Aug 4, 2009
8 Ways to Boost your Brand Online
In the social media age, more than ever, it’s important to pay attention to your brand online. Your brand reflects how you are represented in the digital world from both a business and personal perspective. Everyone from students to business professionals should pay attention to their personal brand because it has a powerful influence on how people feel about you and what you represent. Here are 8 tips for improving your personal brand online.
1. Build relationships.
Limit the amount of self-promotion and marketing you do. Focus on building relationships and adding value to your content instead. The foundation of a well-rounded brand is relationship building, which consists of building trust in your brand through selfless contribution to the community.
2. Recommend other people’s products, services, and content.
When you pass on goodwill by recommending other people’s products, services, and content, you provide value to your community while encouraging others to do the same for you in return.
3. Try a variety of different social networks.
Make sure you have an active presence on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook because they are currently the three biggest social networks. However, you should also build a presence on more specialist networks in your field and try out new sites that have potential. You never know when one of the big social networks will go out of style and be replaced by a new one. It can be beneficial to build a strong presence on a new network before it gets too big. Remember when Friendster seemed invincible? Then it was Myspace. And now it’s Facebook. Don’t spread yourself too thin but do try to maintain a presence on a variety of social networks, not just the big 3.
4. Monitor your personal brand.
Use an alerts tool to monitor what is being said about you online. Anytime your name is mentioned in tweets, blogs, and websites, you can find out through search engine alerts.
5. Self-censor.
Prior to writing anything online, think to yourself whether you would feel comfortable having your mother, child, clients, or future employer see what you are going to write. You have to realize that whatever you put out into the online world can potentially affect your personal brand and have repercussions. While you don’t want to censor yourself completely to the point that you can’t even be yourself, you should be cautious to some extent about what you do and do not reveal.
6. Stretch your presence.
Visit new blogs and leave comments regularly. Often, people hang out and comment on the same group of blogs but that will prevent you from expanding your network. Stretch your presence online by constantly discovering new blogs.
7. Make an effort to post content on multiple social networks each week.
While most of us tend to have a favorite social network that we stick to, it’s a good idea to post content on multiple social networks. It’s easy to get trapped in using one social network but this could be very limiting. Post content on multiple networks each week, such as Twitter, your blog, a friend’s blog, and a forum.
8. Respond anytime someone mentions you.
Anytime someone mentions you or refers to your content, acknowledge them. Don’t leave them hanging! For example, if someone tweets one of your blog posts or otherwise mentions your name, thank them for the recognition.
1. Build relationships.
Limit the amount of self-promotion and marketing you do. Focus on building relationships and adding value to your content instead. The foundation of a well-rounded brand is relationship building, which consists of building trust in your brand through selfless contribution to the community.
2. Recommend other people’s products, services, and content.
When you pass on goodwill by recommending other people’s products, services, and content, you provide value to your community while encouraging others to do the same for you in return.
3. Try a variety of different social networks.
Make sure you have an active presence on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook because they are currently the three biggest social networks. However, you should also build a presence on more specialist networks in your field and try out new sites that have potential. You never know when one of the big social networks will go out of style and be replaced by a new one. It can be beneficial to build a strong presence on a new network before it gets too big. Remember when Friendster seemed invincible? Then it was Myspace. And now it’s Facebook. Don’t spread yourself too thin but do try to maintain a presence on a variety of social networks, not just the big 3.
4. Monitor your personal brand.
Use an alerts tool to monitor what is being said about you online. Anytime your name is mentioned in tweets, blogs, and websites, you can find out through search engine alerts.
5. Self-censor.
Prior to writing anything online, think to yourself whether you would feel comfortable having your mother, child, clients, or future employer see what you are going to write. You have to realize that whatever you put out into the online world can potentially affect your personal brand and have repercussions. While you don’t want to censor yourself completely to the point that you can’t even be yourself, you should be cautious to some extent about what you do and do not reveal.
6. Stretch your presence.
Visit new blogs and leave comments regularly. Often, people hang out and comment on the same group of blogs but that will prevent you from expanding your network. Stretch your presence online by constantly discovering new blogs.
7. Make an effort to post content on multiple social networks each week.
While most of us tend to have a favorite social network that we stick to, it’s a good idea to post content on multiple social networks. It’s easy to get trapped in using one social network but this could be very limiting. Post content on multiple networks each week, such as Twitter, your blog, a friend’s blog, and a forum.
8. Respond anytime someone mentions you.
Anytime someone mentions you or refers to your content, acknowledge them. Don’t leave them hanging! For example, if someone tweets one of your blog posts or otherwise mentions your name, thank them for the recognition.
