What We Write About.

It’s spring again and the smell of new­ness, growth, and cleaner are in the air. The past month I’ve been think­ing a lot about my per­sonal brand­ing. You see, I was recently in the job mar­ket, and one of the biggest new trends in job hunt­ing is that the way to get the right job is to mar­ket your­self, to cre­ate your own per­sonal brand and use it as a tool to attract com­pa­nies to you. Not a small feat.

So, in the spirit of spring clean­ing, I’ve been prun­ing back and refin­ing my per­sonal brand­ing, espe­cially in my online pres­ence. And I think you should, too. Here’s why.

The way we mar­ket our­selves has become more impor­tant as our cul­ture becomes more pro­lific in assert­ing our pres­ence online, and as we put more of our­selves out there, more gets noticed. Employ­ers, poten­tial dates, friends, and any­one else who’s inter­ested can find out about us — our thoughts, words, pic­tures, and choices — by find­ing our social media accounts, web­sites, and more. Now think, what would I find out about you if I were to look?

If we’re con­scious of how we present our­selves online, let­ting peo­ple see who we are can actu­ally be very use­ful. As I worked to find a job and to cre­ate a “hire­able” aura about myself in the past month, I put a lot of effort into show­ing my broad inter­ests and expe­ri­ence, hop­ing to use that to my advan­tage. My résumé, call­ing cards, LinkedIn, Face­book, and newly cre­ated Twit­ter accounts all high­lighted dif­fer­ent aspects of what I wanted peo­ple to know about me: my vol­un­teer work, the impor­tance I put on words and gram­mar, my respon­si­ble, fun, and whim­si­cal per­son­al­ity, together giv­ing a bet­ter idea of who I am — and specif­i­cally see­ing the side of me I want them to see.

This is where “prun­ing” comes in. Cre­at­ing a clear mes­sage about one­self requires a focus in what’s being con­nected to them. For exam­ple, hav­ing matured as a per­son from when I first obtained a Face­book account, I unsub­scribed to groups about silly t-shirts, or fresh­man year dorm floors, instead sub­scrib­ing to net­work­ing groups for young pro­fes­sion­als and groups inter­ested in the ISO. To empha­size my inter­est in good design, I redesigned my call­ing cards to cor­re­spond with my résumé and thank you notes. LinkedIn became a place for my aux­il­iary work and vol­un­teer expe­ri­ence that no longer fit with my résumé.

Ensur­ing that your online pres­ence reflects your ver­sion of your­self, an exten­sion of your per­sonal brand­ing, can make mar­ket­ing your­self to the most impor­tant peo­ple and oppor­tu­ni­ties that come your way eas­ier and more effective.

How do you groom your online pres­ence? What are your goals for your online per­sonal brand­ing? Share in the con­ver­sa­tion on Twitter!

When social net­work­ing sites first hit the Web, I found myself fas­ci­nated with the idea that I could con­nect with my friends and keep up with cur­rent hap­pen­ings at all hours of the day. From fol­low­ing my favorite celebri­ties to check­ing out the lat­est from all of my friends’ week­ends, I quickly found myself addicted to the sites — giv­ing myself the offi­cial title of a social media “junkie”. It wasn’t until I set­tled into my career path that I saw the true poten­tial of these sites and their abil­ity to effec­tively rep­re­sent and posi­tion a brand  while con­nect­ing with con­sumers in such a way that had never been mas­tered before. But, how can com­pa­nies know if they’re truly con­nect­ing with their audi­ence? Is there a “secret” to effec­tively and effi­ciently man­ag­ing your company’s social media plat­forms to lever­age your brand? Let’s take a look at how you can iden­tify and deter­mine if you’re talk­ing to the right peo­ple, and how to effec­tively man­age your company’s social media channels.

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When Old Spice first hit the shelves in 1937, the brand pri­mar­ily sold cologne and after­shave; deodor­ant was listed tenth in mar­ket share. A pop­u­lar brand amongst my grandfather’s gen­er­a­tion, Proc­tor & Gam­ble (P&G) faced quite a chal­lenge to repo­si­tion the prod­uct when they pur­chased the brand in 1990 for $300 mil­lion. In hopes of restor­ing the brand that was quickly dying in the mar­ket­place, Old Spice re-evaluated their tar­geted audi­ence in effort to appeal to a much younger gen­er­a­tion by bring­ing for­mer NFL player, Isa­iah Mustafa, on board.

In a cul­ture where social-media has com­pletely trans­formed inter­per­sonal rela­tion­ships, Old Spice saw an oppor­tu­nity to trans­form the company-consumer rela­tion­ship by revamp­ing the brand through the use of the pop­u­lar social-media out­let: YouTube. Viral videos have proven to be so effec­tive in draw­ing pop­u­lar­ity that famous day-time hosts, like Ellen DeGeneres, have used the web­site to dis­cover aspir­ing tal­ent — such as Sophia Grace, the young and British singing sen­sa­tion. As I write this, the Old Spice YouTube chan­nel has 290,969 sub­scribers and 253,612,723 video views. So, what did Old Spice do that was so influ­en­tial in suc­cess­fully rebuild­ing their brand?

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