Everyone Has an Online Personal Brand
Your online personal brand is the same as your reputation. Everything you do, say, don’t do, don’t say, etc. becomes part of your brand, your reputation, and how others perceive you.
There are many ways you can strengthen your personal brand.
However, what took so long to build can be destroyed in a matter of seconds in four easy steps!
Procrastinate
Don’t do today what you can do tomorrow. Your brand can create itself, right? WRONG!
You already know what your niche is and you already have a plan.
All you need now is to put your plan in action. Remember, you are in charge of your own personal brand. If you don’t build it up, who will?
Be Inconsistent
You need to define your brand. Your brand also has to be consistent.
For example, McDonald’s hamburgers taste pretty much the same no matter where you are located.
When you walk into any McDonald’s anywhere, you KNOW exactly what you will get. That is consistency.
Your customers will expect to see your brand wherever you are online. If they don’t, they won’t recognize you.
Bad Time Management
You need to know how to manage your time properly. If you cannot keep track of your own work and time, why would clients trust you with their money?
Part and parcel of your own personal branding is to deliver the goods on time and in a consistent manner!
There is no point having really good products but at the same time being unreliable.
Clients take reliability into account when choosing your brand.
Get Stuck in a Rut
You need to constantly keep on moving. Your ideas need to be fresh.
If you just stick to the same old concept all the time, someone is bound to take your idea and an extra zing to it.
So keep those fresh ideas coming. You don’t want your personal brand to stay on a plateau phase all the time! You want it to keep growing and growing!
There are many other ways to kill your online brand like being rude in a public forum, not following through on your brand promise, being dishonest, having poor quality products or services, and much more. 🙂
As a Visual Digital Marketing Specialist for New Horizons 123, Julie works to grow small businesses, increasing their online visibility by leveraging the latest in internet and video technologies. She specializes in creative camera-less animated video production, custom images, content writing, and SlideShare presentations. Julie also manages content, blog management, email marketing, marketing automation, and social media for her clients.
This is really helpful, I have taken what you said and will learn to do the complete opposite – in one way this is quite inspiring for me, thanks!
LOL Lawyer Sydney – how’s this for a little reverse psychology?
Nice short points but very true and very important. It’s really easy to get stuck in a rutt without realising. I think something just clicked. lol.
This is so wonderful post and I think people who read this post gonna think positive in life 🙂 thanks again for posting this.
Good points Julie.
Would just add that even if you are doing a marvellous job on all 4 points it will not matter if you are rude to an insult people on social media.
Haven’t you come across some member of Linkedin in discussions that are always obnoxious? Would you do business with them? I sure wouldn’t.
Hi Catarina, Of course there are MANY more ways to ruin your personal brand and most definitely, being rude or insulting on social media is a biggie! I have absolutely run across many obnoxious people in discussions on LInkedin and other social networking sites and nope – sure wouldn’t. Sometimes you just have to wonder where their common sense has gone, right? Thanks for stopping by – hope you are doing well! 🙂
I admit it, these are really the most common mistakes a blogger can do while branding him/herself. Personal branding is a very sensible area of the online marketing scene, the trust which is really hard to earn could be lost in a second.
Thanks Anna – most definitely we can ruin our online reputation very quickly by one silly mistake. Ever wonder why online reputation management companies make the big bucks? 🙂
very important and short point really very helpful thanks for sharing this with all of us its really great post.
Being stuck in that rut Julie is a sneaky way for ego to procrastinate. Seize the moment, use it and grow. Keep meeting and helping folks and most of all, dive into your fears. Awesome way to expand brand awareness. Rocking advice here.
Thanks Ryan, it’s amazing how easy it is to procrastinate isn’t it?