I’m often asked: Online Personal Branding, what is it? And what does it have to do with me?

Good questions.

The fact is that in this era people and companies are increasingly using the internet to find out information about others. When you log onto major social networking sites like LinkedIn, MySpace.com, Facebook et. al. you leave a ‘virtual footprint’ that gives an impression of who you are, what you like, whom you chose to associate with and other characteristics about who you are.

The question is: Do these ‘virtual footprints’ represent who you really are and how you want to be perceived?

I started my investigation on Personal Branding 8 years ago when I started working with my brother Peter Montoya, founder and president of Peter Montoya, Inc. a niche firm located in Orange County, California that specializes in helping financial service professionals create their ideal practice.

While there, I worked with over 1000 individuals and companies on their marketing colateral (brochures, business cards, stationery, websites etc.), marketing plans and overall business structure. I learned ‘hands on’ how to build an ideal practice and how to present that practice to the public so that ideal clients would be clammoring for their services and products. I got the opportunity to see this from both the external view of a consultant/advisor/coach to practices, and from watching my brother build his company from the ground up.

I mention this because it really helped to firm my understanding of what Personal Branding is and how it works in ‘real life’. My passion however was not to work for my brother forever…

…and I realized that I wanted to do something with the internet. What that something was, I did not really know at the time… and even now it is still growing, and yet I now have the vision for how I want my life to unfold- on a professional, emotional, physical and spiritual level I have the clarity of purpose and focus that I have never previously experienced. [These are things that I'm going to be sharing as future blogs unfold- stay tuned!]

So, to tie this initial entry up, the purpose of this blog is to further explore Online Personal Branding as I see it and to help others in their lives with this theory. I will demonstrate the power of Personal Branding through the various things that I find online; sports is a huge passion of mine and will carry the bullwark of my entries, then there will be pop culture references- movies and TV more so than Britney’s last breakdown- and other points of interest from business, politics and culture. After all this is a personal blog as much as it may be instructional.

Enjoy