How would you define yourself as a brand?

[TOM Merilahti]

If you can't define yourself as a brand, yet, why should you build a personal brand?

You might already know the answer to this question. There are lots of answers, actually, depending on you, your needs, the way the world has shaped you. Letʼs look at just one answer.

The easiest answer is that you might want to be memorable, and you might want to transfer your real world reputation into the online world. A strong personal brand is a mix of reputation, trust, attention, and execution. You might want to build a brand around being helpful (what I hope my brand means to you), or being a creative thinker (I hope you perceive me as one) or being a dealmaker (what I'm striving to be), or being a showman, or whatever matters most to you, and also what you are capable of sustaining.

A personal brand gives you the ability to stand out in a sea of similar products. In essence, youʼre marketing yourself as something different than the rest.

Here is just an example how I would like to be perceived as a ("online") brand.


As you might probably know, I have an amount of contacts all over the world, I don't even know how many, and on how many platforms, but only on XING I have today 6 650 direct contacts connected with 1 108 700 other professionals and decision makers, on LinkedIn (+ 1230), and only on Ning there are 64 networks I'm a member of.

I founded Synergialaitos.Com ("Synergy Society") and started to develop it as a virtual organization and a brand in 1999. In September 2004 I joined openBC (XING), and in 2005, after a very fast process of internationalization, I renamed Synergialaitos.Com as SICU (Synergy Integrated - Connects the Unconnected).

My aim and objective has been from the very beginning to create a huge professional netywork globally in order to invite the best of the best to join the SICU Synergy Solutions Group (SICU SSG), and naturally to keep up the contact with the most active networkers through different SICU Synergy groups on different platforms (The Helsinki Connection (+ 2 625 memers), SICU SSG (+ 900)...), SICU SSG on Facebook, SICU SSG on LinkedIn....

To keep actively up a relationship with all of my contacts is naturally just impossible, but the more contacts I have, the more contact requests I get. And again, I strive to pick-up the best ones.

One important point is that I'm not only looking for new contacts, but for connections who I can introduce and connect with each other. By this I have a very good reputation of being the guy who connects the unconnected even in concrete. On the other side it's imortant to notice that SICU is not at all about connecting just people but everything else as well.

It is the function of creative people to perceive relations between thoughts, or things, or forms of expressions that seem utterly different, and to be able to Connect the seemingly Unconnected.

Since 1999, I have been also generating an amount of ideas, which I could not put in practice before openBC (XING) was launched in Finland in July 2004. As you have recognized, global networking offers an amount of opportunities.

What I have been thinking of from the very beginning of my global networking "career" is that I have to differentiate myself to stand out from the masses, out of millions and millions of other networkers, and now I think I have succeed to do it.

What I have been working on (hard) is to build-up and develop a brand of myself as a helpful creative thinker, and matchmaker who "Think, Do and Make it Happen" by "Connecting the Unconnconnected", under a mutual " sunshade" of my global partners and members called the SICU (Synergy Solutions Group), and by offering professionals representing divergent professional disciplines an opportunity to influence in the development of SICU and its activities, future pro-operations, and to benefit from one another multilaterally.

How would you like to be perceived as a personal brand, as a product, as an organization and as a symbol???

TOM