Now that I have an idea of what kind of experiment I want to employ in order to analyze and explore the concept of personal brands in the virtual world, I have a serious task at hand:
I need to work out the details.
I have thought a lot about how I might be able to reshape my own personal brand on my preexisting social media outlets. I have come to the conclusion that the most difficult medium to work with in this respect will be Facebook. The reason for this is because Facebook is not just about the individual; all Facebook activity is very contingent upon the “other.” What I mean by other are friends, and friends of friends (depending on one's privacy settings).
Regardless of privacy settings, there is no real way to completely control the content on Facebook, especially images, that will be associated with your face, name, and ultimately personal brand. Tagged photos, even once “untagged,” float in the liminal Facebook space featuring, you guessed it, your face! In light of this, I am leaning toward focusing my own personal brand reshaping on the twitter medium.
Even though I do not have much twitter content as it stands, it will still be a challenge to shift what I have already posted to fit some sort of personal brand. The question now becomes, what is it about myself that I want to make my personal brand? Who am I trying to attract? Is there a message I want to be sending?
Now for the second part of my experiment, I will be embarking on the most inauthentic of paths to create a totally fake identity. For this challenge, I will be working with Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram (?). Each will serve to create a specifically targeted personal brand for a fabricated personality.
Now, here comes the exciting part...
The first thing I will need to lock down is an individual, someone I have access to regularly so that I can photos of them as needed, who is willing to participate in my experiment. This person will have to be comfortable having his or her face associated with a different, make up, name and a personality created by me...at least for the rest of the semester.
This person will not be involved in the administration of the fabricated person's social media accounts; only his or her face will be a part of the journey.
Stay tuned for updates!