There’s no better time to start building your brand than now, while you’re still a student.

College is the perfect place to start building your brand, because:

1. You are surrounded by professors who want to help you succeed
2. You are surrounded by peers who share your passions and interests
3. You are surrounded by resources, like Career Services, that don’t exist outside of college

In college, you have the unique opportunity to:

1. Explore your career interests without having to commit
2. Develop and hone skills sought by employers
3. Add to your network of relationships
4. Work on projects that result in “deliverables” (tangible things you can show someone), because as the father of personal branding says, deliverables become “braggables.”
5. Beef up your resume

So what are you waiting for? Learn the basics of what a personal brand is, and check our blog regularly to learn how to make yours remarkable!

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1. Take Courses Unrelated to Your Major

Steve Jobs made Apple the premier desktop publishing platform because he took a course totally unrelated to technology: calligraphy. It was out of his area of expertise, yet it inspired him to popularize fonts and typography on personal computers.

Even if you’re obsessed with accounting, don’t limit your education one single area. College is about risk-taking and leaving your comfort zone.

Besides being well-rounded, the benefits are enormous. You will be able to talk comfortably and intelligently with people from all areas of expertise, which is extremely important in the world of business. Being able to understand where other people are coming from also increases your ability to connect with them and form meaningful relationships. A strong personal brand means little without strong relationships to back it up.

2. Don’t Join Clubs and Organizations. LEAD Them.

Student organizations, fraternities and sororities are opportunities to lead. Not only will you become known around campus, but you will learn firsthand what it takes to lead a team. If you were making hiring decisions, would you rather hire a club “President” or a club “member?” Leadership positions go a long way to build your brand.

You will also meet passionate people your age that share your interests. Certain clubs in particular, such as Toastmasters – which focuses on improving your public speaking skills in a supportive group environment – will help you hone some of the most vital skills needed to succeed in business and in life.

3. Be a Teaching Assistant For a Semester

It’s often easier than you might think to be a T.A., and professors are always happy for the help. Simply go up to your professor after class (in a subject that interests you) and ask if they’d be interested in having you as their T.A.

The position will improve highly transferable skills including organizational and interpersonal skills. You’ll also get to know professors on a more personal level, deepening your relationships and forming bonds that may last a lifetime.

4. Take Leadership Roles at Every Turn.

Take leadership roles whenever they appear. If you think you don’t have enough time for multiple leadership roles, prioritize and eliminate the positions that excite you the least.

The more leadership roles you take on, the easier leading becomes – and the more comfortable you’ll be taking on even better roles. You may want to start simple, such as tutoring your favorite subject. You could become a peer advisor and help organize events or aid in spearheading a fundraiser. You’ll meet new passionate people (the best kind of people to know!) and hone your leadership, interpersonal and organizational skills.

5. Do a co-op or shadow a prominent figure in your field.

You can’t get real-world experience through books. The most important lessons in life – and the ones we remember most – are lessons we learn from our own mistakes. You can’t the make mistakes that will shape a strong Brand You if you hide under textbooks.

That’s not to say that books aren’t valuable tools. However, you need to get yourself out there and trip up a few times. Everybody does, and everybody needs to. The more mistakes you make early on, the less you’ll make later. And as a student, you’re not expected to be perfect. Make sure you ask questions constantly and tap into the knowledge of those above you.

6. Rabidly approach everyday problems with an entrepreneurial mindset.

Constantly ask yourself how you can capitalize on everyday problems. Look around you and ask yourself: what annoys you? For example, college student Ricky Podsiadlo launched http://winterhatshoppe.com at a Syracuse University, where students often skip classes because it snows so hard. He looked at a problem – excessively cold weather – as an opportunity to offer a solution.

7. Work a part-time job.

There are often a variety of part-time jobs on campus, and it’s up to you to find them. A dining services position can strengthen a weak resume by showing that you’re hardworking, punctual and energetic. A Resident Advisor position demonstrates your interpersonal, time management and organizational skills. No matter what job you take, you will be meeting new people, learning new skills and learning how to manage your time more effectively.

