How to Define Your Personal Brand in 5 Simple Steps

I have clothes hanging in my closet that I’ve barely worn since I bought them. They’re practically brand new, hanging there and never seeing the light of day. What gives?

Here’s what I’ve learned. If you buy a fancy cashmere sweater because you think it’s the type of thing you should wear, you won’t wear it. If you get a flashy suit vest and suit vests just aren’t your style, it probably won’t make it out of your closet when it’s time to get dressed.

Personal brands are like wardrobe choices. You need to be honest about whose attention you’re trying to get, what your natural style is, and the story you’re trying to tell. Without all that, you won’t make comfortable clothing choices, and you definitely won’t have a personal brand you can relate to. It’ll be more likely to hang in your closet, along with the rest of your unloved vests and sweaters. R.I.P.

On the flip side, an authentic and relatable personal brand is like a perfectly tailored suit. You’ll look great, feel great, and be much more likely to close the sale, get the dream job, or land the first date.

To get your personal brand to feel less like an ignored sweater and more like a tailored suit, you have to get to the heart of what makes you “you.” To do that, I guide all my clients through the following five-step brand extraction process.

1. Determine your goals.

Setting goals are an obvious first step for people looking to improve their online image, but I don’t mean goals like, “I want to look good online” or “I want to generate ROI.” These aspirations are great but they don’t take into account the personal branding work that’s required.

In order to improve your digital presence or drive more business online, you’ll need to start generating lots of online activity: publishing content, growing a social media presence, engaging in PR initiatives -- the list goes on.

With all of that digital activity, it makes sense to dive a little deeper into figuring out your specific goals first. Otherwise, you waste a huge opportunity to use those online efforts to support where you’d like to be two years, five years, or ten years down the line. Remember, looking good online is a means to an end -- and you need to determine that end before you start.

What are you most excited about achieving in the next few years? Do you want to write a New York Times bestselling book or would you rather land your first speaking engagement? Do you want to be generating a certain amount of revenue at your company or would you prefer to start your own venture?

Your answers to these questions (and the ones below) will be the steering wheel that drives your personal branding campaign. Without them, you’re just pressing on the gas without looking where you’re going.

2. Pinpoint your unique value proposition.

You would never begin marketing a business before you’ve determined the product and its unique value in the marketplace. Or you might, but it probably wouldn’t work out so well.

Personal brands work much the same way. Before you start a blog -- before you even send out your next tweet -- you’ll want to pinpoint your unique value proposition.

That’s a fancy way of saying you need to figure out A) what benefit you offer people B) who those people are C) how you solve their problems and D) what makes you different from others like you.

If you’re having trouble answering these questions, I find it’s useful to first determine why you’re passionate about what you do. From there, you’ll be able to figure out what audience you’d like to help the most and how you can do that better than anyone else.

3. Craft your professional story arc.

People remember stories. Think about someone you really admire -- a CEO, a public figure, a family member -- and ask yourself why you admire them.

There’s a compelling story to tell about that person, right?

J.K. Rowling is one one of my favorite examples. Rowling grew up poor and remained that way as a single mother struggling to make ends meet for her daughter. She got the inspiration for Harry Potter while stuck on a train, and hurriedly wrote it down on the back of a napkin. Her manuscript for the first book was rejected 12 times, but she persisted anyway until a small publishing firm gave her a chance, and the rest is history. Rowling went from being unemployed and living on state benefits to becoming a billionaire in under a decade.

Another favorite story of mine comes from Anik Singal. Singal was a kid who just wanted to prove he had what it took to “make it” as an entrepreneur, experimenting with digital marketing for 18 months straight before he finally made his first dollar. He learned quickly and grew his business from nothing to $10 million, and then watched everything come crashing down as his business, finances, and health all went down the tubes. Given a second chance, Singal took a hard look at where he was, shifted his priorities, and then worked even harder to get to where he is today as the dedicated CEO of Lurn, one of the biggest digital publishing platforms in the world.

Determining your own story arc will be crucial to crafting a brand narrative that your audience will relate to and remember. Your brand narrative will come naturally if you ask yourself the right questions: What obstacles have I overcome? What desirable goals have I reached or am in the process of reaching? How have I changed for the better?

Talking this out with someone else can be extremely helpful to get a little distance from the narrative you already hold in your own head. If you want to try it by yourself, imagine someone on an interview asking, “Give me the whole story -- how did you get to where you are today?”

