Personal Branding: What is that for?
By Hannan Ben Slimane, Intern
We often hear about the fact that we should not leave compromising pictures on Facebook after a crazy night out or pay more attention to content that can be expressed on social media. We often hear the term “personal brand” in discussions about social media, now let’s check the definition. Personal branding expresses the act of creating and managing our own brand, attached to an individual and not to a product. That brand is the addition of personal reputation and professional identity.
The concept of personal branding is based on the idea of applying to a known person or not (professional area in general: artist, employee, manager, CEO, etc.) communication techniques usually used for brands. Along with the emergence of social media, this method has found a new perspective in the management of digital identity, online notoriety and online reputation.
Personal branding was able to be developed thanks to the possibility of using simple tools like social media (Facebook, LinkedIn and others), blogs, micro blogging sites (Twitter) to publish content easily about ourselves, increasing our network, talking with people in real time, regardless of place or time and without any control.
Optimization of personal branding is primarily used when looking for a job. Indeed today, many recruiters do some research on the candidates via the Internet. The first thing done is often typing the name of the candidate in a Google search and sift through the the list of results. Personally I think it is very important to take care of our personal brand because with all of the competition out there, we must learn to stand out and be able to sell ourselves for a job. For this, we come to sell us as a product, but with our own characteristics.
In addition, personal branding is a very good way to create and extend our network via social media like LinkedIn, which is a career oriented social network. Like I already mentioned in my previous articles, I was able to be hired as an intern here at Fusion thanks to Twitter. I believe Twitter can be a great tool for professional networks. However, there are definitely rules to follow if you do not want your brand to be perceived as a “bad brand”.
So be careful of your content on Facebook, what picture you are tagged on, etc. Many stories have made the news about employees being fired because of what they have said on their Facebook profile. Personal branding is definitely like product branding: it takes time and a lot of work, but can lead to great things.
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