7 Steps to Building Your Personal e-Brand
Only recently did I start to embrace who I am Online, I finally did some of the steps I knew would help me in getting more client referrals from this blog (now happening), getting more feed subscribers (now happening) and increasing my sense of being on the internet. Even though I knew how I could improve all these things, I never did them for the fear of my Offline life being affected if anyone could easily track what I was up to. Not that I actually do anything to be ashamed or embarassed of and now I fully focus on Building My Personal e-Brand and my Internet life has changed so much for the better. Here’s how you can start to achieve more success online aswell:
1. Accept What You Do
By this I mean don’t be afraid of the whole world knowing what you do online, what you look like or being scared of your friends finding out about you and making a joke of it. Now that I dont care about these things the benefits are major and it actually feels like a huge weight lifted off your shoulders.
2. Profile Yourself
Get out there and have a page on your blogs or websites about who you really are, include some pictures and possibly some humerous or unique information people couldn’t find about you elsewhere. I think I do that well on this blog by simply having my full name on the posts and an image on the actual blog post pages.
3. Understand why you build your brand
If you dont have the understanding of why your building your brand then you wont realise how good it is to share yourself online. The reason your profile and brand online is important is that pictures and a name are about as personal as you can get to bring trust to others to visit your site. Trust leads to people buying your products or enquiring about your services. If you dont have a face or a name its often hard for people to trust you.
4. Become Involved in the Blog-O-Sphere
The Blogosphere is becoming the new media at an alarming rate so it’s good for you to get in their early, early is now. I started this blog a year ago and whilst I’ve never been a consistent writer like I finally am now, I’ve always been involved on linking to other blogs, commenting on other blogs and joining in their communities. This has helped me with business enquiries and traffic to my site that I wouldnt have had. And oh yeah, this is all because my name is really out there!
5. Be Real In Social Media
Social Media sites arent there for you to wade in, post some stories or give some thoughts and get tonnes of traffic and links back to your sites. They are social media sites because they are where people are supposed to be social and interact with each other. Really take the time to get involved in a community you are interested in and it will help your brand ten-fold.
6. Learn Your Subject So You can be an Expert to Others
If you are passionate about your subject, then its so much easier to happily read and learn about it, becoming an expert on the subject and sharing what you have learnt so you can be perceived as an expert to others. Seth Godin wasn’t always an expert marketer, Aaron Wall wasn’t always an amazing seo and John Chow wasn’t always an expert at making money online. Being seen as an expert on particular subjects will always build your brand online.
7. Be Your Own Person
You can decide on your own whether you think this blog post is good or bad. Whether I have personally learnt about building my online e-brand. I dont think I copy anyone in this industry, partly because I wouldn’t and partly because I am my own person. If you aren’t your own person and unique in someway, how can you stand out from the crowd and be memorable?
Personally…Im starting to see the affects of building my brand when my name gets mentioned and my blog posts get linked too, not just because I’m writing decent content. I hope my findings teach you something too…
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I think a key issue is making sure people can find a picture of you online. It helps establish credibility especially if you are speaking to people over the phone.
I agree, although you’ve been in the industry a heck of along time patrick I’m not sure how long you’ve had such a big web presence?
If you’re a ‘blogger, then you’re already building and managing your brand.
Once you’re on-line, there’s no point erecting virtual partitions in an attempt to prevent your on-line activities bleeding into those off-line.
Your message, your articles and your comments are your brand.
How you present yourself both off-line and on-line is your brand.
Showing diplomacy and knowing when to keep a dignified silence is you managing your brand.
It’s not a requirement to have some unique trait, either. Consistency is as good as anything.
And by that I’m referring to a constancy in the quality of your content and a constancy in your posting cycle being foremost in my mind.
Also, having an unusual name like mine helps, too!
But there’s a lesson to be learned, one of looking to unusual sources to help you build and manage your personal brand…
Thanks for the brialliant comment Wayne
And your surname is awesome!
When I was a kid, I hated my name, more so because I was the tallest kid around.
But now, I’m still tall (6 foot 7 inches) but I’m fine about my name. People remember me.
And, if someone wants to know more about me and what I do, if I’m feeling lazy, I can just tell them to go Google my name.
Now that’s the kind of branding people and businesses pay serious money for…
Pretty ironic eh!
Yeah I like being able to say search for my full name. Being able to say search for ‘Glen’ would be so much cooler though
My name is not really that manly but I have to accept it. It’s my name when people refer to Lorrin they try to think who people are talking about but when they here Lorrin Guy everyone knows me. I accepted my name the only hard part will be when I get married. If any random person comes to the wedding their going to wonder which one is the male’s name.
I’m just sick of people calling me Glenn even when the correct spelling was right there on the likes of emails and facebook
[…] is a comment of mine, made on an article offering advice on how to build personal brand by Glen Allsopp, over on Viper […]