More Personal Branding Tips!

By Louisa Mattozzi

Last week, we all sat down in front of our laptops in hometown bedrooms, empty dorms, and various dining halls around campus to educate ourselves on personal branding. Though everyone is readily exposed to corporate branding, such as choosing red and yellow to represent McDonald's, or artistic branding, such as Maggie Rodger's red and blue color scheme, personal branding is less visible to the public eye. Here's some tips on how to brand yourself and translate that branding into self-marketing.

Who are you?

What are your strengths and weaknesses? Are you a strong graphic designer or primarily a writer? What motivates you? Chick-fil-A sandwiches or positive feedback? What are you known for by your friends and family? Are you exceptionally hard-working or skilled at collaboration? What makes you unique and valuable to an employer? Write it down.

What do you want to be known for?

What future career do you want? What industry? Are you missing any skills? Do you need to learn InDesign? Do you need to educate yourself on fashion seasons? College is the time to discover any knowledge you may need in the future. There's a 24/7 study room in ECL for that exact reason.

Who is your target audience?

Who are you appealing to? Teenagers? Choose TikTok over Instagram then. Who is a member of your desired industry you are similar to and what's their audience? Is that your audience? Probably.

Use your above answers and list a few words you can use to describe and market yourself. Ideally, you will be able to narrow them down to three. If you work in visual mediums, also choose a font and three colors you can use for all your visuals.

Once you've determined your identity, you can begin to list who you want to schedule informational interviews with. Create a list of companies and people related to your future desired career and interview them about how they found their job and what their work is actually like. You might change your focus or plan once you get up close and personal with the industry. Maybe you’ll find that you prefer corporate communications to social media. You'll never know unless you've tried it.

The easiest ways to use your branding for self-promotion is through social media and elevator pitches.

LinkedIn is the best go-to place for any self-promotion activity. The first thing anyone looks at on your LinkedIn is your profile picture, header and biography. Make sure your profile picture is professional, high quality and supports your branding. Your header is equally essential, so use it to show one of your skills or interests. Have you written three books? Use a picture of them on a coffee table. Your biography should also publicize your skills, interests and important information. Are you available for public speaking? Put it in your biography. Unlike other social media, LinkedIn also provides opportunities to advertise your skills, gain endorsements from colleagues and make recommendations, so take advantage.

Other than LinkedIn, you can also use other social media to publicize yourself, whether it’s Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or even the infamous TikTok. Just make sure that the content you create and advertise supports your branding.

Finally, you can also create an elevator pitch, often talked about in the Communications major or at any career fair. An elevator pitch should be thirty to sixty seconds long and detail who you are, what you do, how you're unique, your ideal future clients and what's next in your career. You also can create a virtual version for text or email considering in-person marketing may not be as possible during the current pandemic.

I hope you discover your niche and get out there. Internships are waiting, and so is your future career!