To figure out your personal brand, you need to take a serious look at your core existence. Really strive to understand your values, passions, and strengths. In other words, figure out what makes you you.
After you’re able to articulate what makes you unique, you can transform that knowledge into a value statement that expresses your worth and fit to prospective employers. By expertly communicating your value statement across several different mediums, you can grow your credibility and your brand influence.
Blogs make an excellent medium for communicating your value statement because they also allow you to share your knowledge and opinions about topics that matter to your particular field of interest.
An added bonus of blogging? Employers who see you passionately turning out articles, videos, or slides in the area of your expertise will see that you’re truly passionate about your work and have a depth of knowledge that may help their organization. Also, not many other candidates are brave enough to put themselves out there and share their voice.
Monitoring your online reputation
A huge part of branding is making sure your brand is represented accurately and consistently at all times. You therefore need to manage your online reputation by taking charge of the results that come back when someone does an Internet search for your name.Here are the basic steps for managing your online reputation:
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Assess your online appearance from the perspective of a hiring manager.
Try Googling yourself or searching for your name in a free background check website like pipl.com.
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Build up enough content over time so Google’s search results fill up with more relevant content.
Publish old slideshows or articles you’ve written to social sharing sites so that Google has more relevant content to display for your name.
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Monitor your reputation monthly.
If someone says something bad about you, you need to know about it right away. The only way to do that is by periodically searching for your name and seeing what pops up.