I thing that the most difficult thing to learn is to learn about your-self, to know what do you want exactly, to understand what you need, and to describe what you want.

But as you know, it all about you and by your own perceptions.
And talking about “personal branding”, your own perceptions is not the most important, because “It’s not What You Say, It’s What They Say about You”, the most important now is their perceptions.

© Photographer: Svanhorn4245 | Agency: Dreamstime.com

I love learning more about personal branding, creating a personal branding matrix for all my goals, etc.
I always think that i’am a student of personal branding, i learn and learn more from my personal branding mentors.

Here some profiles of my personal branding mentors online, as mentioned in “50 Personal Branding Consultants Worth Working With” :

Dan Schawbel
Dan’s specialty is personal branding for members of Generation Y. He’s especially well known for his blog on personal branding, along with his book, Me 2.0: Build a Powerful Brand to Achieve Career Success.
Here my special interview with Dan Schawbel

Megan Fitzgerald
Megan works with expats and globally-minded professionals and entrepreneurs seeking a career or business that fits who they are and their international lifestyle.

Hajj Flemings
Hajj’s book, The Brand YU Life, covers branding in some depth. He also teaches personal brand management at Michigan Technological University, as well as speaking regularly about brand management.
Here my blog post about Hajj Flemings

Thanks to all my online mentors, for sharing your knowledge about personal branding.
Happy New Year 2010, I wish you all have a great of success in 2010

http://blog.caturpw.com/2009/12/28/my-personal-branding-mentors.html

Have you watch Mel Gibson movie "What Woman Want" , when Nick Marshall (Mel Gibson) suddenly has the power to hear everything women are saying just because he zapped by electricity.

Can you imagine that? He suddenly know what woman think about himself.
The Bad mostly .. About how woman hate him when he insults women, tells offensive chauvinistic jokes, and generally goes out of his way to offend woman.

Very shocking when other people got negative image from you, am I rite! .

But he got positive insight about his personal branding directly from reliable source, so in next he can fix it.
As result, now Nick become most understandable caring person, and woman love him a lot, event he can turning competitor into great friend.

In real world, that such miracle doesn’t happen so easily like that. To have a good customer insight, we need to conduct a full FGD research or Ethnographic research and  Netnographic research for internet user.

Here by this article I want to share with you about finding a good insight from blogosphere.

I am sure that all of you have a great mission on building your personal brand. All set, including planning, timeline, brand image, etc. It’s perfectly settled now. Next step is execution of the plan, is everything runs perfectly? just like what you want, or maybe you get shocked that people get wrong message about your brand??

Blog as one of media to help you promoting your personal branding, is part of blogosphere. You can not avoid them.

Blogosphere always right (it’s only right when it agrees with you, of course)
~ "Small Is the New Big" by Seth Godin

During your brand building journey, people are watching and learning about you. They absorb the message that broadcast from your brand image. People creating their own perceptions about you. They might posting it to their blog, make it easily access able in blogosphere, share it with  another bloger. The perception can be good or bad, it’s up to blog owner.

So, can we know what people say about our personal brand?

Me, myself use Technorati for it. With more than 30.000.000 blog claimed member, they have my trust on finding specific blogs. Just tipe your brand name on Technorati search box. Wait and see the good result that many blogs linked to yours. (read more about Tips to choose your “link love” partners to recognize blogs that make great impact on your blog popularity)

You see, no need to be zapped first to know what other bloggers say about your personal branding.
The next step is maintain your brand image, by commenting professionally in articles about your brand in other people blog. Make sure it can helps you deliver the right message of your personal branding image.

I use a sample with Dan Schawbel Figure as Personal Branding Specialist.
As you can see, from the result on Technorati. Dan message are deliver very well as personal branding specialist, and if you figure out more, Dan spare his time to maintain communication and driving the right message of his personal brand image by commenting in the article.

So, are you ready to know what people say about your personal brand? See it your self in Technorati