Using The Social Media For Personal Branding

If you have ever bought any item online, do you remember making a little research online using a few Google searches and going through reviews just to make sure you are buying the right thing?

Before the beginning of online media, we use to with a few people we thought knowledgeable before making a buying decision or any important decision for that matter.

What Is Personal Branding?

Personal Branding is the way you market yourself to others. It is something related to your reputation. It also refers to the way your peers see you. The few questions given below can make will clear the clouds of your doubt about personal branding in your case.

1) What sot of  ideas pops in others mind after hearing your name?
2) What do you represent?
3) Are you expert in what you do?
4) Are you trustworthy?
5) [and the most important] What do you stand for?

Gone are the days when Branding was confined to celebrities. Everybody has a brand value and social media makes it so important for you to build your brand reputation so you can have your value in the marketplace.

How To Do Your Personal Branding?

Companies spend a lot of money and their effort to build a brand value for themselves online. Entrepreneurs therefore, must focus on benefiting from this trend and build their own brand identity and leverage social media to influence the market.

Among many ways, let's keep this discussion to the social media tools and technologies and how you can use them the right way for your Personal Branding.

Here are a few  basic steps to start to establish your brand value online using the social media channels:

1) Create your Facebook profile: According to a report, the Facebook's population is as big as whole world's was in 1804. So it is one of the powerful ways to create your online presence.

Set up your Facebook profile if you don't own one. Remember that whatever you say or do online becomes a public record of your personal brand.Maintain a hawk eye on what you post/update/like.

2) Set up your Google+ profile: Till date, Google holds the number one position as search engine. So don't underestimate the ability of Google+ to add a rocket speed to your Brand Value.

If you have a Google account (Gmail account), you are already on Google+. So spend some time to tweak your Google+ profile. When you are logged in your Google account, you can find your Google+ account option as a '+' followed by your name.

3) Set up your Twitter account: Twitter is a micro-blogging service where you can share insights and links on the topics that demonstrate your area of expertise and professional skill. Write your Twitter bio describing yourself in 160 or less letters, we call them characters. Follow big people of your industry. share a link to your online resume in the website field of your account.

4) Set up your LinkedIn profile: This should be your first stop if you are a student or a professional. It is the closest thing to your online CV. You should set up your LinkedIn profile with great care. Fill out the profile completely.

Do not skip out any experience or details that are important. The default headline describes your current job position. You can and should change it manually if you are not happy with the look of your profile headline. Your summary should always include a brief paragraph summarizing your work experience and your career aspirations.

5) Set up your Blog/Website:This is the most powerful step of all. After your social profiles on all these mainstream social networking sites is in place, it begins to create an image of a genuine person for you. That is a good beginning.

However, there is more to personal branding than having a bunch of social media profiles. Your own website, your own blog starts to make that difference for you.

We all have talents, we all have unique skills and we all have some passions. These are the things that can help you get going with your blogging journey.

If you don't have a website and you want to learn more about it (such as why you need one, how to do it etc.).