I don’t know about you, but I think that personal branding is somewhat difficult, especially if you are not sure about your passions. It is important to start your personal brand now, as you want to continually grow your brand. However, the most difficult part about personal branding is well, knowing where and how to start.

In my Internet Marketing class, we talked about how to start your personal brand and it starts with:

1. Thinking about what you’re passionate about
2. Picking three influencers who inspire you and connect with them.

Extending off of these two steps, an article by Mashable, gives 8 additional tips to getting a move on your personal brand.

3. Be specific about what your niche is. For example what kind of career do you want?
4. Make sure your niche spans across all your social media in the same manner.  The article states that you should not be too creative, but direct like saying you are a marketing major. But I think that it is more interesting if you write a one liner about your personal brand, instead of just stating your title.
5. Share, comment, and get your opinion out there by engaging in posts and conversations via social media.
6. Use the same photo in all your social media profiles. I don’t necessarily agree with this step because again, I think you want to keep it interesting. With that being said, I believe that you should always pick a nice and appropriate photo that you are comfortable with everyone seeing.
7. This brings us to the step of auditing all of your social media accounts: Facebook and Instagram. You don’t want your boss seeing an embarrassing or controversial photo, therefore, make sure that you put privacy settings and filters on the photos you want seen and not seen.
8. Have one username. It makes it easy for you and consistency is always a vital part of personal branding that looks clean and simple.
9. Leaving Amazon book reviews. I have never heard of this tip before, but I think it is very interesting. If your engagement in social media is light, leaving Amazon reviews will help you, as these are one of the first things to show up if professionals Google you. Remember, only post reviews on books that you care about, because this is another way to show your passions and areas of expertise.
10. Lastly, is LinkedIn. If you think that you don’t need one, you are sadly wrong. LinkedIn is a great way of connecting to new people and recruiters are now moving towards LinkedIn instead of Monster and Indeed.