4. Establish your character personality.

Your personality is an essential part of what makes you, you. Without her perseverance and passion, J.K. Rowling would still be the author of Harry Potter, but she wouldn’t be nearly as interesting or memorable. Anik Singal wouldn’t be the same entrepreneur without his “fighter” persona.

As you ponder your own personality traits, remember that people typically describe themselves a bit differently than others would describe them. And since “others” will be the ones engaging with your personal brand online, theirs is the more important perception. Your audience is never wrong.

Don’t run the risk of expressing an inauthentic or ineffective brand. Ask your your friends, family, and colleagues to choose some adjectives they would use to describe you. Consolidate those adjectives and choose the ones you connect with the most.

5. Distill it down to a brand statement.

Once you’ve gathered all the above information, it’s time to distill it down to a brand statement. Just one or two sentences that you’ll refer to internally to keep your digital strategy consistent as you begin engaging with your audience.

A word of caution: you can use the same information to craft a brand statement that’s incredibly exciting or painfully boring.

Let’s use Santa Claus as an example, because why not.

Here’s one way of presenting Santa’s brand:

Santa Claus is the CEO of a non-profit organization that gives gifts to children globally. With decades of experience in supply chain management and manufacturing technology, Claus has helped turn Christmas into the modern celebration that it is today.

Booooring.

Here’s another way:

Santa Claus is the jolly, grandfatherly figure behind the single biggest gift-giving operation in the world. Known for his spectacular flying reindeer and wacky chimney delivery system, Claus has become a loved cultural icon who’s turned Christmas into the modern celebration that is today.

If you were using each of these brand statements as a blueprint for a digital strategy, I bet you can guess which one would would generate interest and which one would put readers to sleep. And unless you’re a mattress company, you have no business putting people to sleep.

Take the time to make your brand statement compelling -- it will serve as a guide for your online efforts, and livening it up can make all the difference.

When you’re done asking yourself these questions, you should feel a sense of comfort. There’s an overwhelming relief in having an authentic personal brand. Unlike clothes that hang ignored in the closet, the authentic brand is like the classic outfit you can’t wait to grab again and again because it aligns perfectly with who you are, how you feel, and where you’d like to go next.

Originally published at Entrepreneur.com.

The #1 Secret to Building Your Perfect Personal Brand

Some people absolutely hate the idea of personal branding because they think it feels fake or forced. Sure, I’d hate that too. Who wouldn’t? But an effective personal brand should never feel forced by definition.

I’m going to let you in on an insider secret. Brand building is actually a misnomer. You don’t sit down and decide what you want your brand to be. In fact, that’s completely the wrong way to go about it. The secret to building the perfect personal brand is this. You don’t actually “build” a great personal brand, you “extract” it.

It may not be an easy or comfortable process, but figuring out what makes you “you” is a necessary first step to making your brand realistic and relatable.

The people who skip this step and jump immediately to packaging themselves are the ones who end up with forced brands that they can’t relate to and ditch after a week.

It’s only once you’ve extracted your personal brand that you can package it for others in a compelling, memorable, and relatable way.

Extracting your personal brand.

The first step to extracting your brand is being 100 percent sold on who you are and what you’re looking to accomplish in the marketplace.

It’s like marketing a company’s brand. Would you ever sit down to market a business when you’re still unsure what the product is? Of course not. A company must first determine what benefit it offers and how it’s different from the competition. In other words, it has to determine its unique value proposition.

What’s your unique value proposition?

Most people haven’t thought about this much before. That’s good news for you because you’re about to put yourself 10 steps ahead of the competition.

Determining your unique value proposition.

This process is very much like defining your own personal business plan. You need to first answer three main questions:

• Who’s your audience? Whose attention are you trying to get?
• What problem or challenge do you solve for them?
• How do you distinguish yourself from the competition?

Let’s say you’re a college graduate looking for your first full-time job in PR. Great, now it’s time to dive a little deeper.

The target audience is obvious, right?

At least in the short term, you’d want to reach the hiring departments at your favorite PR firms. But it’s also worth thinking about your audience in the longer term. Will you want to appeal to other PR professionals, editors at publications, or other people looking to break into PR?

Next, what problem or challenge do you solve for your audience? Well for starters, you’re going to solve the HR department’s challenge of finding their next awesome employee.

Taking it a step further, let’s say you want to be a PR thought leader and act as a guide for others looking to break into the space. In that case, you’ll want to provide them with all the information they need to break into the industry and succeed.

