7 Key Ways To Promote Your Personal Brand

By now, you understand finding the perfect job requires more than simply writing a resume and posting it online. In fact, if you are going to take the “apply online” approach, you should spend no more than two hours per week at it. Less than 5% of jobs are ever posted online, so if you are going to find your next job fast you need to spend your time elsewhere.


The successful and savvy job seeker will develop a compelling personal brand and spend 75% of their time (or more) promoting it. Here are seven key ways to promote your personal brand:

1. Buy Printed Business Cards:

Now number of job seekers who have absolutely NO way of letting other people know how to contact them other than by shoving a resume in their face. And no, the ones you print at home on your own computer are NOT good enough! Business cards are inexpensive. Sometimes you can even get free business cards from places like Prints Made Easy or free shipping from stores like Office Max.
As for what to put on your card? I recommend the minimalist approach. Put your name, e-mail address, phone, and LinkedIn profile address. You don’t need a title or a cute picture. Get a non-glossy finish and leave the back empty so people can jot down notes about you.

2. Develop A Concise Elevator Pitch

Give just enough information to make people want to ask you to tell them more. Don’t focus on your past, instead focus on your future. Nobody cares you have 15 years experience in micro-processors. They want to know what you can do for THEM now! Be memorable, but not flippant or “cutesy.”
Lastly, rehearse it at least 100 times out loud BEFORE you use it in a group. You want it to be polished, but not too formulaic.

3. Show Up

You have business cards and a concise elevator pitch, but what good are they if you sit all day at the computer? Plan a strategy to show up in places where your target audience is (i.e. potential employers in key companies within your target industries) or where the people who know them will be.

4. Listen And Build Trust

Networking is NOT about you. It’s about building a relationship. It’s about helping people in your network of friends and colleagues connect for mutual benefit. It’s about finding out what someone else needs and helping them.

5. Complete Your LinkedIn Profile

This is one of the most important online tools you will have. A great resource for learning more about how to beef up your LinkedIn account is from Joshua Waldman with Career Enlightenment. Check him out. He’s is THE premiere professional on this topic!

6. Follow Up

Develop a press kit you can send if asked. Better yet, create a blog (I like WordPress). Online you can store video clips, PDF files, work examples and much more.

7. Send A Thank You Card

Every career coach from here to Katmandu tells their clients to do this. It’s an inexpensive way to keep you on the top of someone’s mind. Personal, handwritten cards get past the usual gatekeepers and are absolutely read by their intended recipient.

 

A Breakthrough Approach to Brand Creation

A new approach for creating brands has been proven more
effective than brand positioning.
This new approach is based on the power of storytelling. Some
marketers, most notably McDonald’s, have recognized the
need for a storytelling approach. Until now the effectiveness
of this approach had not been validated.
SDS is at the forefront of ground-breaking empirical research
that demonstrates the superiority of brand stories. Our efforts
include actively contributing to an extensive 3-year study
conducted by The SDS Research Foundation (SDS) titled, “On
the Road to a New Effectiveness Model.”
SDS has built upon the findings of this research and the
principles of storytelling to create a breakthrough approach
to branding.
We call this approach SDS Branding.