I read this interesting news blog on the Guardian online prompting user thoughts and feedback on deleting your online presence which made me think about why you would delete your personal social brand (brand ‘you’) and start again.
I should say I also commented on the Guardian too to reinforce the point:
You have social footprints so why not help people to find you by following them?
I don’t know whether my feelings on deleting your social media profiles and starting again affects me because of the throw away societal iterations of these type of activities and an ingrained desire to recycle and utilise rather than dispose of, but I know there are better ways to make personal brand building work for you.
Benefits of a personal brand
You are your unique selling point and you don’t know who might be looking for you until you help people find out about your personal brand. You can control how you are perceived by people (or at least promote the elements of your personal brand that you want to be most prominent) and put on display the characteristics that you wish to build:
Let your voice be heard
A personal brand does not have to be disassociated from your professional brand or your business. In fact, often a personal brand adds measurable value to a business’s social media goals. The lines between personal brand and business brand often overlap, and authorship, rich snippets and other forms of content value from originators encourage this overlap to ever greater extents.
People trust people not brands
While brands can often seem removed, impersonal and unapproachable, people employed by brands can encourage interaction, reinforce trust signals and support brand authenticity. A number of people tend to consider the benefits of a personal brand as intangible and often personal however the gains from brand and thought leaders are directly quantifiable.