The following tips and hints expand on those in the video above and will help you develop and take control of your online personal brand.
The first step is to conduct a search of your name, and any variations. Find out what is being said about you and what information about you comes up first in the search engines.
Conduct a Google search now. You might also like to try Pipl which is an online people search engine.
Do some "spring cleaning" – if you don’t like what you see after searching your name then you will need to take the time to clean up the information. Have a look at the College Student Guide to Professional Social Profiles for tips on how to clean up your social media accounts.
After you have cleaned up your social media profile you should create your personal online brand with information that can be found quickly and that contains what you want others to find out about who you are, what you do, and what content you're sharing.
Managing your personal brand and online reputation is not always easy; however there are some free tools that can help.
- BrandYourself helps you take ownership of your search results. Check out the BrandYourself Youtube channel for tutorials and webinars.
- About.me profiles you and your major social media links on a single page.
- LinkedIn is a professional networking site. Your profile on LinkedIn resembles your resume and emphasises professional affiliations, work experiences, skills and job titles. Check out the LinkedIn Youtube channel for tips and hints on using LinkedIn. Once you have created your LinkedIn profile you might like to turn it into a one page website. Strikingly.com has created a one click function to transfer your LinkedIn profile to a Strikingly website. Here’s a video demonstrating how to do this and a website for more information on this function.
- Strikingly is a website builder has a number of templates suited for personal branding websites. Here’s a video which outlines how to build your own personal branding website using Strikingly.
You may want to start a blog or Twitter account to share information with others. Make sure you think before you publish – think about whether your parents, friends or colleagues would like to read the post or tweet first. Blogging and Tweeting are great ways to demonstrate your personal brand, they help you position yourself in a way that you want to be seen. They can also help grow your network beyond your work colleagues. If successful, they might position you as a "thought leader" as they are a way to demonstrate your expertise on topics. They are also great ways to demonstrate that you know how to write and communicate effectively. These are extremely valuable skills.
- Wordpress is probably the most popular of the free blogging tools available. Read the article on Entrepreneur, ‘The key to writing an amazing blog post’, for tips on blogging.
- Twitter can be used to build a personal brand and create more opportunities to stand out and be discovered. Read the article on Entrepreneur, ‘5 Twitter tips that will enhance your personal brand’, for more information.
To monitor your online profile you might like to set up a Google Alert so you are notified when something is being said about you online. When you create an alert, make sure you put your name with and without quotation marks and include the different variations of your name if there are any. Here’s a video tutorial on setting up Google Alerts.