Personal branding is crucial in today's world. When people search for you online, you want to ensure you present a positive and accurate representation of yourself. It is important to separate your personal and professional lives online by setting social media accounts to private and only following accounts that can positively contribute to your brand. Everyone appreciates authenticity, so it is important to show your true character while also maintaining professionalism. Staying active on social media helps engage followers, and blogging allows you to provide more in-depth information about yourself and your brand. Honesty and monitoring your brand are also essential.

1. Personal Branding
By Chris Stein

2. The Five Keys to Personal Branding
1. Discover Your Passion
2. Be Bold
3. Tell Your Story
4.Create Relationships
5.Take Action

3. Why Should I be Concerned about Personal
Branding?
No matter what career path you plan on taking personal branding is crucial in today's world. Personal
branding is not only important in professional settings but also social settings. Often times the first thing
people do before or after meeting a new personal is search for them on social media or through google.
When people search for you, you want to be sure that our are presenting both a positive and accurate
representation of yourself.

4. Professional VS Casual Online Presence
Many people including myself use social media sites such as instagram and twitter for casual use. If that is the
case I strongly recommend setting up these accounts as private. Setting up these accounts as private helps
separate your personal life from your professional life. The images below are examples of a professional vs
non professional Instagram Account.

5. Who you Follow Matters!
When following social media accounts it is very important to only follow accounts that you want to be
associated with you and your brand. Following accounts that are inappropriate could have a very negative
affect on your brand. Following others can also be very beneficial for your brand. It gives you the opportunity
to connect with others and also gives you great content that could potentially be shared.

6. Individuality
Everyone loves authenticity. With that being said it is important to show sides of your true character while
also being professional. Nobody likes a robot, showing sides of your true character while also being
professional is a great way to set yourself apart. Needless to say you have to find a balance with this and
avoid saying anything that could possibly offend others.

7. Remain Active on Social Media Accounts
Staying active on Social Media helps engage your followers. Developing a schedule of when to make posts is a
great way to stay active. A schedule helps make you more aware of if you are posting too much or to little. If
you don't post enough other users will most likely lose interest with your brand.

8. Consider Making a Blog
While LinkedIn and other social media platforms are a great way to build a brand, blogging can help you take
it to the next step. Blogging allows you to provide more info about topics then platforms such as linkedin or
Facebook which gives users a better idea of what you are about.

9. Accidents Happen
Everyone makes mistakes that are both in our control and sometimes out of our control. If you make a post
that is receiving negative feedback you should delete the post. If somebody makes a post that includes you
and could negatively affect you start by asking the person to remove the post. If that fails take action and
report the post.

10. Honesty
Be honest with your users. Posting false information about your achievements or qualifications almost always
backfires. If somebody brings attention to you giving out false information to benefit yourself all of the work
that went into building your brand goes down the drain.

11. Monitor your Brand
Monitoring your brand is very important. You need to look at the number of likes, and also what people are
commenting about your posts. Monitoring your brand allows you to improve on things that you are lacking
while emphasising on things that you are good at.