Personal Brand

At a recent presentation I gave to college students about ”Marketing Yourself”, we talked about what it takes to create your personal brand and how social media marketing plays a very strong role. Everyone needs to think about how they are perceived in the market, both from an offline and online perspective. In competing in the job market or for new clients, it is to your advantage to have a professional image developed online so that people can easily find out more about you.

As independent professionals, free agents or entrepreneurs, social media marketing can be used as a very effective strategy to build your brand and enhance your reputation as an expert in your discipline. Before you embark on this path, you first need to decide what you want to be known for. What is your unique differentiator? Then as you would with other types of marketing, you need to develop a social media marketing strategy that consistently reinforces your unique differentiator through your actions.

• Do you have a plan to write articles and distribute them?
• Have you built your profile on LinkedIn, Plaxo Pulse or other social networks that are relevant to your business?
• Do you have a blog, read other blogs and comment intelligently on them?
• Are you contemplating how to incorporate podcasts or video into your strategy?

Social media marketing is an overwhelming topic but can be implemented in small steps. Start simple by developing a blog and commenting on other blogs. Put a plan in place for what new techniques you will  learn and implement and by when. If you don’t incorporate social media marketing into your brand development, you may find yourself left behind.