How to Use Social Media for Personal Branding

Sometimes associated with online reputation, personal branding means mostly being different and standing out from the crowd by identifying and articulating a unique value proposition.

Dan Schawbel said once “Brand yourself for the career you want, not the job you have.” What can we learn from this is that personal branding means more than acting spontaneously but planning in detail the image you want people to recognize you for.

Social media can help you build and develop your personal branding.Here are some tips on how can you use social networks in your advantage:

Learn how to present yourself, clearly state your profile, how you want to be perceived by your public and for what type of content you want to be known as.

If you don’t have the necessary time to develop and supervise your social media strategy you can hire a social media savvy that will set-up and manage your accounts.

Blog:
Create fresh, useful and interesting content.
Write passionately, but be brief.
Comment frequently (and meaningfully) on blogs or social pages that write about you and your posts.
Get support from your happy readers, industry experts, or any respected professional working in the same field as you are. Their positive opinions will create an aura of credibility around your personality.
Be unique and take a niche -people don’t want to subscribe to another blog that talks about the same old topics used on every social network. Develop a distinct social personality, offer a fresh perspective and approach a distinct market segments.
Join other communities: a Facebook fan Page, a LinkedIn group, or a local association will help you build new relationships and select and target your audience.
Show interest in what others have to say about them; stay alert about what your competitors do and check out the latest news and trends in your industry. Sites like alltop.com and google.com/alerts might help.
Promote yourself. Use Digg, StumbleUpon or Del.icio.us to drive awareness. After you’ve managed to build a strong online reputation, linking and promoting others is a nice way to show you care about your readers.