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We all care about how we present ourselves to the world. For instances when you wake up in the morning you brush your teeth, wash your face and put on clean clothes so that you look presentable before the world sees you.  This is exactly the kind of effort and approach your personal brand requires because you’re selling yourself!  Every post you share, comment on or like, your followers and others will make judgements about what you are promoting and whether it aligns with how you’ve established your personal brand. Unlike your appearance, where you can change it if you don’t like it, what you post online or how you react to it stays with you forever.  

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.

Brand monitoring is all about a business analytic process which helps the website owner to give important information about his site. It basically tracks & monitors various channels and media to get the insights of the company, its products and any other information connected to the site. It is also about tracking the brand image, its reputation in the eyes of the end consumer. It also connects with the customer in the sense that it gives importance to the consumer concerns and reaction. ("What Is Brand Monitoring? - Definition From Techopedia").

 One of the great tools that reflects brand monitoring is SumAll, this helps you to connect with a number of social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram & LinkedIn and it provides what your consumer think (insights), interactions & engagement. The paid version also allows you to do automatic post scheduling and also provided you with content recommendations.(Whalley)

 Online reputation management is all about how we can build strategies in order to influence about the general people’s perception about the organization, an individual or other various entity. It helps the entity know the public perception of their services or products. By using ORM a firm can fight back against negative a viral video, they can create marketing strategies and wider their domains so that they are clearly visible on the internet. One-way ORM works are using the positive material to counteract, it balances or pushes away the negatives. In terms of Google search it shows the only limited number of sites at top search and probably those are the best ones, ORM can pull up some positive contents to your site in order to be a part of that search result. Social media management has become one of the major elements for ORM. ("What Is Online Reputation Management (ORM)? - Definition From Techopedia")

 IFTTT is a tool or an app that helps you to be smart enough in the world of technology and social media. Let’s say you are coming back from a job at home once you park your car in the parking then this app will automatically switch on the lights at your home. The basic principle is to be versatile, you choose a channel that triggers an action on another channel, suppose you like a pic on Facebook (trigger) and that image comes to your Dropbox (Action). Using this you can keep track of 300 + channels that will support to keep track of your online reputation like you can get a message whenever there is a new item on your Talkwalker alerts. ("8 Brilliant Online Reputation Management Tools")

 These functions are a good learning tool for the students as in their future when they will have their own company or will be the part of the organization they can track the image about their respective companies and can use tools like SumAll & IFTTT to simplify their work.

 Work Cited

 "What Is Brand Monitoring? - Definition From Techopedia". Techopedia.Com, 2018, https://www.techopedia.com/definition/30310/brand-monitoring. Accessed 23 Feb 2018.

 Whalley, Brian. "12 Free Social Media And Brand Monitoring Tools We Love (And Why)". Blog.Hubspot.Com, 2018, https://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/29437/20-free-social-media-and-brand-monitoring-tools-that-rock.aspx. Accessed 23 Feb 2018.

 "What Is Online Reputation Management (ORM)? - Definition From Techopedia". Techopedia.Com, 2018, https://www.techopedia.com/definition/29591/online-reputation-management-orm. Accessed 23 Feb 2018.

Nowadays you cannot work in digital marketing field without understanding the importance of brand monitoring and online reputation management.

First of all, brand monitoring is important because it gives you an understanding of specific media, its background and actions.  You can see how they react to the emergency, deal with the crises, what are their benefits compared to their competitors. One of the most convenient tools to use while monitoring the brand is Hootsuite. Hootsuite works for all of your social networks and lets you create a more customized interface that will help you research different hashtags or users or words, etc. Hootsuite works with Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Google+, and it is free for you as a student.

As far as reputation management is concerned, it is considered to be essential to the business and market of any size. Reputation is something that can be built during years and decades and ruined just in one scandal. Students should understand how to monitor it and how to interpret the results of this monitoring. This way they can draw some conclusions on how to work with the audience, what influences it, etc. You can use tools like ReviewTracker that will help you track customers’ reviews through more than 80 sources. It is a paid tool but it does not cost a lot if we compare it to the use it gives us.

Being a student means you are in school. Being in school means, almost all of the time, that you are going to be looking for a job at some point in the near future. Wether you have a job lined up or are going to be going on a big search, nothing is set in stone. Too many times you have seen people lose their jobs or have their name ruined by what they have posted or done online. You only have one brand, one name and one reputation so it is critical that you are careful and strategic about what you do online. Personal brand monitoring (BM) and online reputation management (ORM) are incredibly important for everyone, but especially for students and those looking to enter the workforce soon. 

One helpful tool that can be used to monitor your personal brand is Google Alerts. Google Alerts is a tool that sends you an email any time your brand or your name is mentioned or used online. It can be very helpful for ensuring only positive things are being said about you, responding quickly to possible negative comments and more. 

An online reputation management tool called Brand Yourself is another way in which you can ensure that you are representing yourself in a positive, professional way. Brand Yourself has functions for both businesses and individuals. For individuals, it tells you what your current reputation score is, what content to remove that poses a risk to your reputation, how to optimize your posts to build your reputation positively, it constantly monitors your reputation for you and more. This all encompassing tool can be very helpful to ensure you maintain a positive and professional reputation online for all to see. 

Moral of the story is that your social and online profile is an extension of your self. There is no disconnect. You are responsible for all of your comments and actions online and off. As a result, managing your brand and your online reputation is critical for all and must always be a top priority or thought. 

My first ever post on Tumblr.