worms roaming free!

    • bkmacdaddy

      Thanks for the visit & the addition to the discussion, Nicky. I think the answer is unique to each individual and corporation and one they will all have to grapple with. But for me I am certain the answer is to start at the root with my own character and behavior. If it’s something I can be proud of and confident in, then I have nothing to hide or censor from others!

      LOVE this discussion!

  • http://2fishweb.com Carol Logan Newbill

    Hm. My thinking on this subject is changing radically as I work through the redesign of my own website. I’ve always kept “me” out of my business because I have been uncomfortable talking about cheese sandwiches for lunch and problem clients and rude salespeople. I am beginning to think now that I went too far with invisibility — that potential clients want to know that there is a real person behind 2FishWeb. My new “about me” page will have a good deal more info … well, about me.

    I do have separate profiles on both Twitter and Facebook, which I set up primarily to reserve both business and personal names. It’s evolving so that the business profile is marketing and web design tweets and posts, while the personal name profile has attracted friends and followers in the art community. Since art is a large part of my business, there’s a great deal of overlap. My kids don’t follow my business tweets, though. And I’m too old to be tempted to get drunk and post embarrassing pictures online. :p

    • bkmacdaddy

      Thanks for the thoughts, Carol. It sounds like the more we delve into this subject the more we must decide where our boundaries are. Hope this has been helpful in your new website development.

      • http://2fishweb.com Carol Logan Newbill

        Rereading my initial comment, I wonder if I needed coffee. I wasn’t terribly clear.

        Basically: I am who I am. That comes through in my writing although I have tried to minimize overt personality in my business dealings.

        People like to deal with people. I need to be less anonymous on my website, though no less “me.”

        And the only reason for separating business from personal is that not all my business clients are interested in art, while not all my art friends are interested in web design and marketing.

        I still don’t talk about what to have for lunch on either side. :)

  • http://colemanphotographix.com Nick Coleman

    Good questions, for sure. Two things:

    1) I do separate what people can see on my Facebook account–not because I am hiding anything unflattering (I follow your advice on refraining), but because I have experienced wall posts, etc. from friends whose language does not fall in the same line.

    2) My clients, business associates, etc. should have no reason to sort through my baby pictures or other personal information–regardless of whether they might find it “interesting”… so those are off limits, in my opinion.

    I live and work in the same space… much like Facebook and other social media site are multi-purpose. But just because I invite people in from 10AM-5PM doesn’t mean that they should also hang out in my bedroom, or go through my keepsakes or family albums on the shelf.

    There’s a middle ground: appropriate relationships. I use my phone to talk with my family and my girlfriend… I also use it to speak with my clients. But we discuss different things.

    Nothing wrong with limiting the scope of the conversation to the appropriate boundaries for each person. Expecting more access than what is appropriate is a major problem with modern society (in my opinion), and not something to embrace, but to resist.

    • bkmacdaddy

      Great thoughts, Nick! I agree that the direction our society is taking with expecting more access is something to resist. It’s a great struggle between true transparency and complete breach of personal confidentiality. As an idealist I want to push for total honesty, but in the end it may just really mean that my boundaries are just a little farther in than others. We all have our lines we won’t cross, I guess.

  • Pingback: Twitted by jimhunt

  • http://www.buildyoursoulpurpose.com Brandon R Allen

    Here here. It really comes down to being a professional and acting like you should act. Having 2 identities makes no sense to me. Social media is supposed to be about authenticity. You should be careful about what you reveal in some sense but bottom line there is nothing on any social media page that I would be worried about.

    • bkmacdaddy

      Thanks for the comment, Brandon. Obviously we’re not talking about revealing all elements of your personal life such as your children’s photos or items that potentially endanger your family’s security or other things of that nature. But when it comes to revealing the true character of a person, shouldn’t we be able to stand before everyone online or off with confidence that our true character is enough?

  • http://imageidentity.com/ Dave Lubelczyk

    Being IMAGEidentity’s Founder/President/Key Figure I already have trouble keeping my company brand and my own professional brand separate. If I had to add a personal brand to the mix my head might explode. Therefore, I try to keep my online brand as friendly as possible revealing some of me while trying to maintain a professional image.
    I know someone who maintains two Facebook profiles. I went to college with him and I know him professionally. I am friends with both profiles and I am never sure which profile to interact with. Conversations often drift in and out of both walls. It is a pain. I also notice that neither is 100%personal or professional.
    My advice is to determine what you want your online brand to be and only post things or interact with friends online who will support that brand.

    • bkmacdaddy

      Interesting points, Dave. I appreciate your input. I think the example of the confusion your friend’s online identities creates is a perfect one for this discussion. Thanks for the advice!

  • http://visualcreative.net Rami

    It is such an interesting question…I struggled with this “branding” problem when I built my first website for my business. I am a designer, and that is what I do for business. I am also a visual artist, and an experimental musician. And a mom. And a thinker.

    I am an integrated being, but all of these roles have different qualities, different tones, and I am uncomfortable with revealing all of those dimensions uniformly. I don’t want my design clients to necessarily know how “out there” my music or my personal philosophies are (or might be perceived to be)…I know my own code of integrity, but I am also familiar with being misunderstood or incorrectly assessed, and that is the risk with “branding” that is incoherent, too stiff, too personal…The public and the personal face are not the same…but they all overlap in the world of social media.