Lastly, what makes you unique? How do you stand out from the crowd?

Perhaps it’s your incredible depth of experience despite your young age. Or maybe you have a fresh perspective thanks to your academic background in a completely different field. Perhaps you’re so good at throwing parties and organizing events that PR firms can’t afford to pass you up.

Packaging it all up.

Once you’ve answered these questions honestly, you can finally move onto packaging your personal brand. This is the exciting part. Your answers will help inform how you’ll reach your audience, delight them, and keep them coming back for more. You will figure out what kind of personal website makes the most sense and what your call to action should be. You’ll decide which social media profiles to use and what kind of content strategy you’ll use.

These packaging decisions will definitely feel forced or fake if you’ve built up a brand without much thought or deep questioning. It’s like building up a house of cards that’s bound to collapse at the slightest breeze.

But an effective personal brand is like a tree, with strong roots and branches that extend naturally from the trunk. And like a tree, your personal brand will grow and evolve over time as your goals change.

That’s the beauty of extracting your personal brand, rather than building it. By getting to the core of your passions and your unique value proposition, you invest in a brand that’s transparent, relatable, and sensible for the long haul. That’s an investment in your future worth making.

Originally published on Entrepreneur.com.

A No-Nonsense, 5-Step Guide to Success In the Digital Era

Let’s face it, the digital space is a wild and dangerous place. A single tweet can cost you your job and a bad customer experience can quickly become your worst PR nightmare.

Given the huge risks, isn’t it frustrating that everyone has an opinion about your company’s digital strategy? Any schmuck with a smartphone is suddenly a digital marketing expert.

It’s impossible to know what’s important and what’s not. Should you take advantage of content marketing or is it a waste of your time? Should you tweet three times a day or three times a week? With so much conflicting advice, it’s no wonder business owners everywhere are struggling to maximize their digital efforts.

Your family, friends, and all of the marketing blogs are dead wrong. I alone hold the secret to digital success, and lucky for you, am charitable enough to share it!

Here are five clever steps I’ve developed to guarantee your business success in the digital era.

1. Stop sending email blasts. Send this instead.

After several drafts and revisions, your carefully crafted email is ready for delivery. Your marketing team has given you two amazing headlines to A/B test and you can’t wait for the positive response.

You send the email off and where does it go? Right into the trash folder.

Did you know that the average email only gets clicked three percent of the time? You are ten times more likely to be able to walk right into your customer’s unlocked home unannounced.

Now I’m not suggesting you do that -- that would be crazy. But youcan take advantage of this “open-door” policy without getting yourself arrested. I’m talking about a completely untapped marketing strategy that’s guaranteed to get your business the attention you need.

The secret? Ditch the emails entirely and send glitter bombs to your customers via snail mail.

People love glitter! It’s sparkly and fun. Women wear it on New Year’s and guys even put it on their beards. If you’re in a boring industry, glitter has the added benefit of generating more excitement than you possibly could by yourself.

Actions speak louder than words, so stop sending email blasts and start sending glitter blasts. Put your email marketing efforts on hold and dedicate your efforts toward a full-fledged glitter marketing campaign. People are guaranteed to pay attention.

2. Avoid social media at all costs.

You don’t have time to mess around on social media, you’ve got a business to run!

Would you have a baby and expect it to raise itself? Of course not. So why would you start an online presence when you don’t have the resources to nurture it and bring in qualified leads?

You might have heard that 80 percent of small and medium-sized businesses use social media to drive their business growth. Sure, but did you also know that 80 percent of businesses fail within 18 months? Coincidence? I think not.

Remember, the internet is a dangerous world where online gaffes cause irreversible damage that no PR firm wants to handle. The best way to avoid these issues? Avoid social media altogether. Roughly 99 percent of top brands use Facebook, so this tactic will land you in the top 1 percent, the very cream of the crop.

As if that weren’t a good enough reason, remember that social networks are teeming with bots, spam, and fake followers. You’ll never convert a phony follower into a paying consumer, no matter how hard you try.

3. Ensure your website is old and out-of-date.

All the blogs say you need a modern a mobile-friendly company website. It’s a good thought, but allow me to propose an alternative.

Sure, more than half of website traffic comes from mobile devices. But that leaves a good chunk of traffic that doesn’t come from mobile. Plus, everyone and their grandma is hopping on the responsive design bandwagon now. Why not try the opposite to distinguish yourself from the competition?

