6 Overlooked SM Personal Branding Must-Dos

Personal branding – it’s all the rage. Working hard to make sure that everything that shows up online – social media and everything else – reflects well on you and paints an accurate picture of who you are.

But there a few things that often go overlooked when considering working on a personal brand.

6 Personal Branding Must-Dos

1. Updating: Stay on top of your various online presences and what they say about you. If you have a job title change, be sure to update it in all of your bios. If that profile photo more than 10 years old its time to update it – everywhere.

2. Social media and SM connections: Reevaluate all of you social media presences. Do they all still make sense to tell your story? Are there others you should be on? Evaluate your connections for quality. Be sure that anyone looking at who you’re connected to is not going to be less than impressed.

To read more on this topic, see Quality SM connections for personal branding 

3. Blogging: Writing and regularly posting to a blog is viewed by some as a bit of a vanity pastime. They could not be more wrong. To claim extra internet real estate, show off some expertise or to simply get found in Google search results – it’s hard to beat the power of a blog. 

To read more on this topic, see Blogging for personal branding 

4. Your focus: Yes, you’re focused on things you can do to your personal brand stand out, but ultimately your success in social media is mostly about how social you are and how others perceive you. To that end make your time on social mostly about others. Be helpful: help others connect, help others learn and most of all notice, and comment on, the hard work of others. It’s the No. 1 commandment here: 10 Commandments for Social Media 

5. Get uncomfortable: It’s easy to stick to connecting to people we know; to interact with people like us. But the real secret sauce of social media is the opportunity to meet people all over the world who have interesting stories to share.

Make a point of connecting to at least one intriguing Twitter or other social network account per week and look for ways to interact with the account-holder. 

You’ll be surprised where this might lead in terms of connections down the road. 

6. Get real: Finally, but most importantly you need to turn all this online activity in something in the real world or IRL as the kids say). Massive effort on social media is not worth a hill of beans if you don’t make new connections in the real world.

How to do this? Look for opportunities to attend meetups. Suggest your own meetup. If you’re visiting a different city or even a different country let your connections know and offer to buy coffee so you can meet. It truly is a very gratifying and fun experience to meet someone you’ve been connected to on social media for years to finally meet them in real life…. 

There you have it: Six often overlooked keys to stronger personal branding wit social media and other online presences. Do you have other suggestions? I’d love to hear them.