On having a "brand" and a self

It's been pointed out to me quite a few times that I kind of have a "brand" on the internet. One thing I've gotten asked a few times recently is how do I separate my "brand" from Ryn the person. Or put more generally, how do you build an online name for yourself professionally while still maintaining space and privacy for yourself personally?

I would recommend figuring out which online spaces make sense in a professional context. For me, a blog and Twitter are those places - I like words, and I like to say words on the internet sometimes. If your work is more visual, something like Instagram might be your professional space. (I've found two of my regular tattoo artists through their Instagram accounts of their work. It's not only cat pictures and artfully displayed food there!)

Different spaces will make sense for you based on what you're trying to accomplish. Don't feel like you have to have every social network be a part of your "brand". For me, it makes sense to have Twitter and this blog be where I maintain my more "professional" content - and I guess LinkedIn, judging from my amazing endorsements which I take very seriously:

My brand ends there, though. Everything else is personal and is going to stay that way. (So if I don't actually know you, I'm not going to accept your friend request on Instagram, and so on.) Don't feel bad about not engaging with people everywhere, either online or offline. Networking at a conference or meetup makes sense, but if someone comes up to you when you're at the airport or at a party and wants to talk shop (both have happened to me!), it's fine if you want to disengage in that circumstance. Don't feel the need to be "on brand" all the time.

So once you've decided where you're going to post your "brand"-related things, how do you decide what to post? I didn't have a good answer for this for a while - I found that those decisions were ones that I made without being able to clearly articulate how, and so this post had been languishing in my drafts folder for months.

But then one day recently I had a rather uncomfortable experience with someone I was meeting for the first time who decided that, in a professional context, it was acceptable to go back through years of my tweets and blog posts and tell me his assessments of my personality (and how he thought I had changed over time) based on that. Yes, my Twitter is public, but that level of scrutiny from someone I've never met felt almost intrusive. Overall, it was a pretty unpleasant interaction, but on the plus side, it really enabled me to clarify my "brand" strategy.

Post as if someone you don't know with no sense of boundaries is going to be reading this content with a fine-tooth comb three years in the future.

Before I tweet, I ask myself, either consciously or not, is this something that I'd want some potential overly-enthusiastic stranger with nothing better to do to be reading? If I'm making a joke, will my humor translate to someone who has never met me? If I'm talking about technology, how likely am I to get mansplained to? If someone decided to harass me, would this be fodder for them?

More and more of the time, I end up not posting something I was considering. The bigger my "brand" gets, the bigger the boundary I have to maintain between it and my self. The more followers I get, the less I actually tweet. Whether you're building a brand or maintaining one, keep in mind that you don't necessarily have any control over who sees your content or in what context. The same posts that can be used by people who want to help you or give you opportunities can also be seen by people who don't have your best interests in mind.

I normally try to not have posts that end on a negative note like this, but truthfully, having a "successful brand" hasn't really been all roses and kittens. (I wish it was all kittens.) I would be remiss if I talked about the opportunities without mentioning the costs. If you're trying to build a brand, make sure you remember that you don't know who will be out there consuming it. Unfortunately, visibility is not always a good thing.

And everyone, please be mindful of how you might come across to others, especially people who don't know you. Just because you follow someone online doesn't mean you actually know them, and something that you might see as funny might come across as creepy or even threatening to someone who doesn't know you at all. If we all keep this in mind, we can help make the world a better place, rather than a creepier one.