Dan Schawbel and The Brand Named YOU

We’ve often written about the importance of managing your personal online reputation. Remember Jamie’s posts on your online CV and how Twitter can lose you your job? Well when it comes to personal branding there is a guru, and his name is Dan Schawbel.

Dan Schawbel is the author of the new book Me 2.0: Build a Powerful Brand to Achieve Career Success and considers himself to be the “personal branding spokesman for Gen Y”. In addition he has a very successful blog, the Personal Branding Blog, and is currently working as the Social Media Specialist at EMC Corporation, one of the leading technology companies in the world . Oh and he’s only 25.

Dan reckons there are four steps to building a better online persona:

Step 1: Discover Your Brand

Describe yourself - what are your strengths and weaknesses? Dan suggests locking yourself in a room and jotting down ideas or asking friends how they would describe you. The important thing here is to brand yourself correctly - if you list yourself as being creative, you need your network of friends to agree that you are creative. He also says it’s not about the five year plan anymore, it’s about the 20 year plan.

Step 2: Create

You need to be consistent throughout your marketing channels. This means using the same picture, for example, in your Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn profiles. Think about your audience when you create it and make sure it is constant across the board.

Think about your name. If you have a very common name, start using your full name so that it stands out when someone searches for you. Just like a company wants their website to be found before their competitors, you want what you create to be discovered when your name is searched before anyone else.  

Step 3: Communicate

The advent of Web 2.0 rendered everyone a content creator. To get ahead you need to be a good communicator. “Writing is like a sport” says Dan, the more you practice it the better you become. Therefore, write constantly to hone your skills.

Step 4: Maintain your reputation

Track your name, companies you work for and companies you may be interested in working for using ORM tools. It’s important to look at comments made around your content – these help you to see how you are perceived by the harshest of critics – online consumers, and how you can improve this perception.

The tools available:

Personal branding is becoming more and more important in the race for jobs. There is an abundance of tools available to help you build your personal brand. Google Profiles allows you to aggregate all your content into one central location ensuring that when someone searches for you, they find the content that you have created.  Visual CV  is a free service that allows you to construct an online resumé enhanced by visuals, audio, video clips, slide shows and charts. You can also link your Visual CV to other Social Media accounts such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. 
 

Google Profile: John Wiley

 

After Thought:

Whatever tools you decide to use, keep the above four principles in mind. Unfortunately the more job hunting and recruitment move to cyberspace, the more you will need to bring together your online professional presence and your online social presence.