I’ve heard this before, just never seen it on the front bumper of a public vehicle. But I want to discuss it in light of how I’m building my business.

Personal branding?

In my blogroll is Dan Schawbel’s Personal Branding Blog, a blog I read regularly because it does have good career advice for young people in particular. But I have never been fond of the term “personal branding.” Dan himself theorized why people feel this way: “Could another term downplay the marketing connotation that risks reducing human beings to commodities?”

His answer to that particular concern:

Human beings start off as commodities and by way of personal branding, they can stand for something, achieve greatness and become visible to their audience.

He’s got a point about humans starting as commodities. People young and old do need to learn how to stand out from the rest of the labor force.

Still: branding? Do we have to put people on a par with Pepsi or J. Crew? Kami Huyse writes an even better explanation for those of us uncomfortable with the term: “…it leads to an undue focus on the self rather than developing and communicating character.”

Character as part of a team

Implicitly, what this means is that “personal branding” doesn’t do enough to support “team branding.” When you’re focused on reputation—what you do when others are watching—you’re not working with those others. You’re not part of a unit. You’re doing what you think is the right thing without considering whether it really is the right thing, whether it works for the team. You’re doing the right thing for you.

This is a crucial point when dealing with law enforcement and allied professions like digital forensics. Many of these professionals have the kind of character that deflects individual praise. They’d rather support team efforts. That’s because they know they wouldn’t be where they are without strong community support.

And yet they have great ideas, great talent, which deserves to be noticed so that they can help the wider community. Sometimes professionals know this; they want to go beyond where they’re already known, from law enforcement to the private sector, or focused on a new aspect of their careers.

Others are content just to help their team members and friends via training, doing favors, and such. They wouldn’t mind putting their expertise out there for more to see. It just isn’t a high priority. And that’s character.

Thus, good reputations. Even at times when they thought no one would be watching, someone was. They went the extra mile for a colleague or client, thinking it would stay just between them. And maybe it did. Except that even when loyal friends and fans don’t talk, people pay attention to loyalty.

Promote the mission

Writes Kami Huyse, “A better model is for the company (or individual) to develop strong values that they can live into and put all of their focus on that.” Values are related to missions. The best “personal brands” are those who have missions like, “Find the bad guys and put them in jail.”

Because when there’s a solid mission, and a person who’s devoted to it, they will do whatever they need to to make it happen. They’re not thinking a whit about what’s in it for them. They’re thinking about what they can do to strengthen the team to move as a cohesive goal toward completing the mission.

Professionals don’t just need to be scared into realizing that the Internet is as wide and as public as Times Square. They also need to be inspired to make that square their own digital billboard. Yes, this will be uncomfortable. No one likes to self-promote. Promoting the mission, though, is a whole different story.

What mission can you promote in the online square?

Image: striatic via Flickr

When the spotlight hits you, how will you look?

It’s not easy to find out about most investigators via Google search, and I’m sure they like it that way. The less information “out there” about them, the better; criminals won’t be able to find them (or their families) as easily, and defense attorneys won’t be able to damage their credibility in court. If they keep their heads down, their work will speak for itself among the people who matter most.

Well… maybe. But online reputations are beginning to be made without a person’s involvement or even knowledge. People increasingly go to sites like Twitter, their own blogs, or newspaper sites’ comment sections to share and, yes, vent their experiences with businesses and people and government agencies.

Consider this blog entry about Toronto Police Services Constable Scott Mills. It’s overwhelmingly positive; no surprise. I haven’t followed Scott for long, but his passion for his work is plain. He’s a Crime Stoppers youth coordinator, active in supporting graffiti art, and regularly seeks assistance from the public in solving crimes.

Even if he did not choose to be online, the Cop Gossip blog likely would’ve covered him anyway, as would Toronto news media. In other words, his reputation would be established for him. But if his influence was not so positive?

Then you’d have what happened to a friend of a friend.

Who’s in control of your reputation?

Researching a story, I was referred to a potential source by a friend. I wanted to find out whether this detective had written or spoken about the topic I was working on; my friend wasn’t sure, so to Google I turned.

What I found frankly shocked me. I trust my friend, and I knew he wouldn’t send me to someone I couldn’t likewise trust. But here was a detective who’d been brought up on an infraction: supplying alcohol to a minor. He’d pleaded no contest, paid a fine, and resigned from his position at the police department he worked for.

Google turned up another search result: a defense attorney who was using the media reports against the detective, insinuating during a separate trial that an inappropriate relationship existed between the detective and the minor, a police Explorer in the same department.

According to my friend, the detective and the Explorer had participated in a sting which resulted in the arrest of a liquor store proprietor. When it was over, the detective bought her something to drink. She picked an energy drink—one that contained alcohol.

This was before the demand to repackage alcoholic energy drinks, so neither of them noticed the problem. In the ensuing investigation, however, “energy drink” became “beer,” and the detective’s union rep gave him what my friend called bad advice: to resign before he was fired (given his record, probably unlikely).

The detective went to another agency, had no problem getting hired. Offline, his reputation had preceded him, and he apparently felt no need to try and improve his Google standing. “Why bother?” he may have thought, yet attention spans nowadays are not as long as they were when he started in law enforcement and traditional media made or broke a reputation.

In other words, had he started a blog or had articles published or worked to get positive press of the same kind that our mutual friend has, Google and other search engines would pay more attention to optimized, more recent mentions of his name. The other stuff wouldn’t disappear, but it would be harder for defense attorneys to cast reasonable doubt.

The new resume

Public relations/social media consultant Brian Solis quoted journalist Kevin Donline as saying:

It’s been said that Google is the new resume. Truth be told, any search engine, whether social or traditional, is the resume – it’s the Wikipedia entry for the rest of us. It’s no longer what we decide to curate onto a piece of paper or onto one traditional one-page digital resume. It really is moot in a world when anyone can practically piece together your story without the help of a document designed to shape and steer our perception.

Solis then went on to say: “Indeed, there are many stories that fuel the urgency for everyone to take control of their online persona.”

Back to Scott Mills. He doesn’t have to be online (though I’m sure he’d disagree), and any attention he were to get solely from Toronto media would be positive in itself.

But by having his Facebook and Twitter and other profiles, Scott has done what a lot of law enforcement professionals are not comfortable or used to doing: rather than react to something, he’s proactively “branded” both his work and his agency. And that’s something more public safety professionals need to strive for.

How can you be proactive about the way your work is reflected online?

Image: sashafatcat via Flickr