This article will discuss the must-know personal branding tips for 2023. When starting your career, building a personal brand is crucial in getting ahead of others around you.
Whether you wish to create the perfect sports logo or clothing store slogan, your brand is what makes you stand out amongst other job applicants and can help or hinder your chances of finding employment.
Since employers have started doing work-for-hire projects on sites like Upwork, they’ve been looking to hire freelancers with great personal branding. The rules for filling out a resume or waiting for an interview aren’t the same.
Must-Know Personal Branding Tips for 2024: What Does Personal Branding Mean?
Personal branding is everything you do to establish your reputation and trustworthiness online. It includes how others find out about you, what they think of you after meeting or working with you, and what comes up when they google your name.
All these things feed into each other and can affect your work. Your reputation must be 100% spotless if you want to work for someone else because they are taking a significant risk hiring you.
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Why is Having a Strong Personal Brand Important?
Beyond just looking for a quality freelancer, companies also try to avoid hiring anyone who might damage their brand. If an employee with a solid personal brand gets in trouble, they could throw the company under the bus and it would affect everyone else’s trustworthiness overnight.
Personal branding is one of the best ways to show employers you know how to work hard, stay on task, and have a good attitude even when the chips are down.
What Personal Branding is Not
Personal branding is not about self-promotion. Self-promotion gets you nowhere when it comes to building your brand. If you want people to trust you, they need to see that you are modest but know your stuff. Instead of calling yourself an expert, show off your work and showcase your best qualities when you do so. There are five steps to creating an effective personal brand:
- Building your brand’s reputation online;
- Learning how to manage others’ impressions of you;
- Getting hired for jobs on Upwork;
- Managing your online reputation;
- Staying relevant in 2022.
Building your brand’s reputation online
Your brand is built over time and by engaging with others online, whether that be through LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, or blogging platforms like WordPress or Medium.
You should always network and look for opportunities to contribute to relevant projects and publications. By creating a great online reputation as a freelancer, you can attract more jobs and project opportunities.
Learning how to manage others’ impressions of you
Even if work-for-hire never takes off in your field, or if it does and you want to build a career as a full-time freelancer still, managing others’ first impressions of you is still very important. If you are doing work for a company, they will want to hire someone who is easy to manage, trustworthy and dependable…not just someone who does good work. You have to be more than just your work product.
Getting hired for jobs
The best way to show that you are professional, reliable, and trustworthy is to have a professional website, LinkedIn profile, and Twitter with work proof. People are more willing to hire freelancers without full-time jobs if they can see proof that they are successful.
Also, make sure you communicate regularly with your clients so they feel important and valued, even when it’s about small issues – this goes a long way.
Managing your online reputation
If you have a poor reputation, it’s going to be nearly impossible for you to get new clients or work. Make sure you don’t commit any major blunders by not checking your mobile phone 24/7, avoiding drunk-tweeting, and refraining from getting into petty fights on social media with people you don’t know.
Badmouthing others will only make you look bad and might even end up in a blog post like this one that can damage your reputation (so take it easy, tiger).
Staying relevant
The most important thing about personal branding is staying current so you are always employable. There are no excuses in 2022 for having an out-of-date LinkedIn or website. You have to constantly be reading, learning about the latest trends in your field, and keeping up with your contacts.
By following these steps, you’ll build a successful personal brand that will serve you well into the future.
Personal Branding Tips for 2024: Time to Check Your Brand
To ensure your brand is in good shape, search for yourself on Google. Your LinkedIn profile should be at the top of the results, above any other social media profiles you have!
If it’s not at the top, put more effort into optimizing your profile with keywords and ensuring you’re using all of the network’s available features. If someone is looking for a freelancer with your skills, you want to make it easy for them to find you!
