Out of Work Bum

Personal branding, a buzzword used a lot in the current recessionary job market is simply identifying and communicating your value to people who can help your career.  Essentially it is using social networking sites like Linkedin, twitter, and Facebook to promote your personal “brand” or identity to the people who can offer you a job, the hiring managers and  recruiters of the world.

The first thing you need to do is to consider what you want your brand to be.  Think long term – remember the Internet is forever.  What ever footprint you leave will never go away.  Once you determine what you are or want to be you need to go to work building your brand.  This requires a lot of thought and effort.  As any good marketing person will tell you (and I am one) is that branding is an ongoing effort.  You can’t simply start a twitter page and not tweet.  Also, you need to carefully manage your brand.  If you are trying to position yourself as highly professional on Linkedin you can’t go on a rant or post pictures of Saturday’s keg party on your Facebook page.  You need to keep the image you are trying to project in your brand at the top of your mind in everything you do online.  Remember, the Internet is forever.

There is and interesting article on personal branding that I link to on the job search page of this blog.  The article, written by Meridith Levinson talks about common personal branding mistakes.  Read  it before you launch your own brand.