Towards the back end of last month I was invited to present to the Dorset branch of the Chartered Institute of Marketing at a brand new event they were promoting designed to introduce members, students and academics to the benefits of digital marketing. My 15 minute slot was to be about Linkedin strategy, but what can you really talk about in just 15 minutes. Never one to pass up a good challenge though I set forth on the journey to condense the wonder that is Linkedin into just a quarter of an hour, hoping along the way to motivate those present to get started on building their personal brands. Continue reading
Tag Archives: brand you
The mysterious art of creating the perfect personal brand ….
A personal brand is a funny creature, part reality and part manufactured. It’s purpose is to create an image, to which one then has to live up to.
We’ve come a long way in the few years that this has started to become part of popular culture, we’ve seen celebrities come and go and they are no longer just the actors and actresses. A great example of the degree of the change that has occurred is in the rise of the people who are famous simply for being famous – who have no discernible talent, skill or knowledge but who have a knack (perhaps that’s a skill after all!) for being in the right place at the right time and being seen with, and around the right people. Continue reading
It’s all about YOU!
Yes really, personal branding is guess what ….. all about YOU! Ok, so you realise that or you probably wouldn’t be reading this blog post would you? But do you really know who you are? No really, who are you, who is the person that you are showing on LinkedIn for instance?
The reason for the questions above is because I come across so many people who don’t really know who they are and as a result are not really doing themselves any favours when it comes to putting a profile together. So where do you start? Well, you could start with the present. The reason for this is because it is the present that matters when it comes to a personal brand, of course what you have done in the past and the vast amount of experience you have had matters a huge amount, but it matters because it informs the present. In other words, you probably wouldn’t be doing what you are doing now without having gone through your past experiences, even if you jumped ship into a completely different career.
How this translates online means that your summary reflects your CURRENT STATE – the things you are interested in, what motivates you, what drives you, your goals, dreams and aspiration NOW. It also should reflect the successes you have already achieved as well as those you are hoping to achieve in the short to medium term.
Don’t forget those all important key words too, you know the ones that reflect the expertise you have, that you draw on everyday in order to undertake the role you now have …. At the same time don’t dismiss your past experience, just because it was a different career path, it has never been truer than today to say that all of your experience is relevant, but only in context of how it is used now.
Once you realise that LinkedIn is not just another online CV storage facility, but a real, live thriving community that can help you to achieve your goals you’ll start to value the person you are today, and not the person you were five, ten or even twenty years ago. It is the present that matters, but your present is built on the experiences of your past!
LinkedIn Made Easy, the ebook that accompanies this website, is full of hints and tips to help you make the most of the opportunity that is the LinkedIn community, you can buy it now, for just £4.99.
