So you’ve read all our articles here at Brand-Yourself.com about how essential it is to maintain your online reputation and personal brand identity. You’ve successfully set up your Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn accounts, emphasizing your individuality, visibility, consistency, and desirability as an employee.
The battle doesn’t end there, however. Maintaining a personal brand is continuous work and will continue for the remainder of your working life – perhaps even beyond retirement.
In order to cultivate your identity and your online reputation, keep three things in mind:
Be smart, not paranoid.
This is the age of the World Wide Web and, although you should exercise basic common sense and abstain from releasing information like your social security number to the general masses, there is no need to be paranoid about your information being online. Visibility is key, and it is up to you to take advantage of the accessibility of the Internet. Although you obviously shouldn’t provide, say, a blueprint and a detailed aerial shot of your home, don’t make it difficult for interested employers to contact you, either.
Use your name as often as [logically] possible.
Look at your various websites and social networking profiles as web footprints. Your online personality should be unique to you, but a clever, intelligent website means nothing if people have no idea who owns it. It is crucial that your name be prominent on any work you post online – not only in titles and bylines, but also headings, URLs, etc. – so that there will be a higher chance of your page[s] receiving hits. Exercise discretion, however. Sprinkling your name unnecessarily will look cheap and desperate, but thoroughly linking your work with your name shows that you are proud of what you can accomplish.
OWN YOUR ONLINE REPUTATION.
It can’t be stressed enough how important it is to own your personal brand identity. If you haven’t already, do a quick search of your name and see what the Web says about you. If you find there are people who share a similar name, you must work hard to differentiate yourself from those people. Always keep in mind all those professional and personal traits that make you desirable to prospective employers, and protect this image with everything you’ve got.
Remember, your work isn’t finished once you’ve established a personal brand identity. You must also work hard to regularly manage the impression you make on the rest of the world, ensuring now only that you remain individual but also that your brand remains true to who you are. Your online reputation is how people will differentiate you from the masses.
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Gabrielle is a recent graduate from Syracuse University, where she studied fashion design and fashion communications. She occupies her time with photography and creating her own comic book, and she plans to return to Syracuse in 2010 to pursue her Master’s Degree in art journalism.
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