    My solution thus far is to keep some separation based on how I use each medium: Linked In is completely impersonal — business only; Facebook is for friends and family only; Twitter…is public but chatty, like Main St. in my neighbourhood; and my blog…THAT’S where I get stuck. I can’t choose a tone for this: I more often want to write from a very personal point of view, but my blog is on my professional site!! And I am not comfortable putting my self out there in a totally personal way in the same space I am trying to appeal to unknown future clients…

    Really, I guess at the core of the question, I don’t put ANYTHING online that I am not ok with being PUBLIC. But I differentiate my use of social media, based on who I think is MOST LIKELY to be paying attention, or how I have chosen to limit access.

    • bkmacdaddy

      Thanks for your thoughts, Rami. I completely understand your getting stuck between the various online forums and how to best use your blog. Again, I think it’s every individual’s struggle and we will all probably end up at our own various places.

      • http://visualcreative.net Rami

        I agree — everyone has to establish their own measure of comfort and appropriateness…I appreciate that you framed your article around integrity. It’s a very important angle in the discussion I think.

  • http://forum.progressive-seduction.com/index.php?showuser=41643&kostenlose-filme-downloaden=0 Gratis Filme Downloaden

    Great post!

  • http://owng.net countzeero

    This is a great article about a very valid subject. Gave me real food for thought and set me to reviewing my own “Personal” Brand Strategy.
    I have been around on the interwebs since ´94 or so, back then I was mostly to be found on “the boards” and later using the mighty Hotline Communications Software on my PowerMac.
    The Web in the late 90´s was to me about subversive dissemination and being anti-establishment, the feeling of being 1337 or l33t was enforced by being a Server Admin running Hotline and offering all sorts of wierd and wondeful or plain dodgy stuff to those lucky enough to be insiders in “our” community.
    We instinctively used “nicks” not only to protect our real identities but also as projections of our personalities, I think a “nick” gives someone encountering you for the first time more insight into what you are about than a real name.
    countzeero has been my “online identity” for a good 15 years now – I took the name from the 2nd part of William Gibsons Sprawl Trilogy – added a second “e” (for reasons I won´t go into here) and promptly registered email addresses and domains. My online persona was born. I have used this “ID” for so long now that it has become inseparable from my “real” identity, some good friends call me Count or refer to me as The Count – both on and offline. I have even insisted that my email address at various Agencies where I have worked be count or [email protected].
    As the web boomed and subsequently blew up in it´s own face and online privacy issues made daily headlines I sat there smugly grinning at friends and colleagues who were being beleaugered by telemarketing and spam mail whilst shovelling kilos of waste paper out of their postboxes. Almost 10 years have passed now since the dotcom boom and we live work and play in an Internet that is generally assumed to be safe for non hackers and geeks, I say “assumed safe” because this is not the reality. The internet of today is IMO dirtier and sleazier than it ever was back in it´s infancy, Identity Theft, Malware, Keyloggers, Rootkits and BotNets are just a few of the threats to the personal Integrity of anyone who goes online.
    Although I maintain Profiles on a multitude of Social Networks which integrate directly with real life, real work and real play, I still prefer my Front-End Identity to be countzeero. If you look deep and hard enough you will find my Name, Address and even telephone number. This is necessary and unavoidable for a freelance designer dealing with clients from both the online and offline world. I do not see it as measure of my sincerity (integrity) that I prefer this approach to the “facebook” type of unconsidered and complete personal disclosure which seems to be accepted by millions.
    The integrity of countzeero reflects directly upon my real person and vice versa – I don´t pretend to be anything or anyone else. I am Me and countzeero is Me. I like it that way and I have never had a client shy away from working with me because I don´t use my real name in online communications. I would go so far as to say that I have gained not only clients and jobs, but also new friends because I maintain a “Virtual Persona” that they can relate to.
    Since founding the OWN INDUSTRIES brand with my better half (who also maintains a couple of virtual personalities) I have been experimenting and developing a whole bunch of Brand Identities and have begun to refer to them as ID:Entities. In essence these ID:Entities are various aspects of our creative (multiple) personalities and reflect different values, roles and contributions to the “whole” of the OWN brand. The integrity of our brand is being reinforced by these virtual entities and the background noise of our real identies.
    Personally speaking I feel that integrity comes from the spirit and is not implicit in whether that person prefers anonymity or not. I would go further and say that some virtual entities – take the Gorillaz as a prime example – display more integrity than many “real-life” identities let´s say politicians and investment bankers.
    I will continue to enforce my Integrity (in all senses) by using my virtual entity as an anchor to my real life person and believe that they will both benefit from this approach. The integration of both into my real-life and virtual presence has so far proven to be successful and I can´t see any reason why that should change in the future.
    To finish up I would like to say that I have seldom read a “blog” that is so engaging and interesting as yours. I feel that I absolutely have to have my “say” in the discussions that take place here. Maybe it has something to do with your obvious integrity.

  • Pingback: Back to One… « Sheila Germain