Branded!
Dating myself here but do any of you remember that old TV western, Branded, with Chuck Conners? I loved it. The theme song is running through my head right now: What do you do when you're branded... Got on Twitter today and the first thing to catch my eye was a tweet from @DannyOutlaw on The Ultimate Self Branding Guide (via @imjustcreative). Check it out. It's a PDF file by Christopher Doyle. Unlike Conners' character on the show, branding is supposed to be a good thing now days.
To quote Graham from ImJustCreative, "If you can't brand yourself or your own company, how can you do so for others. You must be seen to take pride in yourself, your company and how people see, relate and talk about you."
After checking those guidelines, I do think my own personal branding needs some serious (or is that not-so-serious?) tweaking.
Update: Then shortly after posting this I spotted About a Brand by Jen Wright where she takes on this personal branding thing (and the photo she used just fit so perfectly with the little TV theme song in my head). She addresses the whole truth in advertising thing (or lack of) from the self-branding perspective.
Go sell yourself!
And on a related note...
Very interesting and very true. We all need to think about this, especially those of us who work free lance.