Personal Branding: How much is too much?

Personal Branding gets easier these days, because you can mostly promote yourself for free, by using a dozen of different digital or social media platforms. The tricky thing is, the more you do, the more you have things to talk about and it will never be enough. However, it’s also getting more difficult because too many people are using it: Bragging right about anything and everything!

But really, how much is too much? When does your self-advocacy become self-adsorption?

A LinkedIn user shared about his new achievement “John has just completed a Marketing Course on LinkedIn”

A Facebook User shared this on her wall “Maria just got a training certificate provided by ABC Institution for being part of the Mentoring Program”

Some active influencer likes to share one famous quote per day to inspire other people and to attract likes.

Inspirational speakers that tell people to smile, stay positive every day.

Meaningless polls just to catch attention.

There’s actually nothing wrong about it until everybody is actually doing it. How do you leverage yourself by letting yourself become so ordinary and predictable?

A friend of mine is using less Social Media now because of this virtual world. I personally stop sharing all of my less impactful achievements as we all know how-easy-we-can-get-it-done. There’s nothing to brag about. Then some people may argue that it might have been easy for me but not for others and vice versa so you should still share them anyway.

Bottom line is, let’s just be more selective before we share things, for the sake of keeping the internet environment around us more clean and interesting. Why do we have to do that? Because life is a race, we will only get busier and the market will be more saturated and competitive and not everyone is happy with your success. By over-sharing, you might gain an enemy rather than an admirer. Here is what I do on a regular basis as part of my learning curve. It doesn’t mean I do not make mistakes but I guess, based on my personal experience, these rules work for me and to those I value more than other people.

-I do write about…myself, but limit to maximum 01 post per 02 weeks.

-I write about other people with information which is relevant to you instead – Remember that when you do good things for other people, good things will happen to you. Give people kudos or recommendations.

-Be authentic if you can. Don’t try to be someone you are not. Authentic people can detect ingenuity.

-Be selective in joining public debates or events: Don’t just be part of every crowd.

-Let people write about you or mention your names – this will be a lot more effective than you singing so-lo the whole time.

–Don’t try to be better than your peers, you just need to be better than yourself.

-Don’t be pessimistic but try not to not overly-positive at times is a real blessing to many people. We are all human-beings and nothing too much is good.