What is your personal brand?

I'm a bit new to this blog business. As much as it is an over-used cliche, and the opening sentence is probably the single most abused sentence in the history of blogging (statistics anyone?), I am feeling my way through the process of (hopefully) becoming a blog-savvy netizen. The sheer influence of the blogosphere in China, and the growing role it plays in both influencing and reflecting the rather mercurial currents of public opinion here, have led to my resolving to bite the bullet, sit down and learn something new. Phew!

So, yesterday I posted my first blog. Today I tried to 'hook up' my blog to my Linkedin profile, which tends to languish in a kind of cyber-limbo, half populated with my personal information, playing a sorry second-fiddle to Facebook. First of all, in describing and advertising the application which allows me to show a blog link on Linkedin, the function was hyped up by a statement to the effect that 'everyone knows that blogs are the best way to cultivate your personal brand'. What? Cultivating my personal brand? Like Coca Cola or something? I instantly felt like I was being coerced into joining the Linkedin Club for promoting neo-yuppy corporate-speak......talk about the privatisation of everything, including our points of view! I was just about comfortable with the idea that a brand is a set of ideas or associations which creates a perception in the target market, encouraging loyalty to the product (no I didnt look in Wiki - feel free to correct me). But now, by writing a blog I am creating my own personal brand! Soon I will be floating myself on the Shanghai Stock Exchange.

But seriously, am I just being excessively pedantic? Or is there an 'ideological tint' to this idea of 'my personal brand', as defined by my blog. What is the purpose of my personal brand? Marketing? Maybe. Perhaps Linkedin are just an Internet service with 'capitalist characteristics'. Perhaps I am stuck in the ideo-polarised past. Perhaps I have just used the whole thing as an excuse to subscribe to what must be the biggest cliche of Blogdom - making use of my blog to vent my spleen and have a good rant about something of little or no significance.