Online Personal Branding: Making Yourself the Star of the Web

So what if you have an impressive career profile with a charismatic personality to boot – how are potential employers going to know that? By reading your traditional resume? Why not put it into safekeeping and jump on the online personal branding bandwagon? After all, it’s projected that this year would mark the death of the traditional resume as more and more employers turn to your online presence as one of the major tools for assessing whether or not you’re a cut above the rest.

Online personal branding is all about turning yourself into a bankable, marketable product. Working as an interactive online portfolio, your personal brand gives potential employers access to read about your accomplishments, education, work experience, and other relevant information about you, letting them create an impression of your value along the way. Potential employers may visit your LinkedIn, Facebook, or Twitter accounts and/or refer to your Klout score to know more about the quality of your social engagement.

When you create an online brand, the internet becomes your personal vault. You need to fill it with quality content that will make you a standout brand on cyberspace. As Online ID Calculator would put it, “if you don’t show up on Google, you don’t exist”.

In this information age, Googling your name has become not a vanity, but a necessity. The internet is used as an information source by millions of people around the world; what these people see when they search your name becomes part and parcel with your life. For someone who’s seeking career growth, you cannot afford to be mistaken for someone else, especially if that someone has a background that could put your career into a compromise.

Good thing there are many things you can do to prevent it from happening, including:

• Carefully managing your image on social networks
• Participating in legit professional forums
• Creating and maintaining a quality and informative blog
• Contributing relevant content to reputable sites

You can also hire an expert online reputation management service to do these tasks diligently. Reputation management firms know the ins and outs of online branding, and they have the right SEO tools and the manpower to manage your online brand effectively.

SOURCES:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeannemeister/2013/01/03/2013-the-year-of-social-hr/
http://www.thealexandergroup.com/blog-press-room/2010/have-you-googled-yourself-lately/
http://www.forbes.com/sites/georgebradt/2012/10/03/how-to-manage-your-personal-brand-especially-during-a-job-search/
http://klout.com/home