Brand Yourself

I am so proud of myself

BECAUSE

Yesterday I went to my lecture and it was for my module ‘Professional Practice & Creative Industries.’This lecture was about building myself as an online brand and starting our blogs. I was really excited for this lesson to see what we had to do and if there were any more improvements that I could take into consideration and act upon… surprise surprise there were! This means I have some improvements to make but don’t worry any changes that I make, I will update you. 

The lecture’s focus was on how to brand yourself online and it sounded strange to think of yourself as a brand but then I started to think of the big names such as, ‘The Murdoch Empire.’ Rupert Murdoch is a person with a regular name like me and you BUT by using the concept of branding and branding himself, he made it big! To get into the media industry you really do need to take advantage of the tools around you… 

This post WILL help you get started, regardless of what industry you want to go in, everyone finds everything on the internet, the question is, ‘Will your brand be there?!’ So whether your a baker, a photographer or a fisherman use the internet to brand yourself online! Although this post is mainly focused towards branding yourself for a media industry it can be applied to any other industry that use the internet and social media to their advantage to get their business recognised. To start off with, here are a few starting points on how to brand yourself…

USERNAME
The key is to always look and stay the same, for example MacDonald’s uses Ronald MacDonald as their brand and have never changed that figure.
-Always use your name 
-Try to use the same online username for every account you create, if it is already taken do not add a number instead add your profession, if my name was taken I would choose something along the lines of ‘rosaaversawriter’ 
-On any online accounts that you create try to always use the same profile picture so that when someone comes across your brand its looks professional

EMAIL
We all had msn when we were younger and made up a silly email instead of using our name, but let’s be honest if you put down on your CV ilovecheese@live.com, no one would hire you, especially in a media industry it’s always about being 100% professional. When thinking of your brand you need to remember that your name is your brand, therefore you want your brand to appear professional. I’ve said it before in a previous post but, ‘IMAGE IS KEY’. A tip so that you don’t confuse your personal life with your work life is to keep them separate and have two separate email accounts. With almost everyone having a smart phone/device it’s easy to keep up to date with opportunities, your work and personal life on the go via email especially as you can connect it to your phone. 

FACEBOOK
Again as I have mentioned before with social networks such as Facebook & Twitter you need to be careful about what you post, such as I like to keep my personal life private in the sense that if I don’t know you I won’t accept you on Facebook, you can also set your page to private via your settings. However I like to keep my Twitter public so if you want to follow me you are more than welcome. However a wise thing to do is to spend a few hours simply going through your social media accounts as employers now like to Google future employees, think to yourself if you were a CEO/Employer would you be impressed, more likely to hire yourself or not? My advice is simple if you are in doubt get rid of it! Your brand online could be costing you that job that you can’t understand why you didn’t get it if your perfectly qualified for it. Again, ‘IMAGE IS KEY’!

TWITTER
As Twitter is public you need to be extra careful with what you post as thousands of professionals use Twitter, think of it as your competition is on this network, how can you be different?! Remember to use all media professionally, when a friend mentions you in a comment respond to them privately so that your big plans for the weekend are not all over your feed. Make sure to follow as many professionals as you can within the industry that you want to go in and interact with others, share your opinion, if you use Twitter right it can bring many advantages. 

LINKEDIN
LinkedIn is a very useful website to use, it’s use is purely professional, for those of you that don’t use social networks at all you need to be on LinkedIn at least to create your brand. This social network is very useful as you can search for jobs within your industry sector, add other people you have been in business with and best of all your CV is public and easily searchable. For those of you yet to discover LinkedIn sign up to it ASAP it could land you your dream job!

BECOME NUMBER ONE
Everyone has something in common with another person but to become a brand YOU have to be different, you need to have a unique selling point (USP) which makes you different from someone else. Most people will know that an industry like the one that I really want to get into is extremely difficult so you need to be eager, intelligent and know your industry. The internet is an amazing tool so use it to your advantage to find out as much information as you can. Now that I have started this module, I don’t think that this blog will be enough to set me apart now that it is compulsory for all the people on my course to have a blog similar to mine in order to pass this module. As Kid President says, ‘What will you create that will make the world awesome?’

INTER CONNECT
One of my favourite things about social media is that most of your social networks can be connected to one another, for instance when I blog this post it will instantly be posted on my Twitter feed, LinkedIn profile and Tumblr account at the expense of a click. Make sure to keep all of your accounts connected so that your brand can grow and reach a bigger audience than you can possible imagine.  

BIOGRAPHY, WHO ARE YOU?
Writing about yourself is the best way a person can sell their brand across the internet, my teacher referenced this blog site http://brandmeajournalist.com (This website is focused more towards people wanting to go into the Media/Journalist industry.) which is amazing, it’s filled with tips on how to write about yourself and how your bio can have an impact on your brand. Make sure you check it out for tips that could be of use to you, especially as Twitter has a limited amount of characters try to maximise the limited space available. When branding yourself online make sure that the image you want to sell is reliable and professional, try to select a professional photo as your choice of profile picture. 

CONTACT
It’s strange but I never realised I did this too until my lecturer pointed this out yesterday but it’s quite common for people to forget to update/put their contact details on their social networks. For example would you have known where to find my contact details? Either put them in your about me page or have a page dedicated on how to contact you. A good tip is to mention your email in posts now and again, just to put it out there my email is  rosa.aversa92@live.com you can find my contact details on my Online CV page.

PRIVACY
-Although your Facebook page may be private if you have 1000 friends that means over 1000 people can view your page and friends of friends can use your friends Facebook to view your page so you may want to really think about who you want to keep on your Facebook page.
-As it is a social media account remember you are there to interact so think through your privacy settings. 

When I was in the lecture and my teacher was discussing all of the above I thought to myself, ‘Why am I here? He’s pretty much repeating everything I do already’ Most of the tips in this post have been written about in detail beforehand and have been posted on separate occasions, if you would like to find out more on a certain subject, you can search it, check out the  tips category  for all the tips available or you can comment below if there is a certain subject that you would like advice on and I will dedicate a post for you. Now that I have reiterated most of  the tips that I have previously given and used the extra ones from my lecture notes, there is only one thing left to say…

What are you waiting for?! 

Start BRANDING YOURSELF! 

Also posted in http://lifeisfunbeingme.wordpress.com/