10 Ways to Improve Your Unique Personal Brand
People are starting to understand & respect the value of having a powerful personal brand. Here are some ideas to help.
Since the early days of Facebook, MySpace, Friendster, and even GeoCities, people have been using the Internet to express themselves, and share content on topics that interest them.
The earlier you joined the digital world, the more you have probably experimented with different platforms and tools. All this cavorting on different systems may have taken a toll, however, and now, when you’re trying to be taken seriously, someone may be able to google your name and come up with something like this:
Yes – this image the fabulous social site Twoo, and yes, the page has been translated from Urdu and yes, I apparently still have a profile on it.
I don’t think that this profile is doing much to help me define my personal brand, however. The page is mostly blank, I only have connection to one other profile on the platform and I can’t remember ever signing on to this page before in my life.
And I have no idea what that picture of me is supposed to be about, but I am certainly giving someone or something a fierce side-eye.
So – there’s a lesson here about clearing out the crud in your online profiles, but what are some other important steps that you can take to improve your personal brand? Here at MetaMorph, we’ve put together these 10 ideas that you can implement right now to get yourself on the right track to improving your personal brand, and achieving your goals:
1. You could spend some time thinking about who you are and what your goals are. What is it that you want your personal brand to do for you? What about your brand makes you special? Are there any keywords or specific phrases that you can start using to bring that special point of difference forward in your online social media profiles?
2. You could remove old profiles that are out there that you don’t use, as we discussed in my example above.
3. You could look back over your old performance reviews from your work to see what themes may emerge in how you work and have developed over time. What are the areas that people say are your strengths, and what keeps coming up as a good area for you to develop further in?
4. You could check your LinkedIn profile (and other profiles) and see if everything is up-to-date. See if there are any pieces of the profile that you can fill out but have left blank. Do you have any skills not called out? Any projects you can describe? Can you update your profiles across all of your social media sites to have a consistent voice and theme?
5. You could self-google and run your own privacy audit.
6. You could find a mentor at work (or church, or wherever), and set up times to meet with them to talk about your personal brand. After doing this for a while, it can also be helpful for you to become a mentor to another person as well, just don’t rush into this before you’re ready.
7. You could get a great haircut and take a new profile picture if your profile pic is too old, or too informal, or just plain bad. Yes, it’s superficial, but in many cases your profile picture is the first impression that someone may have for you online, and so it can be important to look your best.
8. You could start a blog, talking about your perspective on the most important topics in your field.
9. You could start commenting in online forums that deal with your chosen field of interest. By participating, you add your knowledge to the discussion and can get responses from others who may have differing views, which can help you hone your own opinions and thoughts.
10. Lastly, if you have built your expertise in your chosen field to a point of authority, you can start looking for places where you can teach others on a large scale. Speaking at colleges, community events, conferences and exhibitions are all good outlets for building your unique brand and authority.
As we all grow in our respect and knowledge of the importance of our online brand, we should take steps to start maintaining our
unique brand in the ways that can work.
Good luck!
Find out more on the future of Content Marketing at our DLUK - Trends briefing on the 24th September 2015