5 tips for rocking your brand online.
I spend a fair amount of time helping students, faculty and staff manage their personal brand online. Yesterday I presented to TRiO high school students on campus, which is an exciting group because they have more time to build their personal brand online– or harm it.
In today’s technology-crazed world we should all be thoughtful about how we are represented online. Whether you are a person or a company, people are making assumptions about you based on what they see. If you are a job seeker, employers are learning about your qualifications for the position based on your resume. But they are determining fit and motivation based on your social media profiles.
When you google your name and look at your own online presence what do you see? Today I am offering some simple tips for enhancing your personal brand online. Tory Burch is gracing the cover of today’s post because she kills this concept. And here’s why…
1. Be selective. Choose a few of the social media platforms you enjoy using the most and get really good at them. Quality over quantity. So you just learned about the cool new Vine app. Check it out but strongly consider which platforms you will invest most of your time using. There is nothing worse than seeing a Twitter page with outdated tweets. Or a Pinterest board with one or two pins. Deactivate the social media profiles you are not using. You can always reactivate them later. It is more fruitful to be really good at fewer profiles than mediocre at several.
2. Brand yourself. Pick colors, logos, fonts and images that match your personality and consistently use them in all social media platforms. This may occasionally change over time but be consistent. Tory’s logo never changes but there is a new color theme with every new season of fashion. Translate your online brand to physical media like business cards, notecards, and more. When I was shopping last weekend the sales associate helping me picked up on my Tory Burch iPhone cover right away, likely influencing assumptions she was making about my interests and sense of style.
3. Be authentic. Your brand execution and approach must be thoughtful and true for it to genuinely resonate with others online. It is so obvious if someone is trying too hard. Be natural, be you. In the end that should be a lot easier anyway. To make this piece a little easier consider people you admire. Genuinely admire. Maybe he/she is someone you know personally or maybe a celebrity. Whoever it is, assess their brand. How do they exude themselves online? What social media profiles do they use; what groups are they a part of or companies do they follow; how do they write and share their ideas, opinions and stories? Your genuine interest in them can help you align your genuine presence online as well.
4. Be LinkedIn. It may be because I am working with it everyday but I truly believe that today everyone should have a LinkedIn profile. I don’t think that you need to be active on LinkedIn every day (though it is a lot of fun), but you should at least have a professional profile set up. This means have a nice professional profile photo (iPiccy is a great free editing tool), customize your LinkedIn profile url (by default it will include numbers and symbols– snag your name), and briefly describe your most recent experience and/or education. Join a few groups and follow a few companies. When I connect with someone the first thing I do is scroll down to Groups and Companies. If I don’t know them personally this provides me a better grasp about who they are and what they like.
5. Be consistent. This is key. It wraps up your entire package. Establish your goals around your online brand, build it, and execute it consistently. Stay true to the brand you’ve created; regularly tweet, post and contribute. Someone once told me to, “Give 80% and take 20%.” The return on your investment (usually time) is huge when you do. You don’t need to be online all day; just 15 minutes daily can accomplish what I’ve touch on in this post.
So there you have it. That would be part of my day job. It is fun. And evolving like mad. Geez I love the geekery!
Dina
{Image courtesy of The Tory Blog.}
Tags: LinkedIn, personal branding, Tory Burch, TRiO