8. Volunteer.

Contributing your time can pay dividends by strengthening your resume, adding to your network and learning about new opportunities. Maria Elena Duro is an excellent example of someone who used volunteering to strengthen her personal brand: “As the vice president of a business fraternity in college,” she said, “I booked speakers to speak to our fraternity for professional development. I asked each of them to write a letter for me about their experience working with me so that I could include that in my personal portfolio. Many of these speakers went on to become regional directors, chief operation officers, chief financial officers, company presidents and further that my portfolio has become quite valuable. Actively ‘buzz’ your brand! Doing that will develop credibility; credibility will lead to influence; and influence with lead to leadership.”

When it comes down to it, building your brand means getting out and doing things that build your skills or are aligned with your passions. What can you do today to start building Brand You?

For more tips about building your brand as a college student, check out our other post, 5 Things to do in College To Lay Your Brand’s Foundation.

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If I search for your name in Google, will the results actually be about you?

The hallmark of a strong personal brand online is the ability to be found when someone searches for you on the web.

The first step to ensure you can be found is to create profiles on major social networks and directories including services like LinkedIn and Ziggs. Besides your “home base” website if you have one, these form the foundation of your online visibility. (Look forward to an in depth review of social networks and directories you might want to join in a future post).

If you’re already on a few social networks or directories, make sure every place you exist online links to every other place you exist online.

If you have a LinkedIn, Ecademy and Ziki profile, then these profiles should all link to each other.

This is important because Google counts every link to a web page as a “vote” for that page. Google results are really one big popularity contest. The pages that come up highest in searches for your name are generally the pages that have the most sites linking to it.

Because of this, you’ll want to get as many sites linking to your profiles as possible. And that means “interlinking” all of your profiles to get more links.

An easy way to track your interlinks is to fire up an Excel spreadsheet. Along the top row, list every social network or directory you belong to. Then list them out again in the same order down the left column. You now have a grid set up to track the interlinking between all your profiles.

The items down the left column are the places on the web you exist, and the items on the top row track whether or not there is a link to that item.

As you can see above, I grayed out a diagonal stripe to show that, for example, you can’t link from your LinkedIn page to your LinkedIn page, or your Ecademy page to your Ecademy page.

Start filling in where you already have interlinks. Let’s say that on your LinkedIn page, you already do link to your Ecamdey profile, Xing profile, Ziki profile, and Facebook profile. Fill in the first row now (the LinkedIn row) to reflect that.

The LinkedIn row now shows what you link to based on the columns that are filled in green. Do the same for Ecademy, then all your web profiles. It might look something like this:

After you’ve done some interlinking, mark which places you’ll interlink the next time you open up your personal interlink tracker. A color like yellow works well. You might also want to use red to make incomplete links stand out (unless you think that looks horrendous, which I do, but it motivates me more to turn them green).

You’re now well on your way to creating a strong web of connectedness between your entire online presence. Remember, Google counts every interlink as a “vote” for that page, increasing your results when someone searches for your name. So check back often until your whole spreadsheet is complete. Then you can, in one quick look, be sure that you’re doing everything you can to improve your online visibility.

Next: 5 Tips to Rank Highly on Google and Increase Your Visibility Online >

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This is a guest post from global leadership consultant and brand strategist Rob Cuesta. Thanks, Rob!

Over at Fast Company, Wendy Marx has posted a great article that reminded me of two key things in Personal Branding.

The first is that we need to keep it refreshed, and that means getting input from other people. Personal brands are all about what other people are saying about you, and the whole process kicks off with asking them for feedback. It’s all too easy for that brand to go stale unless you keep making contact, keep giving them something to say about you, and keep asking for feedback. The best way to do all three of those is by personal contact.

The second point is that getting up-close and personal with your contacts can be a great differentiator in today’s impersonal, e-everything business environment. Sending a hand-written “thank you” note, rather than an email, marks you out as someone who pays attention to people as individuals. Going and meeting your clients, colleagues or managers face-to-face, rather than telephoning or sending one of your team, means that they have a face and a voice to put to the name, and they can get a real ‘feel’ for who you are as a person, and what they think of you – something that is too easily lost in a few carelessly typed words.

So, what are you doing to put the “personal” in your personal brand?

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