Marketing your personal brand

Your identity is becoming far more important when it comes to doing business. This is partly down to the explosion of social media on the Internet, but also applies just as much to your “offline” activity.

You’ll already have contacts in your trade who know you either as a supplier or customer, but is it just simply about being yourself or should you really have a personal marketing plan?

It’s not as shameless as it sounds.  Your strategy for offline “personal” promotion will be about the way you deal with people, maybe how you write about your subject area or speak on your subject.  These are opportunities to be an ambassador for your business at the same time as a respected expert on your field.

Online, content has become so important, as search engines consume new articles, blogs, website pages, news at an incredible rate. Then social networks are inviting you to join and participate in online discussions, forums, and surveys and make friends with people you might never have met otherwise.  So a plan starts to make sense.  Here are our top tips for creating and managing your personal brand:

Offline

• At networking events make sure you represent your business in the best light, bring business cards, and any other appropriate literature, never criticise the competition (you never know when that will come back to haunt you and it’s not good form).
• Offer to speak at seminars and meetings to show that you are an expert in your subject area – this builds your brand very powerfully.
• Think about your face-to-face and telephone customer service?  Have you got it right and are you portraying a professional organisation?

Online

• Join a professional business social network.  LinkedIn is probably the best and apart from raising your personal profile and that of your business, the possibility of making some amazing connections.
• Can you write a blog?  These are best when written by individuals and builds great credibility if you can write.
• If you have a Facebook account, you can use this to position yourself, and you can also set up a Facebook business page.
• Do you tweet?  Twitter is the 3rd most visited website in the UK and is an easy to use social network where you can tell people what you’re up to in 140 characters or less. 

There are two big advantages to getting into social media online – one is that they’re normally all free to join and the other is that by default they will all link back to your website.  Excellent for your business and all of these combined should portray the image that is right for your business.