The Essential Guide to MANAGING YOUR

PERSONAL BRAND

Personal branding is not a new concept. The practice has been around longer than most social media companies that shaped the world as we know it today. The term “personal branding” is thought to have been first used and discussed in a 1997 Fast Company article by Tom Peters titled The Brand Called You. Essentially, personal branding is the ongoing process of creating an image or impression in the mind of others about yourself as an individual.

“All of us need to understand the importance of branding. We are CEOs of our own companies: Me Inc. To be in business today, our most important job is to be head marketer for the brand called You.” -Tom Peters

In today’s digital age, the phrase “personal branding” is synonymous with displaying one’s top achievements and practicing thought leadership in that particular industry. It enables today’s leaders to reveal their presence through action, data and performance. If you're an experienced professional turned coach or an executive looking to improve your brand, this guide is for you. Read on to see how you can ensure that your online presence markets you in the most professional way.

“Your brand is a perception or emotion, maintained by somebody other than you, that describes the

total experience of having a relationship with you.” -David McNally and Karl Speak,

authors of Be Your Own Brand

Is Your Personal Website Working?

When someone is interested in working with you or inviting you to speak to an event, the first thing they are most likely to do is Google you. You’ve probably done it yourself (if you haven’t yet, you really should). The ideal outcome of this search would be your personal website in the top results. On your website, you should have a clear narrative about who you are, what your experience has been in the industry where you’re considered to be an expert, and how people can connect with you.

Here are some key questions your website should be able to provide an answer to: • What makes you unique and what do you want people to remember about you?

• What’s your USP (unique selling proposition)?

• What is your expertise?

• What is the value you bring to the table/project/organization/event?

• What have you written/published about the subjects you’re an expert on? Where can people read your articles or buy your books? Do you have a newsletter?

• How can people reach you?

• What collaboration opportunities are you offering?

• How does one start to work with you? What are the necessary steps they should take?

• Where can people connect with you, on other channels?

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The design should reflect your personality and it should be tailored to your audience first and foremost. If you’re looking to attract companies, think what type of website they would find it easier to navigate and what they would look to obtain from visiting your website. If you want to connect with event organizers think what they’d like to find there. Use your personal website to show past collaborations, events, partners and guest articles. Everything you put out there should also be reflected or linked to from your website. The link exchange will also be beneficial in terms of SEO, if you have other authoritative websites linking back to you.

Here are some personal branded websites that can serve as inspiration:

Gary Sheng

Brandon Johnson

Devon Stank

Kristi Hines

Neil Patel

Online Tools You Should be Using

A big part of managing your personal brand is knowing what people are saying about you and being able to connect with them on the online channels they're using the most. There are different tools that you can use for different activities. We’ll group them into three main categories: brand monitoring tools, social engagement tools and content tools. Of course almost all popular social media tools can serve both as monitoring tools as well as engagement and publishing tools. One pro tip before we get started: make sure you use a consistent look and feel on all your channels - the same profile image, name and bio. You want to personalize and adapt the content and frequency to each individual channel and their specific audience, but you want to present yourself in a recognizable manner. Potential clients may notice you on LinkedIn and decide to check out your other profiles so it’s important they know they’ve found the right account at first glance.

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1. Brand monitoring tools

Mention Mention allows you to keep a constant read on what people are saying about your brand. It’s a pretty straightforward tool (with a good UX). To get started, you add your mentions / searches and connect your social media channels. Mention will show you what other experts in the same industry you can connect with and what their influencer scores are.

Klout Klout connects to all your other social media channels and monitors your level of expertise based on the content you’ve shared online and the people you’re connected with. In other words, it tracks your influencer level and shows you how you rank for different topics you’ve talked about online.

Google alerts Probably the most well known tool for keeping track of online mentions of yourself and your brand. The tool helps you stay up-to-date on keywords you are interested in but also on what’s been said about your brand.

TweetReach As the name implies, this tool is specifically designed to monitor tweets. TweetReach measures the actual impact and implications of social media discussions. It is a good way of finding out who are your most influential followers.

IceRocket This tool offers blog, Twitter and Facebook monitoring in 20 languages, as well as results graphs that you can play with. It allows you to choose the period of time you are interested in monitoring. It can be used for keeping an eye on blog activity mentioning your brand, as they have around 200 million blogs in their database and they also provide the possibility of finding the latest trend terms related to your search.

2. Social media engagement tools

LinkedIn The no.1 network for professional connections and building a strong personal brand. LinkedIn enables you to display your knowledge, credentials, and firsthand knowledge of your industry as evidence of your robust talent and skills. It’s also a good case practice to review profiles of top CEOs and business leaders in your industry to see how they brand themselves, how they leverage their value, and how they sell their skill sets. Also look at the articles they share and the content they curate. Look at Neil’s Patel activity on LinkedIn, for example:

We always encourage our clients to make the most out of the content they create and share it with their communities.

For example, this is an infographic designed to promote a SlideShare presentation for one of our clients.

Download the full guide here: http://bit.ly/2y92TUx

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