In other words, make your website an antique.

There are TV shows dedicated to antiquing and towns that are famous specifically for their antique markets. I know this because the women in my family have an uncanny ability to locate these markets and dedicate whole afternoons there.

So how can you take advantage of this untapped business opportunity? You make your website as mobile un-friendly as possible. See if you can give your site that old, 90s flair that makes it feel optimized for a slow connection on Netscape 3.0. That is, your site should be mostly text on a patterned background with a few cheesy graphics of your choice.

Don’t bother with a blog -- nobody reads anymore Anyway -- and see if you can avoid a clear call to action. People love guessing games. Making your call to action obvious is like giving away the punch line of a joke before you’ve had a chance to tell it properly. Don’t be that guy.

4. Neglect your search results.

You might have heard the stats -- 97 percent of consumers search online for products and services and half of them start on search engines.

So if 97 out of 100 consumers will be looking for you online, why should you completely neglect your search results?

It’s the same reason Hermès sells a limited supply of its handbags and it’s the same reason De Beers manually controls the international diamond supply. Luxury brands have learned the art of cultivating exclusivity by limiting brand access to their consumers.

You can do the same with your business. By neglecting your search results, consumers will have trouble finding your company’s most important information. You’ll restrict access to the information consumers want most, suddenly making your product, service, or experience extremely rare, and therefore extremely valuable.

5. In general, take up as little space online as possible.

Imagine your morning routine. If you’re like the average American, you wake up and check your phone. You shower and check your phone. You probably spend more time checking emails in the morning than eating breakfast. And then you go to work and hop online for six to eight hours.

The average person spends eight hours and 41 minutes on electronic devices. That means we’re spending more time on our laptops and phones than we are sleeping!

The result? People’s backs are hurting, their eyes are getting worse and their social anxiety and depression is off the charts.

The last thing you want to do is encourage that kind of behavior with your business practices.

Instead, your goal should be to keep your business out of the online space entirely. After all, you want people to spend time shopping at your business, not surfing the web and damaging their health.

As the trend for corporate social responsibility continues to blossom, this kind of digital strategy will perfectly position your business to garner trust from responsible consumers.

If you can do good in the world and make money in the process, then why not? By shrinking your digital presence, you’ll encourage safer habits, attract more clients, and ultimately, boost profits.

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Originally published on Entrepreneur.com. Image credits: slate.com, shutterstock.

What Potential Employers Want to Know Most Is Not On Your Resume

I recently had the opportunity to speak with Evan Varsamis, the CEO of Gadget Flow, a platform that helps people discover, save and buy awesome products. Varsamis is a 25-year-old entrepreneur with a big vision for humanizing that process. Every product on the Gadget Flow site is personally curated and customized, and Varsamis pushes that value into the company’s branding and social media as well.

“We have a specific person dedicated to Twitter, one for Instagram, one for Pinterest,” he told me. “Ecommerce is so noisy and crowded so we try to stand out by bringing humanity back into a world of automation.”

With so many choices in the marketplace, consumers are increasingly drawn to exceptional value, trustworthy brands and incredible experiences. But exceptional companies don’t make themselves -- they require exceptional employees.

And the classic way of sorting prospective workers -- via resumes -- makes it extraordinarily difficult for companies to find those standouts. It also makes it difficult for the standouts to find the amazing companies that value them most.

The result is a hiring system that rewards mediocrity. On paper, the clock-in-clock-out type looks as good as the standout. The two employees may have the same experience, the same job title and perhaps the same job responsibilities. The resume hides the passion you bring to your job, the creativity you bring to problems, your can-do attitude and your ability to execute under pressure.

Resumes are great at one thing -- framing you as a replaceable cog in the machine.

The shift away from resumes.

As companies strive to stand out, they look for better ways to find those exceptional employees -- the indispensable workers that marketing guru Seth Godin calls “linchpins.”

One of the easiest ways to do that? Google search.

Already, 75 percent of HR departments are required to search job applicants online and 70 percent of them have rejected candidates based on something they found.

Simply put, the resume -- and even the cover letter -- are no longer enough. Companies are looking for more information and actually making hiring decisions based on that additional information.

At Gadget Flow, human interaction is everything. So when they look to hire, they research the applicant online to see how active they are on social media and how great they are at interacting with their audience. "Being able to hire passionate people who are active on Snapchat or Instagram or Twitter is a huge advantage," Varsamis said. "It’s better than spending thousands on marketing; those employees become our biggest brand advocates.”

