Building a Personal Brand

Chapter 3 of Social Media for Strategic Communications is all about how to build a personal brand. I find this chapter to be one of most helpful so far, mainly because as we become professionals many of us will have a personal brand. I figured instead of focusing on one topic in this chapter I would give the top five tips I think are the best from this chapter.

1. Actions speak louder than words. Always remember what you do and how you react on social media is inevitably how you will be perceived by others. Your actions could end up giving you a bad reputation, which isn't helpful when trying to grow a personal brand. 
2. There different types of personas when it comes to building your personal brand. The six main ones are: altruist, careerist, early adopter, boomerang, connector and selective. People can also be a mix of two or three different personas too, it all depends on how they want their personal brand to be perceived.
3. It's important to maintain a brand voice. This is the overall tone you have when communicating and updating online. You want to keep your brand voice consistent, so it's clear what your brand stands for. 
4. You can combine your personal and professional brand. There are three different strategies to do this. You can use the content strategy, which focuses on the content you share and create online, the audience strategy, which is focused on relationships you have made on specific platforms and the customized strategy, which is a combination of the two previous strategies.
5. Have a strong online presence. This is a bit of a no-brainer when it comes to building a personal brand, but it's important to do this and stay true to yourself when applying for positions that are social media related. 

There a lot to building a personal brand, but I feel like these five are some of the most important and helpful to remember.