Personal branding is the way that we market ourselves to others. Your reputation and the way others see you is your brand. Before you can improve your brand image you need to spend some time figuring out what your brand is.

The way you see yourself should match other people’s natural perceptions of you. If you try to brand yourself as humorous and your jokes don’t even manage to crack a smile, your brand will not stick. Compile a list of your personal strengths and check them against a list of adjectives others use to describe you. If you are genuine and honest with yourself about your strengths and start building your brand from there, you will be much more successful than if you are trying to be something you are not.

Some of the groups of people that may have differing opinions of who you are and what you stand for can be:

• Family and close friends
• Acquaintances
• Colleagues
• Long Term Clients
• Potential Clients

How do they see you? What is different in each group’s description of you? What qualities overlap all the groups?

Some Things to Consider Before You Create Your Brand

Before you start to build your brand, have a plan.

• What are you hoping your brand will help you to achieve?
• What are some of the challenges your brand could face?
• If someone leaves a negative comment on your website or Facebook profile, how will you respond?
• Additionally, how will you respond to positive comment?

In this age of Google, the information you, and others as well, put out there on the Internet is very easy to find. Before you post anything on the Internet, expect for it to be there forever. For this reason, you should definitely have a plan before you begin.

Step 1: Your Brand Statement and Logo

Using your list of unique values and strengths you should create a personal brand statement. It should be one sentence that represents you and what you stand for. Since your brand statement is a one-liner that describes you, incorporate it into all of your other branding tools. Put it on your website, in your email and blog signature, and use it as a tag-line on your Facebook and LinkedIn profiles.

Step 2: Your Website and Blog

Your personal website or blog is another opportunity for you to promote your brand. You should register your own name as the domain name, and if that’s not available you should choose something that coincides with your brand.

Having a blog will lead to higher search result rankings than a static website. Blogging about controversial issues is a great way to show how consistent your brand is. If you respond to similar issues in the same way, it will lend itself to your authenticity. Authenticity should be an aspect of everyone’s brand, regardless of the other qualities you have chosen to brand yourself with.

Step 3: Your LinkedIn Profile

LinkedIn is a social networking site that is focused on professional contacts. Your profile will consist of your work history, where you got your education, any Awards or Honors you have received and any professional organizations you belong to. You can improve your visibility on LinkedIn by answering questions posed by other users and by providing and receiving recommendations from your connections.

Facebook is arguably the largest social networking site on the Internet. Facebook has more than 250 million active users. Because Facebook is more for personal connections than LinkedIn is, it provides an opportunity to connect with people on a more personal level. That said, you don’t want to post potentially embarrassing or overly personal information here. However it is your opportunity to post some personal anecdotes that will help people, including industry peers and potential clients, feel as though they know something about you as a person, which is a part of your personal brand.

Step 5: Your Twitter Account

The best description of Twitter is that it is a micro-blog. The main function of your Twitter account is to provide your followers with an answer to the simple question, “What are you doing?”.

Twitter can be used to update, or Tweet, people that are “following” you when something happens like:

• You updated your blog
• You uploaded a new video to your website
• An article you wrote was published

You can also “follow” the leaders in your industry to be one of the first to know when something blog-worthy happens. That way you will be at the forefront of responding to pertinent issues.

Step 6: Your Email Address

As discussed above with your website, you should have your own name or something describing your brand as your email address. This will be much easier if you own your own domain name. If you are using a free online email service like Hotmail or Gmail try to stay away from email addresses like esquire1752@hotmail.com because it’s not easy to remember and does nothing to describe your brand. Your email address will serve to help link all of the other aspects of your social networking because it is used on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Make sure you use an email signature that includes your personal brand statement, your logo and a link to your website.

One very important thing to keep in mind when presenting your brand on all of these social networking sites is to be consistent. The image you portray on Facebook should be the same as that of your LinkedIn profile and your personal website. Also try to keep the same look and feel across all of your branding items. Your logo and brand statement should appear on your business card, all of your online profiles and even in the signature of your emails. Use the same colors on your website as you use on your business cards. Your brand is your identity, both online and offline.

For more information on personal branding, please visit the Personal Branding Blog by Dan Schawbel.

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