Use Social Media to Build Your Brand

Social media isn’t just about Tweeting your whereabouts. Used effectively, social media can actually be leveraged to create and promote your entire brand as a creative professional.

In order to use social media to its full capacity, you will need to build a brand for yourself or your company. Branding reinforces your message on the Web and can help you prove that you are a polished professional–whether you are looking for work or just trying to cover all the bases by putting together a social media presence. So how do you build a brand? Here are some tips to get you started:

• Strive for consistency in format. Use the same bio picture or logo for Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. If you use your middle initial, make sure all your social media sites have it. Remember that you are creating a package, and that it should be visually cohesive.
• Watch what you say. Remember that everything you say can be seen. Don’t let something slip that will come back to haunt you. Present a professional image at all times.
• Choose colors and a design. This doesn’t have to be super fancy–but you’ll want to stick to a similar color scheme if possible. If you are a designer and can create a custom logo, add it to your social media where you can.
• Make sure all the information is the same. If you describe yourself as a designer on one social networking group, don’t list “writer” on another. Keep the flow of information the same so that no matter which site someone visits, they get a message that reinforces your brand.
• Create a tagline. Taglines are a punchy way to get to the heart of what you do and they tend to be short. Use them if you can on social media.

Tags: social media

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 21st, 2010 at 3:39 am and is filed under Career Resources. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.