Personal Branding – Tools and Resources
I recently sat down with Jung Park, CEO and founder of Metroboom, a high end mens custom clothing store and salon. “Personal Brand manager is expected to be one of the hottest careers in the next 10 years”. He explained how managing, and focusing on your own personal brand is critical to success in today’s entreprenurial market and how Metroboom provides more than just clothes, but an approach to personal branding. Jung showed me how he involves clients in the process of picking out fabrics, and cuts but that he keeps an archive of what each person has purchased previously and takes the time to think about how the personality fits with their personal brand. Needless to say I picked up a few shirts, but it got me thinking about my online brand.
Having just re-launched this site, I have been working a lot with various tools for getting yourself out there. Here are some of my favorites for advertising your perosnal brand.
Facebook, Twitter & LinkedIn – If you don’t have at least the last 2 you are effectively saying you don’t care about your online personal brand. The fact of the matter is these are going to be the top google results when someone queries your name. Here’s a guide on how to use each of them so they represent your brand well.
- Facebook – Either make sure you enable subscribers, and occasionally post something of interest (I have found I like to post foodie pictures) or set yourself up to be not indexed by search engines. Also, pay close attention to what you like and try to support business and organizations that align with your personal brand beliefs. Whatever you do don’t make personal photos overly public.
- Twitter – Even if your just re-tweeting news, you need a twitter profile. Aggregating and curating news you personally find interesting is a great way to created brand association. Also, take the time to follow your favorite brands and business idols. Again, your creating brand association here so be careful who you choose.
- LinkedIn – This is your online resume, and should be carefully crafted to focus your personal message and story. Even if your a starving artist LinkedIn is an incredible way to draw social connections to gallery owners, and photographers. Crafting your profile and building your LinkedIn network could be it’s own post (and probably will be at some point)
Strikingly – Strikingly provides an incredibly easy to use system for creating a quick website for your personal brand or company. If you’re not already running a wordpress blog (and even if you are) Strikingly is a great way to get a quick and beautiful site setup.
About.me – Once you have a LinkedIn and Facebook profile the About.me page seems kind of redundant but it’s easy and quick. Find a cool background photo and upload it. It’ll slurp in most of the other details from LinkedIn.
Vizualize.me – This new services is really cool. It allows you to create some very nice visuals of your experience by pulling in your LinkedIn profile.
Moo Printing – One of the reasons to do the About.me profile is a great deal you can get at Moo printing. They offer both Facebook and About.me cards for the cost of shipping. These are some impressive looking personal business cards printed on nice stock.
Keep it up! – Maintaining a brand can be a lot of work, but for your personal brand it’s rewarding and something that deserves attention.