Top Personal Branding Tips
Personal branding is one of the most important parts of internet marketing. Establishing yourself and your brand as reputable and successful is a priority. Fixing your reputation is far more difficult than establishing a great one right from the start, and here are a few tips that can help you get off to a great start.
- Control what people see. Make sure that you are always presenting yourself in a professional manner. Do not mix your personal social media with your professional use of social media. Use the filters and privacy settings effectively to avoid any problems.
- Actively seek out connections. You need to actively present yourself and represent your brand proudly. Find out who is interested, and who wants to talk about the same topics that you do, and then act on those findings. One tool that is incredibly useful for keeping track of who is talking about your niche is Google Alerts. You will be alerted anytime there are discussions or articles about the keywords that you are watching. Keep up on the latest news. Pay attention!
- Follow social media closely. There is a terrific tool out there, called Social Mention, that can be especially valuable as you try to follow the social media and keep track of any mention of you, your brand, your company, even your competitors. You can follow tweets, comments, posts and status updates that may be of interest to you. When you follow the social media networks this closely, it makes it much easier to address issues as they arise, and make yourself more present, and therefore, more recognizable and respected. Respond as necessary, and promptly, to any mentions that you are notified of! HootSuite is another powerful social media tool, one that allows you to integrate several of your social media networks and keep track of them all in one place.
Personal branding is such an important part of your internet marketing business. Your online image is extremely important, especially when this is the only contact that you will have with your leads, potential customers, potential business associates, and the rest of the world. Without your in-person strengths to rely on, you must be able to show the world that you are reputable, professional, personable and that you are going to be the one to go to when they have needs related to your niche.
Make your brand bigger and better when you follow the rest of the world as it relates to your niche and your company. Know what people think of you, and make sure that you are taking care of keeping a clean and positive reputation. Yes, you can sometimes fix problems if you should be unfortunate enough to have an unhappy customer, but why not prevent these kinds of problems in the first place and be proactive about establishing your brand and your online reputation? Certainly seems easier to me to do it this way!
What other ways have you found to be helpful for pushing your personal brand out to the world and making an impact? Share your ideas!