If I were to ask you to think about the saying, “you only get one chance to make a first impression” and visualize it playing out between two people, many of you will form a picture in your mind of two people physically meeting for the first time.
Maybe you get a picture of two people shaking hands for the first time, or hear the small talk as they greet each other or maybe you imagine the interaction going smoothly or poorly. No matter what you see, the vast majority of you when asked to do this exercise will think in physical dimensions – you will picture two people physically meeting for the first time.
But, when taken in the context of building and promoting your personal brand you need to flip this convention on its head.
You need to think in digital dimensions.
Imagine somebody going to their laptop, typing your business name or a search term into Google and then clicking on any of the first five links that appear. This is the way that people meet in a digital economy.
The information that is found in those first five links is the digital first impression that others will form of you. This information and how it affects others’ views of you is what shapes the perception of your personal brand – and perception is reality.
Now spend some time going through the first five search results – if you try this out, you will find the names and related content from the individuals with the strongest personal brands for that search term. And, if you didn’t notice, you’ve actually just met someone and formed a digital first impression of them.
How many people are exposed to you digitally and ultimately end up forming their digital first impression of you? It’s hard to say how many for sure, but it is far more than the amount of people you will meet face to face in your lifetime.
This is a by-product of our digital economy — the majority of the people you meet are from your social networks or through people finding you on social networks, the web or through search engines.
These changes in the way people meet have many advantages for those who have positioned themselves favourably through building their personal brands.
You only get one chance to make a first impression. I believe in that statement now more than ever because people have the ability to find you online without you agreeing to it. If you have a strong personal brand you can influence a good digital first impression. If you do not have a strong personal brand, well, you will go largely unnoticed and find doors shut where others find doors open.
If you’re anything like me, you don’t like running into shut doors – you like them open with opportunity. If you think of it in this sense, creating your personal brand is much like having a set of keys to unlock closed doors.
How are you going to influence your personal brand today?
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