At BrandYourself (where I work) we also research our applicants to see what kind of presence they maintain online. The nature of our work is to help people look great online, so what better way to gauge applicants than by checking out their own digital footprints?

It all comes back to providing exceptional value. You can’t break through the noise with employees that just follow the rules and do the bare minimum day in and day out. Those kinds of employees are easy to replace but not great at innovating, solving problems and taking a company to the next level.

Breaking through the noise.

Startups and big businesses everywhere are already showing interest in providing exceptional value. So how can you meet them halfway? As a linchpin applicant, how can you break through the noise? How can you make your value known to the companies that care?

If you can get a few extraordinary letters of recommendation from people your employer knows or respects, that goes a long way. So does an impressive project that employers can see or touch.

But those aren’t always possible. One way that’s completely within your control is building up a stellar online reputation.

Companies are already looking you up online. You spend hours perfecting your resume only to forget the very next place employers look -- the internet. Why not spend some time actually differentiating yourself online and crafting a killer personal brand?

When employers do a quick search, imagine how much you’ll stand out when they find your huge following on social media. Imagine how impressed employers will be when they see an active blog that’s so compelling and insightful that they feel obliged to follow up. Imagine how valuable you’ll be when they find you’re a published author on big-time publications.

At the end of the day, a company’s employees can be its most important asset or its biggest liability. Resumes help organizations usher in an endless parade of average employees. This is bad for the company, bad for business and bad for consumers.

If you’re a linchpin, don’t let yourself be defined by a resume. Take the hiring process to the next level and prove your worth. Get your employers -- and clients -- excited about the value you provide.

Is any employee truly irreplaceable? Probably not. But if you can demonstrate that you’re so valuable, so risky to lose, so difficult to replace, you can get pretty darn close.

This article was originally published on Entrepreneur.com.

Companies, Clients and Colleges Are Googling You. Now What?

Let’s face it: how you’re perceived can have a major impact on your life -- from business meetings and interviews to social gatherings and first dates. There’s a reason Dale Carnegie’s 1936 classic "How to Win Friends and Influence People" became an instant best-seller and pioneered a trend of chart-topping self-help books. Cultivating a positive personality and reputation can be a major advantage, and it’s become even more essential in the digital age.

It wasn’t always like that. Over 100 years ago, perception still mattered but the audience was different. People lived in farms or small towns and did business with people they had interacted with their whole lives. How they treated family members and neighbors was the ultimate reputation litmus test. But as people flocked to cities, they suddenly faced the challenge of doing business with complete strangers. The dawn of corporate America called for a new kind of employee -- one who thrived in social interactions with a ready smile and a confident handshake. Companies wanted likeable salespeople with winning personalities who could represent the company in external meetings, bring in new business and help drive sales.

Your Reputation Today

Today’s model employee not only has a likeable personality, but also looks great online. With a professional online presence, you lend credibility to the organization you work for and can even broaden the company’s external sales funnel through your online network. Imagine if you’re a hiring department -- all else being equal, wouldn’t you rather hire someone with an impressive digital presence over someone with no presence at all?

It’s not all great news though. Employees with a tendency to badmouth or post questionable things online are seen as huge liabilities. You never know when an employee’s dumb tweet or angry tirade can turn into a PR nightmare. Remember the woman who lost her job over the AIDS tweet? What about the woman who lost her pizza job before she even started? That’s why 75 percent of hiring departments are required to look applicants up online and 70 percent say they have rejected applicants based on what they’ve found. It’s just too risky to hire the person with a questionable or negative online presence.

Even colleges and universities are taking this seriously. With scholarships and top-tier acceptance rates as competitive as they are, admissions officers and coaches are looking for any reason to drop a prospective student. Students are losing scholarships over dumb tweets and getting rejected based on what admissions officers find online.

What Can You Do?

If companies, clients, and colleges care so much about your online presence, what can you do to ensure yours portrays you in the best light? Sure, you can delete your questionable content and watch what you say online. You can fix your privacy settings and try to disappear. But is that really the answer? That’s like learning that people care about what you say and deciding to keep quiet to avoid saying anything bad.

Your online presence is one of the best ways to build identity capital and invest in your future. Don’t throw that opportunity away by avoiding the digital sphere. Instead, focus on maintaining an active, positive online reflection of your personal brand.

