Build Your Personal Brand in Three-Steps
Before I eat at a restaurant, stay at a hotel, or even before I utilize a service provided by a company for the first time I make it a point to look up the establishment’s reviews online. This allows me to see what other consumers’ thoughts are with certain products or services offered by the establishment. Employers or if you’re a manager the people that follow you are doing the same thing, just to see what your reviews state about you in your profession. As a professional your product is yourself and you have to brand yourself the same way a company brands their products. I personally use LinkedIn to build my personal brand. LinkedIn was a great resource to begin building my professional brand and here is a three-step process to how I built my personal brand on LinkedIn. I started asking for recommendations or endorsements, I looked to add people to my network from my industry, and I write articles related to my industry.
Ask for recommendations or for endorsements. After I created my LinkedIn profile the first thing I did was look for my current or former co-workers, and my current and former classmates. This is where my personal brand begun. I have a good reputation as a hard worker, team player, and leader so people loved to recommend and endorse my skills for everyone.
Look for people in your industry. Begin with the end in mind, I started adding people that are in my industry. Often people that are in the same profession have the same personality traits. Also, I discovered people in the same industry as I tended to read items and engage in discussions about situations that effected our industry.
Write articles. After I built my network composing it of associates and people in my industry. The next step for me was to start engaging to keep them interested. I found the best way to do this was to write articles. So, I started putting my ideas down on paper and I started talking about things that were relative to my industry. Also, I asked people to like or share my articles so it expanded my reach of scope.
Building my personal brand, I followed a process very similar to that of a company building their products brand. LinkedIn was a great resource that helped me start aiding in this process as I embarked on the journey. I increased my network by asking for recommendations or endorsements. Also, I looked to add people to my network from my industry, and I keep all those people in my network engaged by writing articles related to my industry.
Author,Owner/Creative Director at Cypress Creative Enterprises & Cypress Cleaning
5 年Phil, Great tips, suggestions and insights. Very straightforward easy to follow.
Head of Operations ensuring operational integrity | Specialized in Business Intelligence, Forecasting, and Reporting | Proven success in Quality Management, Workflow Optimization, and Change Management
5 年Phil,? I agree 100% with you on this article. I'm new to Linked In and I find this to be motivational; I added former employers but never did I think to ask them for endorsements. Writing articles seems intriguing as well but I may have to walk some before I get to running. I appreciate all your advice and thank you for sharing this article with me!
Supplier Quality Engineer at Senneca Holdings
5 年Great article. Know one knows our brand better than we do. Our resume is only a snapshot of our brand but we are so much more than what our resumes reveal. ??
Sr. Project Manager | Operations Project Manager | HR Business Consultant
5 年Phil, This was a great read. We control the narrative on how we are preceived as professionals. Thanks for sharing your tips on taking a first step! This will definitely have one on the road to building and maintaining a sound professional network. Thanks for sharing!!
Insurance Broker | Licensed Insurance Agent
5 年Hi Phil, I totally love your approach to connection and engaging these connections. I do follow some of your steps depending on where I’m going but not for everything. So, I think I will start doing the same and see where it takes me. Thank you for a very short and precise article. Keep up the great work??