Article No. 1 of 16

Defining your Digital Identity

7 min readMar 6, 2022

The way you look in the media matters.

Are you struggling to connect or show who you are when you explore internet venues to make either business or networking? In this article, I’ll walk you through a simple framework for building a professional and stylish brand identity that can help you exploits all your values online. Continue reading to learn how to create a successful digital image whatever your entrepreneurship is.

A free subscription will be required so you can download free templates to follow the framework approach. Whish you the best through this journey.

Table of content

As a person, entrepreneur or business, you want to show the world who you are by capturing your personality, values, and spirit in your look. This projection is key at the time of making business, friends, and other life activities. Non the less, this is a barrel for many to overcome. The thing is, it does not have to.

It doesn’t have to take months to create a memorable brand identity. If you’re either starting as a new entrepreneur or starting a company, you’ll just need a brand-building approach that’s both efficient and successful. And here is where we will help you through a series of articles that summarize the key elements of this framework.

The importance of an image.

In reality, Images have been used to communicate. So, we use it as a medium to show physical facts while also portraying, at a glance, our best or ideal versions. In this tone, we can see an image as a platform to picture our identities and express our personal and collective ambitions.

Throughout history, stories are told through images and these days we continue doing the same. This is simply because, since the beginning, the anxiety for finding certainty, is a human characteristic. This connection explains our need to identify ourselves with and latch on to stories.

However, storytelling by picturing an identity is not always a positive thing. An image could represent the spontaneous mood of an entity, or it could be a consequence of a deliberate attempt to influence others. So, it will be your entire responsibility to visually define who you are, or want to be seeing.

What is a Digital Identity?

In trying to understand what a digital identity is, we first need to put into context the type of identity we pursue and establish what exactly we mean when we use the word identity. Thus, as this term has many edges, this article will be strictly focused on identities in the context of our interactions with others and the digital means.

Your identity, in the context of interacting with others, contains special identifiers and characteristics that help them to uniquely identify who you are and separate you from others. Throughout your life, you collect these various identifiers and characteristics, and some are static and stay with you, like your birth date, while others can be updated and changed, like your job titles.

Due to the complexity of this topic, researchers have categorized the term into 8 well-defined groups that help to infer who a person is.

The “Big 8” comprises eight of the major identities that help us understand parts of who we are and where we come from. While this list is not all encompassing, it gives us an opportunity to explore some of our social group memberships — many (but not all) of which we are born into. Understanding who we are and who others are helps us honor human dignity and create authentically inclusive spaces. — Age, Ability, Race, Ethnicity, Gender, Sexual Orientation, Socioeconomic Status, and Religion.

According to the research “identity is about how an entity (Individual, business or things) is categorized by society’s perceptions of different groups”. The same perceptual demands are present in today’s digital world. That is why the closer definition for what “Identity” is in the digital world is:

A digital identity is an online or networked identity adopted or claimed in cyberspace by an individual, organization, or electronic device.

So, we can also estate that the digital identity in terms of interactions with others is “an adopted digital image to show others who you are”. Once in the digital world, users may also project more than one digital image through multiple communities.

Why Do you Need a Digital Identity?

Why a digital identity is important? Well, as we move into an increasingly digital world, having a digital identity is necessary for us to fully engage with new emerging types of communities — online communities. Digital communities have evolved to the point of offering new opportunities for individuals, businesses, and organizations to access products, services, and information.

A digital identity is now a foundation needed to show the world who you are and facilitate opening doors to a world of new opportunities for traditional ways of making business or human interactions. Having a digital identity is a necessary component in order to fully participate and excel these days.

This is where identity establishment becomes important these days. It is all about showing who you are to a community of people who expects you somehow match to their perceptual view of idealism.

How to Show Me to Others?

At this point, you need to separate bags from boxes. A clear definition of your objectives will help in making the right decision on how you will project yourself onto others. In today’s digital world you are not stuck to a unique strict image as you do in the real world. So you can choose through either as personal, Business or avatar identity for your interactions.

The key here is having a clear definition of who you are, the level of exposure you desire, and the values you can add to others. In this article, we’re going to look objectively at both options so you can choose the best image or brand type for your project. Let’s discuss the options you have available:

A personal brand is built around you. Here you show yourself as you are — your image, your personality, your lifestyle, and your interests. It usually means you brand your business with your name and image.
An Avatar brand is built around you as well, but anonymously — your personality, your lifestyle, and your interests are still present but your credentials are not. It usually means you brand your business with a nickname and an avatar or logo.
A business brand is built around an identity you create for your business. It usually means you need to craft a name for your business that’s independent of your personal name.

Which Option to Choose?

Personal brands are ideal if you want to develop speaking, writing, or podcasting, artist, coach, even arts career. It’s hard work to associate your name with your area of expertise, but if you notice, people of this type of profession are what usually do. The good thing here is, once you’ve done the work, you’ll be seen as someone who others want to hear from.

An Avatar brand is ideal if you either want to sell products or the previously mentioned careers while keeping your ID hidden from the public. The good thing about this option is that it could be transitioned to a business brand. So, this option is ideal for those who are working to officialize a business in the future.

Business brands are for people that already have either a physical establishment and is transitioning to digital, or entrepreneur that starts a digital business. This type of brand allows you to position your business and products.

SO, DO YOU KNOW WHERE DO YOU FIT ALREADY? SURE YOU DO.

Profiling Your Current ID

Now that you know where you fit, let's do an exercise that will frame your characteristics and attributes and that will work as a prework profile to design your brand. Keep in mind that this exercise is real and you need to take it seriously. From now on, you are following a process that will either help you to self-assess your current brand or create one from scratch.

For this exercise, you will be downloading profiling templates where you will collect the foundational data for this exercise. Important, this information is private, you don’t need to share this info with anybody but you. To download the template please click here to subscribe and you will be sent a link to download the official template.

The template will progressively be updated with every new article of this series for which you will need the access link to download updated versions.

Benefits of Following the Process.

“Defining your Digital Identity” is the 2nd of a series of 17 articles framed to guide you in the process of digital branding. The results of the practices called in the series of articles will provide you with an easy-to-follow framework and toolkit for you to prespecify your brand, or to prepare the specifications required to subcontract a professional to design your brand. Whatever your decision is, it will be a win-win.

Takeaways:

In summary, defining your identity will result in a collection of descriptives characteristics of your physical identity that will be used to emulate a digital version that reflects your essence online and help you transmit a message that resonates with communities of people that as you explore the web every single day.