Personal Branding is all about selling yourself and that is the only way that you will actually get a job through selling your skills, experience and personality to a client, company, individual etc.
The main form of personal branding for a normal individual is through a person’s CV as this is the document that shows you off. It shows your skills and previous experience and how your skills can help and benefit a new company that are looking for the skills that you have. It’s important to make sure that you don’t go over board and that you can back up everything you say you can do.
By ensuring that you make your CV as slick and to the point as possible, then you will show that you take an interest in your career and how you portray yourself to the outside world. Some of the below things are important to make sure that your own personal branding is the best it can be to the outside world.
#1 Create your brand
First of all you need to think about why you are looking to brand yourself and what you feel that you are marketing? It’s important to put time and effort into this branding to make sure that you have your market very clear in your sights.
#2 Core Values
Know what your core values are and how they will be important to other people. Values are very important and should be adhered to if you want to ensure that you come across as a reliable and trustworthy person who can deliver.
#3 Market your personality
As well as your skills, your personality is important to an employer. Your personality is what makes you, the skills are just what you have learnt over time and will continue to develop and learn. Your personality on the other hand is unlikely to change and this is just as important to ensure that you can fit in with a particular company and the other people who work there.
Related: 5 Common Mistakes When Making Job Applications
#4 Communicate & Network
It’s important to communicate with people well and make sure that you come across well if you want to make sure your branding is good. Don’t think that people will seek you out, if you want to be well known in a particular industry or for a specific role then you need to network appropriately and ensure that you are meeting up regularly with like minded people and meeting new people through this. It’s important to find people who are your allies and who you can ask for support and guidance from and who you in turn can also help.
#5 Have a website
Depending on what you do, you could have a website to promote your skills and experiences and try to market yourself around this sector. Having a website can draw people to the skills and services that you can provide. This will not work as well for employed people but if you have key skills that you can promote it may still be of interest to some employers.
#6 Business Card
Get a business card made up so that when you are attending networking and various meetings that you have a business card that you can hand out readily. A good business card can be used to promote your skills and experiences but can also be used simply as who is the best person to contact for clients when looking for a particular service.
#7 Headshot
Make sure that your headshot photo on LinkedIn and anything else is a professional one and not one with someone else, family or friends or on a night out etc. To make sure that you branding is slick means that you need to have a clear image of you in a professional capacity.
#8 Use social media
With the powers of social media, once you have your CV and any references organised, why not use the powers of social media and through face book, LinkedIn, Twitter etc and ensure that your profiles on these social media sites are done as professionally as your CV and any other documentation relevant to your personal branding so that it all matches up.
Related: How to Use Social Media to Get a Job [INFOGRAPHIC]
#9 Email and contact information
Make sure that you do not have a silly email address on your personal branding. Use one that only includes your name eg: firstnamesurname@company.co.uk for example or first name at company etc. It will make you look a lot more professional that some random email address as hotmail.com
Photo by: Dreamfish
