Sarita Prashad

People market themselves (and their skill sets) to the general public through launching a personal brand. This personal brand can be presented to others via face-to-face interactions and/or through establishing a social media presence. Personal branding can be considered the gateway to creating meaningful and mutually beneficial relationships with others; for example, effective personal branding can be used to help you land your dream job!

Imagine that there are two equally-skilled candidates - Candidate A and Candidate B - who have applied for the same internship position at a local social media marketing agency: both candidates have submitted detailed resumes outlining relevant skills required for the position, therefore, the recruiter decides to verify the consistency of the candidates’ personal brands through tracking their social media accounts.

After reviewing the content the candidates have been sharing online, the recruiter decides to directly compare their online brands:

Candidate A: 

Active on 7 online platforms: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest, Tumblr, Professional Website Recent posts have no overarching themes [dogs, makeup tips, coffee] Posting times are inconsistent on most platforms; daily tweets, inactive Tumblr account

Candidate B:

Active on 4 online platforms: Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Professional Website Recent posts are all related to “Job Searching” [interview tips, companies who are currently hiring] Posting times are consistent across platforms; weekly posts

In this hypothetical situation, Candidate B would be offered the internship position over Candidate A. The recruiter would have concluded that Candidate A has weak online brand because the content that (s)he has been sharing on his/her social media accounts is inconsistent, and do not effectively represent his/her personal brand.

If the hypothetical job posting mentioned above was available in real-life, would you be able to get hired based on your online personal branding skills?

Establishing an authentic personal brand and effectively managing it (keeping it focused on content relevant to personal brand) is crucial to establish credibility both when entering the workforce, and transitioning into a new career.

So, how can you monitor your online personal brand? Managing your personal brand has become much easier over the recent years, as many companies have launched brand monitoring (BM) tools to efficiently evaluate the content you are sharing with your followers. Hootsuite is a BM tool – with free and paid options –  which allows users to conveniently monitor their personal brand via linking multiple social media accounts to a single online platform1. Hootsuite provides its users with features to auto-schedule their social media posts and track content which is relevant to their brand through streams and geo-searches; there is also an option to monitor comment streams to ensure your followers only see content that reflects your personal brand in a positive manner1.

There are also online reputation management (ORM) tools available to ensure that you are sending relevant and engaging content to viewers without damaging your personal brand. Go Fish Digital allows you to search for potential complaints about companies from over 40 different websites, so that you are aware about any criticism before endorsing said company’s products or services2. It is important to use ORM tools on a regular basis to ensure that you will not receive backlash from followers and/or the general public for blindly liking a post or tweet.

Rather than just being a follower, make the effort to create an engaging personal brand that can help you stand out amongst the competition and land the job you really want!

Sources

1.  Hootsuite. Hootsuite, https://hootsuite.com/. Accessed 23 Feb. 2018.