Republished: Brand & Conquer: Building Your Personal Brand, Courtesy of Pretty Young Professional
Whether you are just starting out in business or redesigning your professional image, your brand is what identifies who you are and sets you apart from the pack. My friends at Pretty Young Professional have posted an informative article that gives tips on how to brand yourself strategically. The author, Shawn Lankton, offers his insight. Take a look…
PYP: The first thing I do when I hear about a person is Google them to see what they’ve done. The Google search results for someone’s name tells a story, and you have the power to control yours. It’s your brand: claim it.
To shape the way new people (specifically interviewers) see you on the web, you’ll first need to think strategically about the story you want to tell. Then go get famous for things you’re good at!
Step 1: Be Strategic
Think about the person that you’d like to be, and the person the interviewers are dying to hire. Find where those two people overlap, and start thinking about how you can become that person.
It’s best to get started early, but it is worth doing at any time. The biggest rewards come from a lot of hard work, but you can also make big improvements to your personal brand by being strategic about how you present what you’ve already done.
Let’s say that your goal is to become an “innovator with a keen business sense and powerful communication skills.” Well, let’s break that down:
- Innovator: Show examples of things you’ve created.
- Business Sense: Have stories of businesses you’ve been involved in.
- Communication Skills: Communicate well in lots of different mediums.
Read company websites. They’ll often tell you exactly what a company is looking for. If there’s a particular job you want or firm that you’d really like to work for, find out what they want and include those things as part of your personal brand.
Find some examples. If you already have great examples of things you’ve created, business scenarios you thrived in, and your communication abilities—well, congratulations! Otherwise, come up with a plan to fill out those areas.
Get new experiences. To become an “innovator,” find somewhere you can add value by creating something new and do it. To get “business sense,” get involved a venture where you can gain experience and help out at the same time. To show what a great “communicator” you are, you might start a blog. And that leads us to getting famous.
Step 2: Get Famous
Back to those Google results for your name. The goal here is to have your Google search page read like a résumé. You can make this happen by:
- Taking leading roles in events and conferences with web presences
- Getting member pages on web sites for professional groups
- Contributing to publications with high impact factors
- Creating your own content and sharing it on a personal web-page
Tell a compelling story about yourself, your accomplishments, and your worth to an employer by creating a blog or personal web-page. Fill it with content that describes your experience, solves problems for others, and describes other aspects of your professional life.
Clean up your Facebook page, or make it private. And fill out your LinkedIn profile with relevant info and get a few recommendations.
Make your Google search—and Facebook and LinkedIn—tell your story for you, and there you’ll have it: your own personal brand.
For more pertinent information and advice, check out Pretty Young Professional.
To read more of my articles on Pretty Young Professional website, click here.