Blog - Your Personal Brand

Over the last couple of months, an employee in Norway’s leading financial services company, DnBNOR, has become known as the man who hates farmers. There may well be other people out there who hate farmers, or at least don’t like them, and, for most of us, this is not a problem. It is a problem for Ole Irgens, however, because he is the head of communications at DnBNOR, a position for which such a brand tag is not particularly
suitable.

Newspapers reported last week that Ole Irgens had resigned. The whole thing started when he used the title “damned farmers” in a blog as part of an argument that farmers had received too much money from the state this year. The blog caused a huge number of negative reactions among farmers, employees, competitors and journalists, among others. Opponents all agreed upon that Irgens’ statement was highly unacceptable and weakened the company’s reputation, despite a strong apology on the front page of the leading Norwegian newspaper assuring readers that the bank really is fond of farmers.

A Norwegian journalist and social media enthusiast, Elin Ørjasæther, wrote a comment on the case in the newspaper E24. She claimed the story was sad for anyone who wants lively public debate. She focused on the fact that the director wrote the blog as a private individual; nowhere did the blog identify Irgens as an employee in the bank, nor could he be identified by e-mail, address or photo. Ørjasæther argued that the blog was therefore exemplary in its distinction between a private blogger and that person’s job. When blogs like this need to be removed because the content may have economic consequences for the company the author represents, Ørjasæther argues that public debate is weaker for it.

Ørjasæther highlights relevant issues. Blogs allow anyone – private individuals and employees – the opportunity to express themselves in public, which can promote various forms of participatory democracy and discussions. Nonetheless, I believe that Ørjasæther’s conclusions are wrong. Essentially, this case is not about whether business leaders and others can express their personal opinions on the Internet. The case is about how the way in which you communicate in social communities might affect how people perceive you and what you are saying. What is important here is accountability and I believe that leaders must be more careful than others; the role of a leader involves a special duty of care.

The farmer case is a good example of the difficult distinction between someone as an individual on the web and the role that person plays in their professional life. It is also a good example of how the combination of private and professional roles can damage a reputation. Brand new research has confirmed that being true to your own identity is one of the most important elements in successful branding - also on the web. Although this is elementary knowledge in traditional brand management, it is often forgotten when it comes to initiative in social media.

A recent master’s thesis entitled “Your personal brand”, written by two Stockholm University students, confirms that the concept of brands is becoming broader and no longer only includes products and companies but also individuals. Because personal brands are becoming more important, it is also important to monitor and keep track of one’s online image, due to factors such as transparency, openness and the speed of distribution of content in social media. The thesis is based on interviews with a number of people – both well known and less known – who all agree that everyone has a personal brand but that some people manage it better than others. I believe that the findings of that study can be related to the fact that you are never a 100 percent private person in social media. You will always be a representative of your “professional me” and the company you represent. Therefore, a clumsy comment about farmers in a blog can quickly be perceived as something other than what was intended. In this way, your private online identity can give a false representation of the real person behind the profile, thereby undermining your professional identity and the business you represent.

Christine Rosen, a researcher and editor of The New Atlantis, wrote an article entitled “Virtual friendship and the new narcissim” in which she emphasised the importance of thinking carefully about what kind of profile pictures we post in social media. Rosen made the point that photographs and painted portraits allow the viewer to see a glimpse of who the figure in the portrait really is and also how the person wishes to be portrayed.

Self-portraits can expose and obscure, clarify and distort. Rosen concludes her research by raising two questions. Firstly, does the constant need to collect “friends” and digital status interfere with our understanding of who we actually are? And secondly, is it more important to portray yourself in a cool and risqué manner online than to know who you are?

In other words, a number of human factors expressed on the web can affect your personal brand. The purpose of branding and building a reputation in social media, I believe, is to professionalise your behaviour on the Internet, to prevent that coincidences play the main role in how you are perceived. The focus should not just be on how you appear but on how you do not wish to appear. It’s all about positioning yourself and your business in relation to your stakeholders.

Traditional brand and reputation theory points out the importance of the first impression and studies tells us that 80 percent of the impression that people have of you is formed during the first seconds of your first meeting. This impression can quickly be passed on to people who do not know you but that you may meet later. And although it may seem that the Internet is something of a lawless universe and that we are sharing information online that we might not have shared if we were meeting face to face, there is no reason to believe that other rules apply here.