Self Branding and Integrated Marketing Communications

Prasanna in his CV describes himself as an amateur photographer and a web 2.0 enthusiast. In discussions and interviews, he brings forth his interests and talks about his SLR, his traveling hobby and his extensive presence on social media. However if I were to do a web profiling of Prasanna and match it with his CV or what he spoke about in the discussions , there would be several gaps . For Eg – a conspicuous absence on flicker, lack of a photo blog and omission from participating in photography competitions on Facebook, other web communities etc. What you see is a case of different or inconsistent positioning about oneself through various touch points.

This is not an exceptional issue. It is a case of several communications fired in the wrong way. Brands have made mistakes of not sounding integrated in their communications and the consumer is bombarded with different messages sometimes resulting destructive interference of message waves. Brand managers and companies are still grappling with nitty-gritty of Integrated Marketing Communications ( IMC). A consumer gets in contact with the product or brand through various means – bill boards, traditional and online media, brick and click stores and finally the service centres. Companies must use these various touch points to deliver a consistent message to the consumer and repeated bombardments would serve to reinforce the messaging. That Is the essence of IMC. Most of us analyse products, brands and companies under the microscope of IMC, but fail to analyse ourselves. Well, communications and marketing is not restricted only to brands. In today’s small web 2.0 networked world it is important to do some amount of self- branding as well.
Self branding is becoming increasingly important thanks to the freely available information. Every one has a brand identity, a positioning and a proposition to offer. Publicly available information, social media profiles, blogs, tweets, community membership etc. speak volumes about your personality traits. It is upto us to define it, channelize it to give a sharp clearly defined positioning. If Google can acquire information about you and classify you in one of their several consumer segments, so can people, followers and potential recruiters.
As I see it , there are 3 issues here, firstly the need to build a brand about oneself , secondly integrating messages on the web ( the ones your profiles are disseminating)and then finally integrating the online and offline messaging. Twitter gives you an excellent opportunity to build a tribe. Yes , a tribe which is a dream for any brand. You can showcase personality traits – both professional and non- professional through LinkedIn and orkut recommendations. It is important to put up a reasonably elaborate brief about yourself on LinkedIn and ensure it matches with your CV. Update both at the same time. Obtain recommendations from colleagues, managers, professors and other people and have a good mix to show variety. Google reader ( has started public sharing), StumbleUpon ,Twine etc help you share reads. “Judge a man by his friends and his books”.
Now let’s come back to things Prasanna could have done differently. Just suppose that Prasanna has a photo blog, with a good number of followers, is a part of say wildlife photography community on facebook/orkut and participated on those ubiquitous competitions on the web. He is active on Twitter and has a good number of followers and tweets about his interests and follows like-minded people. He has a gallery on flicker and his photos are tagged and rated high and the list goes on.
Web 2.0 gives us an excellent platform for marketing & branding ourselves. It is beyond mere social networking and according to me the best way to Integrated Marketing Communications.