YOUR PERSONAL AND BUSINESS BRANDING STRATEGIST AND MARKETER

CHAMPIONING

Your Success

Evelyn Salvador.com

How to Build & Maintain Your Personal Brand

Personal Branding (also called career branding and self branding) defines who you are, how you are different from others, and why you should be sought after by prospective employers. Job seekers and all career-minded individuals need to have their personal brand defined in order to achieve their ultimate career success.

Personal Branding is who you already are whether you are consciously aware of it or not. It is about building a name for yourself based on what you have achieved and what differentiates you from others. It essentially is your reputation. The benefits you offer to others. Your value proposition. Your return on investment to prospective employers. And it must be consistent throughout your communications.

There are a number of different ways to build your personal brand: 

1. Become an expert in your field.

Establishing yourself as an expert in your field is one of the most essential ways to brand yourself. It builds credibility and demonstrates your achievements and proven abilities through various venues, such as by writing articles published in trade journals, giving speeches at conferences and conventions, being quoted by the news media, and the like.

2. Gain more knowledge, education, and experience.

No matter how much you already know, knowledge is limitless, we can always learn more. First determine what you want your brand to stand for, then decide what you need to learn, and develop a strategy to accomplish that. To enhance your personal career brand, further your education if you haven’t already completed the degrees, licenses, or certifications needed in your field, or earn those that put you at the top.

3. If you are currently employed, seek additional opportunities that can enhance your brand.

To help build your brand while on your existing job, see if you can become involved in new and challenging assignments, projects, or opportunities that can further enhance your expertise and add some additional achievements under your belt, especially ones that can provide some notoriety to your online presence.

4. Maintain an up-to-date record of all of your accomplishments.

Extract information from your performance evaluations. reference letters, sales reports, customer comments, and the like. Make and keep copies for yourself, and maintain a complete list of your own. Be sure to compile quantifying numbers and percentages wherever possible.

5. Have your resume professionally created by a Certified Resume Writer.

Certified Resume Writers are skilled in helping you identify and documenting all of your qualifications, transferable skills, key accomplishments, attributes, and training that you have achieved throughout your career and crafting your print marketing tool.

6. Develop your bio, profile, and elevator speech.

Your professional resume writer can also help you develop a bio—both long and short versions—as well as your profile. From that you can create your one-line elevator speech. Edit it down to its lowest common denominator. Think in terms of how much you can actually say during floor stops on an elevator. It shouldn’t be any longer.

7. Network and promote yourself all the time.

Use your elevator speech every time you meet someone new and inform them of what you do. Once your personal brand message is defined, practice it until it becomes natural.

8. Join LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook or other Social Networking Platforms

With 37 million members and growing exponentially, LinkedIn is the Socnet of choice for Human Resource professionals and all career-minded individuals. Currently 77% of hiring managers view candidates’ online identity before calling them for an interview or making a job offer. Request membership in like-minded groups, and share your expertise in blogs and forums of interest to you. Be sure your brand message is consistent in all of your communications.

9. Become the “Go To” Person.

In person and online. Reach out to members in your professional community and offer assistance when someone seeks help that you can provide. Your brand will become known and you will be the one others come to for expertise in your field.

10. Build ongoing relationships

Again, in person and online. Request information interviews from companies in your field of interest. Grow your online network in Social Networking forums.

11. Reinforce your brand repetitively.

All of your actions should reinforce your brand. In person. In your marketing materials. In your resume. In an interview. During online social networking. Within the content of emails. In your Web Resume. Perform your personal brand all the time…in your actions, in your words, in the way you dress, and in your demeanor. The more ways you showcase and the more times you repeat your brand, the stronger it becomes. When you start to meet people who know who you are, you know your brand is becoming successful.

12. Correct erroneous online entries that detract from your positive online identity.

When conducting a Google search of yourself (your name in quotes), review all of the entries that come up. The goal is to have your online presence to be on target with your brand. If you come across an entry that is not on brand and/or might be viewed negatively, contact the firm or site webmaster to see if you can have them remove or correct it. For example, I use real names in the testimonials I include on my product site, www.CareerCatapult.com. One of my endorsements contacted me to delete her name as she didn’t want that entry appearing in her web presence. I changed it to “Ginger H.” so it didn’t detract from her online identity.

Another method is to build your online presence through having your personal brand developed into a Web Portfolio and LinkedIn profile and including it within all social media networks. This will bring forward all of the positive content and push back anything not on brand. Caution: be very careful what you post on Facebook and other networks, as prospective employers WILL look at it to make their hiring decisions.

13. Have your Web Resume created for you…your positive online identity.

In today’s world of work, your brand must have a strong, positive online presence. The best way to create your positive online identity is to have a Web Resume created for you by an experienced branding strategist and marketer. You can include your resume, a mission statement, a personalized logo, articles you have written or have been quoted in and their links, transcripts of speeches you have performed, testimonials and endorsements, work samples, awards, honors, and more.

14. Continue to redefine and strengthen your brand as it evolves.

As CEO and founder of Me, Inc., the more you do to cultivate and grow your brand, the more successful you'll become in your career and in life, and the more satisfied you will be!

READ HOW TO CREATE  YOUR ONLINE IDENTITY