Who are you online? Are you your real self? A pen name? The name of your company?

You may already have a presence online but it’s never too late to consider this. Should your social media accounts be under your real name or that of your company? Should you have multiple accounts, one for each? Do these identity require separate websites too?

Branding doesn’t have to be painful.

Take a minute to think out your online presence. Do the avatar, bio, profile design you’re using reflect what you’re trying to convey? You may have just slapped something up there quickly when you signed up, re-purposed an old personal account into your professional one or just written up a quick bio but now’s the time to make sure everything is presenting you and your company in the best possible way. Update your pictures and profile, proofread and punch up your bio, and look at the big picture. Is your online identity helping your brand? How would your online identity look to a prospective customer?

The term brand gets a lot of bad press but, to me, it just refers to the personality of your company, it’s voice. If you’re a writer writing under your real name, then your brand is just your public personality. A friendly face with varied interests is always more relate-able than a sterile logo or polished company account. How your public personality differs from your private one, however, is something to consider.

If you’re running a company, while your personality is always going to bleed through into your brand to some extent, you need to decide how much you want to keep your real and brand identities separate or merged. Will your company have it’s own website and social media accounts separate from any personal ones you maintain personally? In most cases, it should, particularly if your personal account is very informal. You can say and do things as an individual that would get your company in trouble were that same comment coming from your official account. But, when done right, merging your personality with that of the company can give your brand not only a personality, but also a visible and relate-able face to draw in buyers and fans. Just remember that something a company posts is always under more scrutiny than a post by an individual and customers can be easily offended and slow to forgive.