This website and its blog articles are full of all kinds of ideas for how your company can make the most of its talent. But what about YOU? In addition to managing the talent at your company, don’t forget to manage yourself and your own personal brand. Personal branding is a hot topic these days, and it’s important to understand what it is and how it can boost your career.

In short, your personal brand includes all the deliberate efforts you put into making sure your entire organization knows exactly what it is that makes you a strong, effective professional. It sets you apart from the crowd and helps you optimize career value.

Take these 10 words of advice seriously for yourself: If it is to be, it is up to me. The good news is that you can take control of managing your personal brand. In fact, you must! If you don’t, other people will do it on your behalf, and you might not always be pleased with the results.

By taking the time to think through both who you are and who your aspire to be, you gain greater clarity about your career possibilities and potential pathways to get you there. This kind of self-awareness is absolutely essential to being the best you can be in both your present and all future roles.

That clarity also opens up your potential to become much more satisfied in your work. You’ll understand what it is that matters most to you, the values and principals you want in your job and the people you work with. Of course, going through this process of establishing and managing your personal brand and the clarity it brings may also reveal you’re not as happy in your current position as you ought to be. Better to realize that now than spend any more of your precious time not being aware of it. Then you can begin to figure out where it is you would be happiest.

The self-awareness you gain in shaping your personal brand also gives you a kind of roadmap for your own personal development needs. After all, part of the process is identifying and acknowledging your weaknesses, which you can then develop a plan for improving upon.

The kinds of things you do to get your personal brand “out there” also have the potential to serve as a launching pad for greatly increased notoriety, such as opportunities to present at industry and trade shows, become a thought leader or the kind of expert that the media contacts when they need your expertise to make sense of current events. Those sorts of opportunities have a way of accelerating your career very rapidly. Here are two social media strategies to keep in mind:

• Write articles. Whether the articles appear on your company’s website, your personal blog, or an industry-related blog, online articles get you and your expertise out there in a way that promotes you, shares your valuable knowledge in order to help others, and creates opportunities for further dialogue on the topic. Make sure the content will really add value to people’s lives – keep the information very practical and useable.
• Create videos. Again, this might be establishing your own YouTube channel or embedding your videos on various websites. These can be very similar to the kinds of articles you write, just delivered in a video format. Whatever your line of work, think about reviewing the different software, products and tools you use, which can be very helpful to others in your field. If you have a very active blog with comments you need to respond to, consider providing those answers via video postings.

Within your company, do you participate in any internal networking functions that get people together from different areas of the company? These can range from lunch-time gatherings or exercise groups to organized soft-ball teams or leadership development groups. They are a great way to make sure your personal brand is being disseminated throughout the entire organization.

Do yourself and your career a favor by creating and managing your own personal talent brand. It’s not that hard, and you just might find you really enjoy the process as well.

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