Personal Brand or Company Brand: How to Make the Decision

If you’re just getting started in social, you might have faced the decision of how to represent yourself on various platforms. Do you use your own name? Your company’s name? Or maybe a made up name for yourself, a sort of personal brand; something that reflects your expertise and what you’re going to be tweeting and talking about. Even if you aren’t an entrepreneur, or don’t have a business, everyone has that project that they feel represents their passions and drives. They want to make sure that has a place online as well.

So this is something that everybody struggles with. I know I did. I had a few different options when I first joined social. I could be Gary Vaynerchuk social media guy, or continue to be wine marketing man.

But the answer was obvious to me. I decided to just stay GaryVee. No expertise following it, no brand name or company name attached to me.

Why?

Well, you’re going to evolve. A lot. You’ll learn new things, start new companies or websites. And when you do, why would you want to leave all the amazing work you put in behind? The following you’ve built up, the readership, the expertise; you can keep it all, if you stick to your name.

So allow your online presence to evolve with you.

One of the things I like about your using own name is just that: you can evolve with it. I used to do a show where I drank wine and spat it out into a bucket. And now I’m doing a question answer show about the world of entrepreneurship. I’ve made a seamless transition because the whole time, I’ve been Gary Vaynerchuk. That didn’t change. The brand stayed the same.

Many of us have a lot of different facets of our personality, and we want to be able to talk about all of them. That’s why I think going with your name as the brand is the right thing to do. It sticks with you. There’s consistency. You don’t have to rebrand. I didn’t have to change my name from wine guy to ask guy.

But, a word of caution though before you head from this page straight to Twitter to create your new profile: you have to put in the work. You have to earn creating a personal brand around yourself. You can’t just come out of nowhere and be a brand. Do. The. Work.