Personal Branding Mini-Series

The following few articles will be a mini-series within the Student Survival Guide to a Web 2.0 World that have to deal with building out your own personal brand. The basic idea is that we, as students and young professionals, want to build out a portfolio of information that sends the message that we want to send to those that are looking to find us.

Imagine you’re a recruiter looking to fill the a few positions for a summer internship or entry level full time work. You’ve got a stack full of resumes and cover letters that all look the same - they use the same catch phrases, the same GPAs and the same boring story: you need to find the diamond in the rough. Ideally, someone would have stood out by now but that’s probably not the case and so now you need to make some moves.

How are you going to research your applicants? If you’re smart, you’ll probably start at the mother ship, Google. First start with their names; are there any results that are towards the top of the first page that jump out at you? Perhaps a LinkedIn profile, Facebook page, Blogs, Podcasts, or newspaper mentions. What we are going to talk about today is the beginnings of shaping that search, crafting the message that you are sending out.

Thinking About Thinking Personal Branding

Personal branding is a bigger topic within the larger context of surviving on the web these days. Let me break down my view on how to build your own personal brand. The ultimate goal of all this personal branding is to control the message that these people would see online when looking for you. At the same time, this needs to be a real thing for you where your personal brand represents you and you represent your brand.

Whoa, James, this is getting way too real way too fast. In this process of developing your personal brand, you will find that you learn a lot about yourself and can really make some worthwhile changes in your life. Today I’m writing about the three phases of developing your personal branding strategy and changing your life.

Looking Inward Changes What Shows Outward

It is time do to some serious “you” time and really consider what it is that makes up who you are as a person. Do you like those things? Are they what you want to be showing everyone else? Consider the following questions - I actually wrote out answers since seeing the inner thoughts on paper can be a very powerful tool of change:

• Who am I and why?
• What are my core values?
• What am I passionate about?
• What am I good at?
• How would you describe your personal brand now? What do you want it to be?
• What dreams and goals do you have?
• What does it mean to you to “live well”?
• What is your personal mission statement?

You answers to these questions are the basis of moving forward with your personal branding strategy. Really take some time to think through these and look at yourself with an honest interest. As you work through the questions, your answers might change. Simply revise them as you go along - it’s a learning process and I bet that you will be surprised by what you find. I’ll be sharing my experience with all this on the Friday edition so you can see an example of what I went through.

Market Research - Who are you talking to?

Ok, so you have some key insights into what it is to be “you” but now you have to figure out who are the people that are looking for you (the people you’re crafting your message for) and what they are trying to find. This isn’t quite as easy as saying “the recruiters are looking for me” because that’s not really true.

They’re looking to learn more about you - who you are and why you would be an interesting and valuable edition to their organization, firm, or group. Similarly, the personal story you tell to your family isn’t the same as what you would tell to your friends, which isn’t the same story you would tell to a complete stranger. Consider the following questions when thinking about whom your audience is and what they are looking for:

• What is their background?
• What is their motivation?
• What are they looking for?
• How much effort are they going to spend looking?
• What information do they value?
• Where are they located?
• What does their location tell you about their attitudes and opinions?
• Who are you competing against for their attention?
• How will you attract these people to your message?

Take your answer to these questions and roll them into the next phase. If you’re having a hard time coming up with answers yourself or maybe you are not entirely sure what the best answer is, ask someone. For example, I asked Rebecca Corliss about her opinions on the matter as a PR major from Boston University. At the same time, I asked my step father, Brian O’Connell, what he thought as an executive level businessman who has had tons of experience in the field. No one person has the right answer for you but taking many data-points of information will help build your answers.

Showtime - Put the pieces together into a strategy

Some will say that this is the hardest part; others will consider it the easiest. At this point, it is time to take your personal discoveries and merge them into a strategy informed by your market research. One person’s strategy won’t necessarily work for another so make it your own. It’s a bit of an adventure to develop your own thoughts, opinions, best practices, and strategies. Map out the goal of your strategy and then choose the engines you will use to carry out your strategies. Some possible pieces to your strategy include:

• Start a blog - wordpress.com and blogger.com are both good free tools
• Online resume - Google pages are a free solution
• Commenting on other blogs - this gets your name out there and expresses your opinions
• Social media - generate content for YouTube and other services
• Social networking - figure out what you want to do with these services and how you use them to your advantage. TIP: if you’re using Facebook for networking, get rid of the party pictures.
• Join a community - if you’re a blogger etc. get involved with people of similar interests
• Search Engine Optimization - no matter how you put your message out, make sure that Googlebot sees the information it should and not the stuff it shouldn’t.

More tutorials on how to go about some of these will follow in the coming weeks either through the podcast reachable right on this site or through iTunes, as well as in the Friday articles that are part of this survival guide series.

TALKBACK

How do you go about building your strategy? Did you come up with any answers to these questions that surprised you? As always leave comments here at http://www.collegetechcentral.com, call into the listener hotline at 203.206.1877 or email me at collegetechcentral@gmail.com.

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