The Benefits of A Personal Brand & How To Build One

        When people look at your Instagram, what is their impression of you? Or, what about when people look at your Twitter? How are people perceiving you based on the things you put on social media and are those perceptions consistent? If you weren't entirely sure and you answered no to the latter, then we need to talk about personal branding.

 

    Personal branding is the intentional effort you put into your public platforms in order to build a certain perception of yourself for your audience. A personal brand allows people to identify you better, allowing you to be more visible online, which in turn improves networking in the digital world. This can open up a world of opportunities, and I say this based on my own experience. Building a personal brand is what helped me secure the job I have now! Despite personal branding being centered around curating your online image, it doesn't mean you say goodbye to authenticity. The goal is to build your brand based on your authentic self. Here are my top three tips:

    First of all, building a uniform perception means to keep things consistent on all your social media platforms. This means using the same name/username across all your social media platforms as well as keeping the same profile picture and theme. IFTTT offers a helpful recipe for this, it will sync up all of your profile pictures across social media platforms. 

    Second of all, keep your content updated. IFTTT can help with that as well. Let's say you mostly use your Instagram account; Some of the recipes that IFTTT offers includes sharing your Instagram content onto Twitter as it is, rather than a simple link, sharing it to Tumblr as well as provide helpful hashtags that will allow your blog to gain recognition and it will even upload your images onto a Facebook album. IFTTT enables syncing between your social media platforms, making it easier to keep your content consistent and updated. 

    Lastly, build a community. This means interacting with your followers and networking. This article has many recommendations to choose from that will help you do this. Here are a few of the suggested social media tools that I personally liked:

• Discover.ly is a free Chrome extension that lets you see the social sites of your email connections. This is a great way to stay connected with the people you want to be connected to across the digital universe. 
• Canva is a website that allows you to create eye-catching images. Many people on Instagram utilize this website to create E-Fliers or Infographics. If you ever have information to share with your followers, this is the best way to do so. When your content is aesthetically pleasing, people feel more inclined to repost it and when your content gets reposted, you gain traction. 
  
• Zoho SalesIQ tracks your website visitors and allows you to connect with them in real time. There is an easy chat feature that lets you talk to them and you can even see the which parts of your website they explored and where they came from. 

   Aside from the article above, Paper.li is a social media tool that I suggest. You can read more about it here. Basically this website enables you to stay updated on what people in your niche are talking about. You can also connect your Twitter to it and it will help you share articles related to your niche as well as add community hashtags to help your account gain exposure among like-accounts!