There is no quick and easy way to build a strong personal brand. The first step is laying the groundwork for success. Be clear about your personal brand. Determine your goals, define your values, and flesh out an effective strategy. Put in a little extra thought now so you can cruise efficiently later.

Think about your target audience. What value can you provide them online? Can you distill your expertise into digestible digital content like articles, videos, or slideshows? Do a little research on others in your industry and see how you can improve upon their online offerings. Armed with an effective and adaptable content marketing strategy, you’ll have the right tools to accelerate the process.

Once you have a tangible brand and a content strategy, you can choose the right online properties to publish that content and grow your audience. A personal website and an arsenal of social profiles will give you a nice start but make sure you’re optimizing everything for maximum SEO value.

Finally, make an effort to stay consistent. Anything of value takes time but growing your personal brand doesn’t have to be a full time job. There are several tools you can use to help you along the way, but the best advice I can give is to schedule time into your calendar. Just as gym sessions and diets don’t happen by themselves, your personal brand won’t develop if you don’t make it happen. If you think you’d benefit from a gentle kick in the pants, try my 28 Day Online Reputation Challenge.

Your digital footprint is a valuable asset. Don’t let the opportunity slip by -- your online presence could be the difference between getting that job, earning new business, and landing that first date.

A version of this article appeared originally on Entrepreneur.com. Image credit: Hero Images | Getty Images

4 Tips to Supercharge Your Company’s Online Presence

These days, a business’s online brand is just as important as what happens offline.

Your company’s digital presence can be a deal maker or a deal breaker. An uncared-for brand turns consumers away in frustration. But an all-star brand can attract leads, expand your reach, increase brand awareness, and ultimately boost sales.

Even if you get referrals through word-of-mouth, you can bet those folks are going to search your business online and interact with it digitally.

Most companies don’t handle these interactions effectively. And even fewer do so in a way that promotes the company’s brand positively and improves the customer experience. That means that a stellar online brand and active digital presence can be a huge competitive advantage.

Let’s explore four ways to supercharge your company’s online brand.

Look Beyond Facebook

Sure, Facebook is still the global giant when it comes to social networks, but it’s not the most effective way to expand your reach. Growing your audience organically is an iterative process. It requires testing on other social channels, which means you have to actually be on other social channels. To learn more about this, sign up for the upcoming Score workshop.

LinkedIn and Twitter are obvious choices. If you haven’t done so already, go ahead and create a company page. If kept active, this will help you build brand credibility and connect with potential investors. There are loads of social channels out there so be discriminating as you choose which ones to tackle. Your business doesn’t need to be on every one, but it does need to be on more than one.

Start a Blog

There’s a reason content marketing has exploded over the last several years. B2B marketers that use blogs receive 67% more leads than those that do not. And marketers who have prioritised blogging are 13x more likely to enjoy positive ROI.

Think about it — popular content is a terrific way to attract customers. If someone Googles a question about your industry and your awesome content comes up, that’s a valuable entry point. Offer consumers high quality content on a regular basis, and they’ll come to trust you as an authoritative source of information in your industry. That association is worth its weight in gold.

Respond to Feedback, Both Positive and Negative

Negative feedback can be scary. But responding to negative feedback is all about taking responsibility. If someone complains about your business on social media, that’s bad. But left ignored, that complaint can be even worse.With a quick response, you can diffuse the situation, give context to the complaint, and even win a customer back. Remember to remain polite and see if you can explain how you’re going to remedy the situation in the future.

Don’t be afraid to respond selectively to positive feedback to. You don’t want to be seen as overly eager or arrogant, but the right comment can solidify the loyalty a customer feels with your brand. If a customer loves a particular aspect of your company, you can use that as an opportunity to generate excitement about something new in the pipeline.

Improve Online Presence for Management

People are going to look up your business and they’re also going to look YOU up. Consumers want to know the entrepreneur behind the curtain, and a quick Google search is the easiest way to do that. If your online brand doesn’t match your business, you’ll reduce the impact of your brand message. Take steps to improve your own online presence and ensure that your digital footprint helps to promote your company, rather than detract from it. Even if your search results aren’t particularly negative, there are some convincing reasons to build up your presence proactively.

Closing Note:

At the end of the day, your potential customers are just regular people and so are you. Appeal to their humanity, be personable, and show that you’re human too.

A version of this article appeared originally on Score New York City.