How I'm Building My Personal Brand Part I

One of the most important things I've learned this summer was the concept of personal branding. It simply had never occurred to me before to think of myself as a brand.  

According to Dan Schwabel, personal branding is essentially how “we market ourselves to others.” Personal branding is all about how other people perceive us; how do we define ourselves, what differentiates us from everyone else, and what value do we provide to others?

Personal branding is especially important when it comes to job searching. In order to differentiate oneself from the crowd of other job seekers, one must market themselves effectively.

As I enter my senior year, I have invested a significant amount of time in my personal brand and it’s showing. Here is the first step I took:

Start a blog.

It could be about anything, but preferably in line with your passions. Personal branding is about defining what you do well and are passionate about, and a blog is a big step in this direction.

I started my first blog a month ago, with the intention of branding myself as a communications professional. I wanted to show potential employers my excellent writing skills, my creativity, and intelligence. All traits which would help me succeed in advertising, public relations or marketing.

At the beginning, I would Google my name but the same three outdated results always came up, and they had nothing to do with the transformation I was undergoing at the time. So I began updating my blog daily, publishing about 5-7 posts a day. I also engaged with other bloggers by commenting on their posts, contributing to the conversation and establishing myself as knowledgeable.

After a month of blogging and related activities, the top ten search results on Google belonged to me! I At first it took a while for Google to crawl my page, but due to the fact that I regularly post content, my posts now show up on Google a day after they are posted. 

How has blogging helped you with personal branding? Post your comment below!

Also stay tuned for the next step I took towards building my personal brand.