Bonus Step: Personal Branding

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Now you have your resume written and ready to send to your prospective employers. Resumes are still the traditional way to get hired for most positions whether it is full-time, part-time, contract, internship and even freelance. However, in the 21st century you need to know how to market yourself. 

Marketing and promotions isn’t just for organizations anymore my friends.

If you are anything like me, you may despise the thought of selling yourself to anyone or any organization. The thought of shaking hands and a saying “How do you do” draws smarmy pictures of cigar smoking greasy handed old men in my head. Yours, too?  No worries. There are other ways of promoting yourself without the cold calls and networking parties.

Social Media
There are as many social media sites as there are people or so it seems. The big ones are LinkedIn and Facebook with Google+, Pinterest and Tumblr coming up and running. They are easy to setup. If you can read, you can setup a social media site.

LinkedIn is the site for business relations and networking. You can join and participate in groups in your area of interests and follow and research companies that you may want to work for. Each company shows a list of people who work there with LinkedIn accounts. You can ask for introductions from people who are your connections with their connections who may be able to help you in your job search.

You can also be bold and send a message directly to the connection. Be polite and let the person know who you are and what you are looking for. Get to the point and keep it short. If you don’t hear back from him/her, move on. Don’t waste time on someone who has no interest in helping you. However, keep in mind that you should not just ask for help. Show them how you can benefit the company by focusing on how you are going to help them. You must make them subliminally think that you are looking to help them rather than the other way around.

When you post on your social media site, share something that is useful for those in your field such as an interesting article, commenting on relevant industry news, sharing accomplishments and joining online debates.

In LinkedIn, look for your peers at companies in your industry and review their profiles to see what is similar and what is different.  Also, look at the Companies’ pages in LindedIn to gain insight on the people the company has hired and even those who have left to see what type of positions they are looking for.  Then look at their growth to see if they are growing, shrinking or just flat. 

Blogs
You can start a blog in minutes and for free. Don’t think that blogs are just for writers and soccer moms or soccer mom writers. Blogs are a great way to showcase who you are and what you can do or what you are an expert in. Believe me – there is something you can blog about no matter what type of work you do.

Here are a few quick ways to figure out what you can write about:

• What do your family, friends, co-workers, etc. ask you for help with? Can you translate that information into regular posts on your blog?
• What are you passionate about that you can correlate your blog to what you want to do for a living?
• What do you like to share with others that you are knowledgeable about? Maybe that knowledge can be offered via a blog.

Of course, just like social media sites, there are lots of sites that offer free blogs such as www.blogger.com and www.wordpress.com that are easy to setup and start posting.

YouTube
Are you good at making videos? I applied for two jobs online that asked if I had any videos to show them what I can do. The only video that I had created was a cooking segment of my family and me demonstrating how to make chili bean soup. I wasn’t sure if this was apropos for the job so I hesitated about sending it. Now I regret it because it showed my personality and the job called for a PR person.

Even if you are not in the video business, you may want to consider creating videos that represent what you can do such as an instructional video and upload them for free to YouTube. If you have enough videos, you can create a video channel on YouTube. Videos aren’t just for creative types, but if you appear awkward on camera you may want to skip this form of personal branding. For the rest of you, film away. You never know. You may become a YouTube sensation.

Websites
Depending on your budget, you may want to consider setting up a website. A website can be viewed as a form of advertisement for you. Websites entail time and money to operate. If you are not savvy with technology, you may have to hire someone to do it for you. This can get expensive. I once hired outside help to create a website for a company that I used to own. It cost me over $2,000 for a basic design, and I had to write the content for the website. If you don’t write, you should hire someone to write it for you.

Nonetheless, if you are a professional, creative type or a freelancer, a website is the perfect venue for showcasing who you are and how to get in touch with you. If you have it search engine optimized (another cost if you are not a tech expert), then people will find you easy through web searches without having to pay for advertisements on the internet.

Not all websites are expensive if you can get away with a simple website. Most people can get away with a basic one page website. You can use the user-friendly Weebly (www.weebly.com) to design your basic website for free. You will build it yourself through a series of setups that the system walks you through. You just have to pay for the domain name which you can get for less than $20 per year via Go Daddy (www.godaddy.com).  (There are plenty of sites that offer cheap domains; simply search for “cheap domains” and you bound to find to suit you.)

Online Portfolios
​Creative types will need an online portfolio to show off their great creations. However, I wouldn’t brush off having a portfolio if you are in a different field. Are there some documents such as policies, procedures, internal communications that you created for work, school or charity? I bet if you search around and truly think about it, you will come up with some items. Did you create a spreadsheet or financial tracker that absolutely stunned everyone in the accounting department or even just amused them? How about an article that you wrote for the company newsletter? Think hard. Be creative. Use your lateral thinking – Problem solving through unconventional and illogical means.

Online portfolios can have fees attached to them so you may want to start with free ones if your budget is tight. Crevado offers free online portfolios at www.crevado.com.

Magazines and Newspaper Advertisements
This is a potentially high-cost measure for promoting yourself, but it can be successful particularly if you are pursuing freelance and contract work. Even so, you may want to give it a try if you are looking to market your talents for a new position.

Which magazines and newspapers? I would look at ones that pertain to your field such as trade magazines. Local newspapers are great if you want to market yourself within your community. Consumer magazines may be trickier unless you have a product or service that is tailored to consumers rather than businesses. If you don’t know if there is a trade magazine for your field, simply search on “[your trade]” and “magazine and newspapers and publications,” I’m sure something is bound to come up. You would be surprised at how many publications exist. Not all of them are sold in bookstores, which, unfortunately, are becoming extinct anyway.

Think outside the box:  alumni magazines and newsletters, church/synagogue bulletins, Craig’s List (www.craigslist.com). What else? Anytime you see advertisements in publications think if it will be a good place for you to advertise as well.

The Old Standbys – Networking and Cold Calling
For those of you who are brave social butterflies, both networking and cold calling can do wonders for getting your name out there and landing the jobs that you want. The rest of us need to learn how to be social butterflies to reap the same benefits.

Spread the message by letting friends, co-workers, family members and former supervisors know that you are looking for work. You can try and introduce yourself to hiring managers at the organizations where you want to work and learn more about the position you are interested in. (Don’t ask for a job or referral; you’re just there to gather information.) 

You can create your own business cards using your computer’s software programs or you can have them printed professionally. Try to attend career events and industry seminars to interact with others in your field. You can even try to set up informational meetings with executives and managers to chat about your career. Just think where it may lead.

What else?
Always remember that there are many ways that you can market yourself. Years ago, there was a model/actress names Angelyne who paid for billboard advertisements of herself which were placed around Hollywood and Los Angeles. It worked. She essentially became notorious, leading to parts in movies and television.

You never know. You just have to be clever.

Remember if you do have a blog, YouTube channel, website, and/or online portfolio, make sure you put the link in your resume preferably in the header section.
One caveat about personal branding:  Don’t put anything out there about yourself that you wouldn’t want you mother to see (or any mother to see for that matter.)