5 Tips for Creating a Personal Brand on Social Media

5 Tips for Creating a Personal Brand on Social Media

 

I had the opportunity to present to a group of university students about the importance of personal branding and the role that social media plays, particularly when it comes to seeking employment.

Because you can bet that your future employer will take a look at your social media profiles before employing you! Like a business brand, your personal brand is how you portray yourself to others. It can be made up of what you say and do, who and what you engage with, your associations, interests and skills.

So what are you putting out there into the world on social media?

This can be broken down into four parts:

1. • Profile – this is what you are consciously deciding to associate or represent your personal brand. It is also the first thing people will see when they search for you on social media.
   • Content – Your posts, photos, hashtags. It is the ongoing content you are creating and sharing.
   • Engagement – Your page engagements, likes, comments and responses to other peoples content.
   • What Others Are Saying About You – harder to control

In a world where sharing every moment has become commonplace, here are our tips for personal branding on social media.

5 Tips for Controlling Your Personal Brand on Social Media

1. Setup and Maintain a LinkedIn profile

Your LinkedIn profile is your online CV and will validate anything you say in your printed CV. It will be searched by your future employers or clients and should represent your qualifications, experience, skills and interests fully and accurately.

Make sure you ask for recommendations and endorsements from those you have worked with professionally.
Use the “ask for a recommendation” feature within LinkedIn to make it really easy for them to respond.

2. Conduct a regular Social Media Audit

Look at your pages with a critical eye and remove anything that doesn’t portray the personal brand you want. Check your security and privacy settings are how you want them.

3. Set your Instagram account to private

Unless you want everyone to see what you are posting – and be careful if you do – set your Instagram account to private. Remember if you have a public profile, anyone can see your photos, and every time you add a hashtag you are adding that photo to the search results for that tag. Just search #drunk and you will see why this isn’t always a good idea!

4. Watch what you are saying on other people or pages content.

People have been reprimanded, fired or even criminally prosecuted all the time for what they say on social media. When in doubt, keep it to yourself…

5. Turn on tagging requests or turn off tagging on your profiles.

Have you been tagged in an embarrassing photograph, only to have it shown to all your friends? By disabling this feature you can make sure you are in control of what images are being shared next to your name.

 

If you have a tip for using social media for personal branding we would love to hear from you, share your thoughts below in the comments.

[social_share style=”circle” align=”horizontal” heading_align=”inline” text=”” heading=”” facebook=”1″ twitter=”1″ google_plus=”0″ linkedin=”1″ pinterest=”0″ link=”” /]