Overview/What You Will Learn

With 79% of hiring managers looking to the web for candidates, it’s imperative to take advantage of social media. William Arruda, personal branding expert, Founder of Reach Personal Branding and Co-Author of Career Distinction: Stand Out by Building Your Brand, outlines the ten most important steps you should take to build your personal brand online and how to take them.

Key Points

• Having a clear plan is vital to your success; otherwise you will have a fractured brand.  Make sure you are clear about who you are and what you want to be known for before you start posting and networking online.
• Having a consistent look and feel to your material – in other words, building a personal brand identity system with your unique color, logo, fonts, etc. -- increases recognition of your brand and enhances your brand.
• Inject personality into your bio and profiles so people can connect emotionally to you and experience other dimensions of you.

• Words are only a small part of communication. Sharing your voice, photo and body language (through video) is a much more powerful way to get people excited about you.

Your Next Steps / Your Top Ten Social Media Musts

• Understand your personal brand. Know what you want to say, what separates you from your peers and what’s going to be compelling to your target audience.

• Build a personal brand identity system. Adopt a signature color, logo, and create consistency with your online communications and links. Customize personal portals and social media sites, wherever possible, to have them look like you.

• Buy your domain name – that is, your firstandlastname.com . You don’t need to have your website ready now but, by having your own domain name, you can steer people in the direction you want them to go to learn more about you. It also can be used on your social media profiles, on the top of your resume, on your cover letters, etc. 

• Brand your Bio. That is, inject personality into it.  Add humor if you’re humorous, creativity if you’re creative. Don’t just make it a list of accomplishments. Make it a 3-dimensional you. Once you create it, you can use it on every social media site.

• Post a professional head shot. This picture accompanies your brand and speaks volumes about it. Include it with everything you do online.

• Update your LinkedIn profile.  LinkedIn is the single most important site for professionals, so you need to stand out. You can make your profile great by including:
  • A branded summary;
  • A great professional photo;
  • Your connection to groups or organizations that convey what is important to you;
  • Testimonials from a variety of parties to provide a well-rounded view of you.

• Register for Branch Out, the professional networking tool on Facebook. You can import your LinkedIn profile, focus your professional contacts and extend your brand through your Facebook contacts.

• Get a personal portal – which is akin to having your own website without having to manage your own website. You can create a custom flashpage and include headshots, your logo and links to all the other social media sites you’re already on.  Terrific personal portals include About.me and Flavors.me. 

• Get a YouTube Channel.  Video is the most differentiating tool – and the most valuable tool – in your job search.  Videotape yourself speaking publicly or working with others to show your target audience who you are. Because these videos will appear when someone Googles you, it’s a terrific opportunity to promote your brand.

• Prepare a Video Bio.   Take your branded bio, create a script and get in front of a camera. Tell people who you are and why they should care about you.  Then post it on YouTube and all the other social media sites where you can place it.

William Arruda is an international branding consultant, author and public speaker focused on professional development and executive leadership.  William is the Founder of Reach Personal Branding, the #1 provider of personal branding services to Fortune 500 companies and leading universities, guiding professionals to unearth what makes them exceptional and use their unique gifts and experience to drive value for their career and organization. He lectures and conducts workshops on personal branding at top-tier graduate schools of business, including Harvard, Duke, NYU, Berkeley, Wharton, University of Michigan, UCLA and Cornell. In addition, he lectures and consults to executives at the world's largest corporations including Johnson and Johnson, Price Waterhouse, Sheraton, Microsoft, Disney, Ogilvy and J.P. Morgan.  He is the co-author of Career Distinction: Stand Out By Building Your Brand, a guidebook with the tools managers need to differentiate themselves from their peers and thrive in today’s job market.  William blogs at http://www.thepersonalbrandingblog.com/tag/william-arruda/.