Four Ways to Put the Person in Personal Branding

 A lot is being said these days about personal branding. If you are a social media manager in charge of coaching your peeps to better personal branding, don't be misled by a lot of the info out there about regular branding. Branding a company and branding a person are two different animals. They may be in the same domain, but they aren't the same species. Here are four quick tips to keep in mind:

1. Make sure your personal branding profiles are personal and not corporate.
First, make sure profiles are fully filled out. If you want to brand, you can't worry too much about privacy. Be personable. Information like how many kids you have, hobbies, favorite books and movies, and the normal info that's asked for on most profiles needs to be there. It's such a huge part of what makes you human. Corporates don't have a list of favorite movies.

Also make sure your avatar is a picture of you and not of your organization's logo. Some social media experts recommend using an informal picture, but I really think that informality needs to reflect your brand. If your public perceives you in a suit and tie, maybe a picture like Brian Solis' twitter avatar would work as opposed to you sitting in the boat on the weekend with a fishing pole in your hand.

2. If you use multiple social media accounts, make sure they all have the same look.
You can provide a lot of brand consistency by making sure that your social media accounts that allow custom looks are branded together. Color, graphics, avatars, tag lines,backgrounds, whatever, should be the same on all your social media accounts. Twitter, Facebook (esp. landing pages) blog sites, and YouTube channels all allow you to customize backgrounds. Make the most of that option.

3. Make good use of keywords.
I can honestly say I am not a search engine optimization (SEO) expert but you can learn everything you need to know about the basics online quickly. Just remember that using keywords in a title or first few sentences of a blog post will help you get found by those spiders on Google. There is so much good info out there--no excuse. Start here. I liked this article--"SEO for dummies--eight outstanding tips for newbies." I actually bought the SEO book for Dummies (I am a huge fan of the Dummies books). If you don't have time for a book, try searching the internet. But DO get to know something about SEO!

4. Be accessible online
You can't succeed at personal branding if you don't frequent the media you are using to promote. I know this sounds like a no-brainer, but I have a long list of people I've followed over the years who jumped into the pool and drowned from inactivity. Personal branding is a huge commitment. You can't create the sites and walk away. You have to be willing to write, post, answer questions, curate, broadcast, leave comments on others' blogs and sites. In short, you have to be "out there."

I'll be doing a table topic on personal branding at CoSIDA in July and would love to get some questions or comments ahead. Let me know what you think.