You are your most own most valuable asset. When you go into a job interview, you are marketing yourself, your skills, your value, and in essence, your "brand". Now take this concept one step further, and as more and more people use social media tools like Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, and more to market themselves and or communicate with other people. If words matter, then how does your profile or your posts identify the type of person you are? How are you crafting your online identity to highlight your skills, accomplishments, and philosophies like you would a good resume? How are you differentiating yourself?

The bad side to all the social media websites, is that they automate the process for giving someone essentially a personal website, all you have to do is sign up and have an email address. They provide a template that you fill out, so it does not requite a lot of thought or technical skills. So there is sort of a sea of online humanity, empowered by the Facebook's and Twitter's of the world, and it is hard for me to see how people are really differentiating themselves, or if they are really in it for the long term.

Thinking long term with regards to your brand and identity are important, because you want to last, and you don't want to ruin your reputation. Because things like honesty and integrity still count, and people will see through any facades rather quickly.

The fact is making money still takes work, being a human takes work and courage. Developing your identity and managing your life in a responsible way takes a lot of work. You can't build these qualities into a website template.

Your connections on your social network may or may not be real friends. Don't let social media keep you from actually talking with real people and having real relationships face to face with people. If you don't want to have a real life conversation with somebody, can you really consider them a "friend"?

The idea of just collecting "friends" or "followers" is not noble and really is an empty pursuit. I keep reading different articles about how you get 5000 people to follow you on twitter, and all these tricks and "tips". A lot of it feels empty and meaningless to me, like a late night infomercial, but now with all of these "experts" on social media.

Rather than falling for every new fad, or every new tip, take time to actually develop something intelligent and meaningful to communicate. Take time to develop relationships with people that you want to last more than 90 days. Seek out the mentors and people you inspire you and reach out to them simply and honestly, looking for synergies. Develop your brand for the long term, and make it excellent, beautiful, and inspiring.