Build Your Exceptional Personal Brand Online

With the explosion in social media and online marketing, it's critical that you manage your personal brand, to ensure your career and professional success.

First off, it is important to understand what branding is: A Definition of Branding Wikipedia offers this definition of branding: "People engaged in branding seek to develop or align the expectations behind the brand experience, creating the impression that a brand associated with a product or service has certain qualities or characteristics that make it special or unique."

I have developed this Top 11 list of strategies you can employ, to build and maintain an exceptional online brand. ENJOY!!! 1. Have a plan for your online brand: Before you begin creating social media accounts, it is absolutely critical that you first plan out what your personal online branding/marketing strategies are. Who do you plan on communicating with? What is your ideal target? Are you trying to learn about a new industry, change careers, find a job in the same field, or do research in advance of starting your own business? The goals you have should define what your strategies are. Is it important that you build your brand awareness as a subject matter expert in a specific field?

2. Have a GREAT profile picture: In today's 24x7x365 online world, we are all identified by and judged by how we present ourselves on social networking sites. Sites like Facebook and Twitter. Our profile picture allows us to present ourselves to others including potential employers, business partners, clients...even future spouses. As part of your online branding, you HAVE to use a profile picture carefully since it's the very FIRST thing people look at. 3. Search your "personal brand" results: Every month conduct searches on Bing, Yahoo, Google, and YouTube on your name "First Name Last Name" to see where you are showing up. 4. Monitor your name: search for it on such social media tracking sites like Reputation.com and SocialMention.com. 5. Monitor your online brand strength regularly: To see what your aggregate online social media STRENGTH is there are really good websites like Klout. Take a test to monitor your online brand performance. Here's a cool list of 10 free tools you can use to manage your brand online. 6. For ideas about the types of organizations that have already built "cult-like" followers as exceptional brands check out this article on GREAT brands. 7. Create separate social media accounts for your personal life and professional career on Facebook, plus have a professional account for LinkedIn, Twitter MeetUp, and YouTube. Constantly ensure that people are not tagging you or mentioning your names for inappropriate things such as that wild weekend at the Jersey shore, that 1am bar brawl in the Hamptons, or anything that would make Lindsay Lohan blush. Provide people who like/follow you on your professional accounts with links to interesting and information articles. Keep providing valuable information on a regular basis. Ask people to follow you or suggest that others follow you. Here is a great article on top tips for building a stellar personal brand on LinkedIn. 8. Become a thought leader/subject matter expert in the industry you currently work in or other sectors that you want to transition to from your current career. You do this by signing up to join any relevant LinkedIn Groups you can find, and once they approve you, follow the discussions to learn the latest trends and developments. 9. Tweet to build a VERY specific and targeted set of followers and follow all of the key industry reporters, analysts, bloggers in the fields you work in or are interested in. 10. Blog! Nothing will build your online brand faster than publishing content that others find to be interesting, informative, and helpful. It's easy and FREE. The two best platforms are Google Blogger and WordPress. 11. BE DIFFERENT: for inspiration on how all the great thinkers were ahead of their time check out this video on Apple called: "Think Different." Top 10 tools to manage your brand's reputation. To obtain my FREE Powerpoint presentation on using social media to build your brand online, email me. Check out this article: "5 Easy Ways to Market Yourself Online."