Is Personal Brand Management destroying Social Media?

"Don't even think about posting those photos online without retouching them!", my mother tells me after a recent visit. Not that my mother needs any retouching, but a huge insight from someone who is about as far removed from technology as someone can get. Social Medial connects with us for it's unabashed honesty. It's openness. We bow down to it for its ability to break down walls. It allows us to connect to those we would ordinarily not have access to with a level of intimacy that reminds us of our own dysfunctional family.

But we have learned, in part from advertisers and in part from our innate need to protect our persona -  and we have begun the slippery slope to brand ourselves. Privacy settings are less about 'who gets to see what' as they are about becoming the tools of how we craft our own personal brands.

The question is whether this defeats the purpose of what social media's success was in the first place. To lead the way with transparency, with authenticity. To break down those walls. It appears we are building them up again, as we become a reflection of the stylized marketing messages we sought to educate.

In order for social media to survive, we need to remember what connects us. Yes, we buy shiny new products, but we also long for the creative quirks, the social ineptitude and the expressive vision of the eccentricities in all of us.

And lastly, 'we' are not for sale!

Brand-Yourself.com Launches Platform to Manage Your Personal Brand Online

Posted via web from Jared Hendler