Why Should You Promote Yourself ?
How people see you at work
as a potential leader or Team builder is vital to your growth in your given industry.
With the Internet, social media, your need to “brand” and “promote yourself” effectively is essential. No matter how skilled you are, it wont matter unless your boss or future employer can see those skills and think of how they can be attributed to the future vision of the company/business.
So, how do you and your “Brand” stand out from the crowd?
Taking control of yourself or at least the perception everyone has of you. I know, that doesn’t sound easy does it, it is not a natural thing, most of us really lack the ability to self promote, whether its self-confidence, timidity or you just don’t want to bother or annoy people with “You”.
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So what you need to do is detach yourself from your brand. and promote your Brand or your vision of “You” and how you would like others to perceive you, and the internet is THE BEST way of taking charge of all of that. By marketing yourself properly in this media rich environment, you are in fact limiting the chance of things that you don’t want employers to see!
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All an employer needs is an internet connection and they can find many things about you, searching Social media is probably the best way, unfortunately this will also highlight some failures in their perception of you that could go against you in your en-devour to achieve your success.
So lets create your Brand.
So what is a brand and how do you change “YOU” into a brand?
There are typically 5 factors that define a brand.
- 1) Brand delivery
- This is your promise to an employer, what will they get when they take on your brand.
eg.Think of your favourite brand and why it is your favourite, it promises to achieve a certain criteria and meets it all the time.
- 2) The Brand Perceptions/referrals
- The only thing that matters is how consumers perceive your brand. You need to work to develop consumer perceptions that accurately reflect your brand-by highlighting testimonials etc
eg. Think of an eBay shop and how the feedback tool creates an aura of professionalism of the given shop.
- 3) The Brand Expectations/Consistency/Standards
- Where do you stand within your profession, what is your style.
eg. If you’re a Chef, do you see yourself as a director of many subordinates high creating quality volume production or Michelin style finesse?
- 4) The Brand Persona
- That’s you, this is the part where you let them know about the person behind the brand.
eg. Let them know your activities and how they tie into your goals, like reading for knowledge or gymnasium for stamina, what the person behind the brand and how you wish to drive it forward etc.
- 5) The Brand Elements
- Cohesion is the name of the game, make sure all the above elements work together to portray you in the direction that you wish to go.
eg. It’s futile going through all the work above only to have a logo that speaks of “Disjointedness or harshness.
So what do we have to do?
Take control. Take part in forums of your chosen profession, commenting on a wide variety of topics, use your real name instead of “theBigBoy10465” earn some respect by being professional in your answers, but the key to what we are doing here is Networking, Jason Shen has a brilliant article on how to promote yourself without looking like a “Douche”.
Build an online Identity.
One of the best places to start would be About.Me, its basically a single page intro with linkage to other social media accounts all in one place. like for example your “youtube account, facebook, google+, LinkedIn, twitter and if you wish to go further and I highly recommend you do, a homepage/website, which leads us to the next part…
Building an online presence would not be totally fulfilled without your very own website, this is an ideal place to instigate your brand and using sections 1 thru 5 as an outline/guide to completing it
Imagine having your own Domain name and website just full of all your accomplishments laid out in an interesting journey of achievement. There’s no substitute for having an email address from your own URL, a photo gallery on your own site that’s populated with your own photos, or a blog with your own URL that’s full of your ideas and thoughtful but interesting articles. here is my Professional Chef Page.
One thing that can help you build a better online Identity is getting backlinks to your website. With backlinks you have to be very precise about what you do. They should be natural, so it won’t hurt your online rankings. Building backlinks can easily become a minefield of mistakes and mishaps for uninformed SEOs. Check out this step-by-step process on how to build backlinks the right way in 2018.
What not todo.
- be gregarious with the truth.
- plagiarize.
- be a link fink, posting your site at every given moment, use it wisely to justify comments or as a way of establishing prior knowledge of a given subject.
- be spammy, dont link to EVERY photograph you take, instead create an album and link to that, this will allow the viewer to establish whether they wish to proceed thru the other 100 photos or not. Promote it wisely.
- forget about all the work you have put into it, keep it active and up to date, use your down time to do this, rushed work will show its rushed.
if I can be of any help……
or leave a comment.
Michael White
some links on the same subject
How to promote yourself
Establishing an Identity