Personal Branding Techniques

Here's a question for the job seekers: How strong is your personal brand?

Personal Branding is a description of the process that job hunters go through to brand themselves and their careers.  If an employer reads your resume and immediately associates your name with a set of career skills, you will have accomplished your goal.  To get the most out of your branding efforts, you are going to have to make extensive use of social media.  Here are some techniques to help you increase your virtual visibility:

• Tweet, Tweet, Tweet: Twitter is going to be your best friend during your branding efforts.  The ability to send out quick, and to-the-point messages to your followers will help solidify your expertise.  You can also use it to link to any articles or blogs you have written.  Make sure to use sites like bit.ly to track how many clicks you get.
• Write Articles: There are a lot of article writing sites out there, so take advantage of them.  These sites can help improve your visibility on search engines.  This will be a great help if employers Google your name during the screening process.  You should also consider starting a blog in addition to writing articles.
• Track Your Efforts: The Internet contains plenty of tools to help track your efforts.  I already mentioned bit.ly as way to see how many people are clicking your links, but you can also use programs like TweetBeep to track who is mentioning you on Twitter.   You should also sign up for Google Alerts for your name.  Google Alerts send you e-mails when your name shows up in search engines.  It's a great way to see what people are saying about you.