Essentials of Social Media Marketing: Chapter 2

In my social media class, we are reading "Essentials of Social Media Marketing." This week we read Chapter 2, which is all about developing your personal brand. 

Your personal brand is essentially your reputation, and what separates you from your peers. Personal branding is becoming more and more important every day. How you promote yourself on and offline can help interviewers assess who you are and determine if they want to hire you. 

One of the first steps in building your personal brand is conducting an audit of your online self. There are many people who have never searched for themselves on the internet, but that is one of the first things potential employers and customers are going to do. The book recommends looking up your name along with your hometown, look at what shows up on the links, photos, etc. From there you can get rid of anything you wouldn't want a future employer to see. Turning personal profiles to private, deactivating old and unused accounts, and deleting anything unprofessional is a good place to start. 

I haven't searched my name on Google in a long time, but reading this chapter was a really great reminder to do so. I also learned that you can set a Google alert for any time a new posting with your name populates. I think this will be a useful tool for me in the future!