By Nick Ellis, Editor at The Water Coolest
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Online brands are important. When someone googles your name, what do you want to appear in the results?
Surely, the answer to that question changes as you move through your late teens, early twenties, and so on. During college, those results are likely flooded with pictures of you yuggin’ beers with the boys.
But as you grow into a young professional and move through your career, you’ll want the result to be something you stand for and are proud of. Not that beer is something to be ashamed of.
So, let’s check out some ways to build your online profile, coming from me, an IT analyst and writer, who has over 400(!) Instagram followers.
Step one is to discover what you want your brand to be. Who am I? What do I want people to know about me?
This will likely require some thought on your part, because some people don’t quite know what they stand for. They just got through life doing and forget to sometimes take a step back and reflect on what they’ve done, who they are, and where they want to be.
For example, my good friend got real into preppy clothing and stop motion videos in college. So, he consistently posted content with that focus, where he then turned it into a career for himself, curating similar content for companies in that space.
Next up is creating your online presence. While it’s beneficial to have an account on multiple social media channels, it’s likely that you’ll utilize one primarily that you’ll build your biggest following.
Having the same username on each of the socials will help followers with consistency across the platforms and make it easier for people googling you to access all your online content.
But, in order to determine which medium will work best for you, you will need to know what kind of content you want to post.
Are you doing short clever comments about recent news stories? If so, Twitter’s 280-character limit and ability to retweet popular posts might be your move. Or do you want to write thoughtful pieces about career enhancement and climbing the corporate ladder? Maybe LinkedIn or blogging is the play then. Just don’t contribute to being one of those people that posts Facebook memes to LinkedIn three years late.
So, you’ve decided on your brand and are consistently posting content. Great, but maybe you’re not getting the result you want. That’s where search engine optimization (SEO) can help.
SEO helps driver users to your content by keywords. If you’re writing about cost savings strategies for a company, ensure that you’re using that verbiage. Include synonyms as well, such as ‘cost reduction’ or ‘spending cuts’ in your piece.
While Google already recognized common synonyms, it will make it more likely for your result to appear in that search and also make it a more pleasant read.
So, there it is. Decide on what you want your brand to be. Decide what platform you want to utilize to get your message out there. Fire out spicy content. And lastly, utilize SEO to open up that road and drive in traffic.
Oh, and while you’re reading, save off to a hard drive and then delete those embarrassing pictures of you trying to do a keg stand on a Heineken mini-keg from your twenty-first birthday party that no one went to. Nobody was impressed and it’s only making you look bad.
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