What Does Personal Branding Mean to You?
What does the phrase “personal branding” mean to you? I hear a lot about this whole personal branding topic. Is it a good thing to develop or can it end up being hurtful to your career? As an entreprenuer, I think that it is important to develop a personal brand. You are a company. The skill sets that you possess are services that this company can provide to an employer. That is how the title of this blog came about. Chris Stocker Inc is me. It is who I am, it is what I do, and every site that I own or everything that I do relates back to Chris Stocker Inc or the 3 letters, CSI. That’s where the CSI in my company name CSI Marketing Solutions, LLC came from.
Even if you don’t plan on starting your own company, it is still important to have your own personal brand. Your personal brand is basically a resume. Here are a few tips to build and maintain your personal brand.
Own Your Name
Very first thing that you want to do is own your name. What I mean by this is, owning all possible user names or websites with your name. Your name may be taken already if you are getting into it late. I was not able to get the domain, chrisstocker.com, but I decided that my personal brand would be Chris Stocker Inc, because I myself am a company. Whether it is as a small business owner, employer, or an employee, that is how I represent myself. An example of owning your name is Ted Murphy from IZEA. Take a look at this search in Google for his name, he owns the first page of results. 
Whether it is a YouTube channel, Flickr page, Facebook page, Twitter, website, blog, whatever it is, he has his profile there.
Create a Standard Profile
As I stated before, a personal brand is your glorified resume. In order to own your name like I mentioned above, you will need to sign up for multiple different networks and forums and communities. Save yourself time and create a standard profile that you can upload to all of these different communities that you join. Just like a company, you want to keep a consistent strong brand. Having an inconsistent message could be damaging to yourself.
Create a Logo
This logo can be anything you want it to be. If you want to use a picture of yourself, then that is great. Try to use the same picture for all of your profiles however. If you have a photo for Facebook, use it for Twitter as well as YouTube. If you are going to change the photo, then be sure to change it all across the board so when people see that picture, they automatically match it to your personal brand. If you don’t want to use a photo, then you can create a custom logo. There are plenty of examples of people that have done this successfully.
These are 3 quick tips to get you started on your personal brand today. Of course there are many things that you can be doing to build the ultimate personal brand, but without these starting points then you will not be able to do the others.
Go out today and get your brand started.
photo credit: Tommaso Sorchiotti via photopin cc