Treat Yourself Like A Client To Build Your Personal Brand In 2015

Happy Wednesday! Welcome to the second post in our new guest blogging series. Today’s post is courtesy of the smart and talented Jessica Lawlor, a PR pro and the founder of the awesome Get Gutsy blog. You can tweet with Jess at @jesslaw. Read on for some of her excellent tips on personal branding!

~Kate

build your personal brand

Since I became active on social media nearly seven years ago, I’ve abided by one simple rule: treat myself as I would my company or client.

Know why?

When you treat yourself like you would a company or client, you develop a strong personal brand and a strong personal brand can lead to amazing and unexpected opportunities. Opportunities you likely never would have been offered, let alone heard about, if you didn’t have a robust personal brand.

For me, some of these opportunities have included new freelance clients, job offers, guest posts on major blogs, exciting speaking gigs and more.

Want to grab up some of these opportunities for yourself this year?

Read on to discover five ways to build your personal brand in 2015:

1. Track your name. Just like you probably have Google Alerts set up for the company names of your clients or your business, be sure to set up alerts for your own name. It’s completely free and easy to set up. When you track your name, you may be alerted to media hits or blog posts that mention you or your company that you otherwise may not have come across. From there, you can share and promote those mentions to expand their reach. I also recommend setting up free Talkwalker Alerts – I find that the service sometimes catches mentions that Google does not.

2. Share media mentions about yourself on your website. What do you do when you land an awesome media hit for your company or client? You share it! I bet you email it to the client, share it on social media, include it in an e-newsletter and you definitely post it on the client’s website. Why not do the same for yourself? Create a page on your website for accolades and media mentions about YOU. If you’re not comfortable with a dedicated page, you can include the mentions on your portfolio section of your website like I do here (scroll down to the bottom). Call it a #humblebrag!

3. Get recommendations/testimonials. Think LinkedIn is dead? Think again. Now that the site has introduced its new publishing platform, LinkedIn is back and better than ever. Might be a good time to do a scan of your profile to make sure it’s up-to-date! One of my favorite LinkedIn features is the ability to have others vouch for your work through recommendations. Consider asking those you work most closely with to write you a brief recommendation on LinkedIn. Once you have those recommendations? Repurpose them to your own website as a testimonial for your work.

4. Refresh your Twitter presence. If I’m being totally honest, the combination of my personal blog and Twitter account is *really* where the bulk of opportunities I’ve welcomed have come from. If you manage social media for a client, you know how important it is to keep your Twitter presence refreshed. To do the same for yourself, take a hard look at your Twitter bio. You have 160 characters to share who you are with the world. Is your bio communicating the information you want the world (more importantly, your target audience) to see? You can also customize your Twitter account to match your personal brand; consider creating a custom Twitter header (check out mine here) and use a background that matches, as well. You’ll be sure to impress with your buttoned up Twitter profile!

5. Don’t be afraid to promote your work. When I publish a new blog post or share a media mention or accolade, I like to follow the rule of three: I make sure to promote it in at least three different places to make the writing worth my while. For example, you could tweet a post, share it on Google+ and email it to those subscribed to your newsletter. Take it a step further and pin it, post it on Facebook and publish it to LinkedIn. Aim for at least three different places to spread your work far and wide. Also remember: not everyone is online at the same time, so it’s okay to repurpose the same tweets or posts a couple of times over multiple days or weeks.

For more tips on building your personal brand, feel free to check out these posts:

Have other tips for how to build your personal brand in 2015? I’d love to hear them! Leave your thoughts in the comments below.

Jessica Lawlor is a public relations professional and freelance writer in the Philadelphia area. Her work has been published on Ragan’s PR Daily, Muck Rack, Spin Sucks, Brazen Careerist, Mediabistro, Business Insider and AOL Jobs. Jessica is the founder of the Get Gutsy Blog/Community where she encourages others to step outside their comfort zone to reach their goals and live a life that makes them truly happy.