Discover your personal brand in the online world
According to Forbes.com, your personal brand on the Internet is poor if you see any of the following after entering your name in the search engine.
1. You don't exist. Your name can't be found.
2. Your name only appears in an obituary of a person with the same name.
3. Your name occurs frequently, but it's not you.
4. There is a lot of online information about you from the time you worked for one of your former employers. Nothing can be found about your current career.
5. There is only information about your childhood and personal life.
6. The results of searching for your name don't make a good first impression. The only things that come up is old or negative information related to your life or work.
Improve your personal brand in the online world
What can you do to make your online identity more positive and professional? Create a plan to build your online personal brand. Before you start taking any additional steps, you need to clarify what traits your brand should reflect, what differentiates you from others, and also who you assume will look for information about you on the Internet.
Focus only on the first page of search results since almost nobody reads the other pages. The first three links are the most important. The content associated with your name should reflect your personal and professional life and show that you are successful and interesting. Your career and work should be reflected in 70-80% of all the content and 20-30% should show your personal life.
Start by writing your own short biography - who you are, what you do, and what have you achieved. Then publish it on your personal website and your profiles on social networks such as LinkedIn. Your profile on this social network should always be up to date because it will occur among the first results after entering your name in the Google search. Your "Headline" and "Summary" are the most important sections of your LinkedIn profile from the search engine's point of view. Your photo and the description of your work experience are also crucial.
When it comes to your personal website, buy a domain bearing your name (eg. yourname.com). This website will also be among the first results of the Google search of your name. Even if you don't have content to you put on your website yet, you can put links on your LinkedIn profile or other relevant sites on it. Do the same on social networks - include your name in the URLs of your profiles (eg. Twitter.com/yourname).
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