Consulting Consultants: Personal Branding – Wrapup

In this final post in my series on personal branding I would like to just recap some of the things we went over.

We first took a look at blogs and how they can be used to quickly build your own personal brand and what you should but into a blog to help build that brand. It is important to note that your blog should be about what you want to be known for (my blog is a bad example since it’s topics vary). It can be one of the best pieces in an online resume. You’ll want to put time and effort into it if you want to see payoff and you’ll want to make sure your content is of the highest quality. Remember, this blog is in some cases the first thing people are going to see.

We looked at utilizing social networks like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. These can get your name out there, allowing people to find and interact with you. This is a huge part of personal branding because people being able to see you in some way allows them to get to know you and what you do.

We also looked at how attending and participating in public events is important to building your brand. People really like to be able to put a face with the name. Especially when they might what that face/name to work on something with/for them. Getting out and meeting people can also help expand your physical personal network which gives to the chance to sell more work.

All of this stuff can also help you build your internal personal branding if you work for a consulting firm (like me). Each of these will help people within your organization better understand who you are, what you do, and what they can come to you for.

Building your personal brand is important for a lot of reasons, but whatever the reasons you need to ensure that you that you do reputation control. Your reputation is a large part of your personal brand so no matter where or for whom you work you need to also put your best work and face forward. Reputation control is almost another way to say personal brand so make sure you have a handle on both. Googling your own name every once and a while can really help you understand what people might thing when they first hear or see your name.

I hope that you have found this series helpful. If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to leave a comment or shoot me an email.