It’s incredible to see how the subject became fashionable in a few months (anyway in France) and how many experts suddenly emerged on the subjec. As  Vincent Berthelot [fr] I was rather taken aback about what it was all about but, at the end, I came to a quick conclusion:

- if everyone is transparent and shows what he/she really is, it can be a good thing.

- in the same way, personal branding must come with an ongoing improvement approach : “how to improve in order to be what I want to show”. By the way, it’s the same for any corporate/product branding logic.

- if we want the system to work, everyone has to respect the rules, what means admit than X or Y is better than me and should receive more attention than me. I don’t think it’s possible, for the only reason that human are human and the human nature is what it is…most of all when a job or a contract are at stake.

- hence the unavoidable drift toward a classical self-marketing approach, driven by the bottom but that “honnest” people will have to follow not be had by less competent but more crafty people.

- and, as a conclusion, as said in this famous slideshow, “If your product sucks, social media won’t fix it”. It also applies to people.

That’s how I sup up my neophytic thoughts on the subject. But, thanks to a long talk with Olivier Zara [fr] a few month ago I understand there’s a huge potential here, provided people can make the difference between gimmick practices that will discredit the concept and the “good practices” that will be collectively beneficial. I’m not only talking about the general public web but also about things that may take place within organizations.

In fact, it’s, one more time, a matter of switching from a push logic to a pull one.

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