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Building Your Brand: How to Create and Build a Strong Online Presence

Building Your Brand: How to Create and Build a Strong Online Presence. By @ AlexKStevens. Lecture Overview.

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Building Your Brand: How to Create and Build a Strong Online Presence

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  1. Building Your Brand: How to Create and Build a Strong Online Presence By @AlexKStevens

  2. Lecture Overview • As a future communications professional, having an online presence highlighting your writing ability is the key to finding employment and building bylines. Learn the strategy behind creating a strong personal brand, how to establish and promote your blog. • Establishing a Foundation • Crafting Your Social Image • Brainstorming Your Blog • Writing for Your Blog • Promoting Your Blog

  3. Intro to Digital District Digital District works with community innovators to educate our peers, foster increased creativity and encourage participation in the digital sphere. Connect with Digital District online: www.thedigitaldistrict.org @DigitalDistrict Connect with me: alex@thedigitaldistrict.org @AlexKStevens www.alexkstevens.com

  4. What is Personal Branding? Personal branding is the practice of people marketing themselves and their careers as brands. Personal Branding is essentially; the ongoing process of establishing a prescribed image or impression in the mind of others about an individual. Personal branding is all about identifying your strengths to focus on and minimizing the impact of your weaknesses

  5. Establishing a Foundation [worksheet] • If you were in an elevator with someone who could give you your dream job, what would you say to them? • You don’t have time to tell your life story • You can’t repeat your resume verbatim • The point is to catch someone’s attention and earn more time, but if you don’t know how to sell yourself, how are you going to convince anyone else they should hire you?

  6. Establishing a Foundation • A good foundation has three parts • Who are you? • What are your major accomplishments, skills, passions? • What are your goals, what do you want, where are you going? • My Example: • Hi, my name is Alex Stevens. I graduated in 2011 with a duel degree from Boston University in Political Science and International Relations. I am currently applying to MBA programs and hope to start Fall 2014. I am the President and Co-founder of Digital District, Partner at EVAS Digital and during the day I am the Social Media Strategist at Zippy Shell USA. I am looking to take my business full time. I’m here to expand my network and gain experience.

  7. The New Elevator Pitch: Your Twitter Bio You in 140 characters or less. You don’t even get 30 second on the internet to impress someone. Once you have your pitch, compress it down to a twitter sized chunk. The goal is to connect yourself to search and show your personality.

  8. The New Elevator Pitch: Your Twitter Bio [worksheet] Order is important. Think mullet: formal up front, party in the back. Entrepreneur President of @DigitalDistrict Partner @EVASDigital Jersey Girl Pit Bull Owner Pink, Pearls and Monograms #bipartisandoggy #demsthatdaterepublicans Location: Washington, DC Website: www.alexkstevens.com

  9. Social Images & Backgrounds • Always choose a professional photo, but don’t be afraid to let your personality show through. • Choose backgrounds and wallpapers that reflect information in your bio. Keep the colors and feeling consistent across platforms and blog to create uniformity.

  10. Brainstorming Your Blog [worksheet] • Find Your Niche • What are you going to write about? • What are you passionate about? • What can you write about with authority? • Do not make it overly specific or technical. • Define Your Audience • Who are you targeting? • Who do you want to read and comment? • Design • How do you want your readers to feel when they visit your blog? • What layout makes sense for your content? • What colors? Graphics? • Title?

  11. Blog Mission Statement [worksheet] Everything needs a mission statement, even your blog. It should answer the following: • Why are you writing? • Who you are you writing for? • What can readers expect to read/accomplish? Example: Welcome to Inc.com, the place where entrepreneurs and business owners can find useful information, advice, insights, resources and inspiration for running and growing their businesses.

  12. Blog Content Be Original Yes, there are a ton of blogs out there just like yours, but none of them are written by you. You are what makes your blog different; it’s about your perspective, your creativity, the value that you add. Be Interesting Write epic, awesome things, always. Be Yourself People click on your blog link because they want to learn more about you. Become a great story teller, be honest and transparent with your writing. Add Value Your content must add value to the reader’s life, otherwise why would they come back?

  13. Keeping Organized • Set Writing Goals • How often will you write? • When will you write? • When will you publish? • Time • Keeping up with a blog takes a lot of time. Nothing looks worse to potential employers than dead, inactive networks. Try keep content as fresh as possible. New content will also help drive traffic and improve search rankings. • Get Organized • Content calendar [worksheet] • Wordpress editorial calendar [plugin] • Hashtags • Short trackable links • Auto sharing

  14. Cheap Blog Hosts • Wordpress is the most universal, user friendly CRM tool out there. Here are a few hosting sites that provide one-click Wordpress installation: • JustHost • DreamHost • Go Daddy • BlueHost • On average it costs about $100 a year for domain and hosting.

  15. Promotion on Wordpress Optimize your content by using popular tags, auto-share with the click of one button to all your social networks by setting up the share features.

  16. Useful Plugins for Wordpress Encourage Sharing Make it simple for your readers to share your content by installing share buttons. There are a ton of plugins to choose from but I prefer ShareThis. Optimize for Search Always optimize your content with keywords, and a meta description to improve search rankings. Wordpress SEO by Yoast

  17. Promotion - Authorship • Google+ maybe a terrible social network, but it is amazing for search! Always establish authorship for any blog you contribute for. This way when people search for you, or certain keywords – your article AND photo show up!

  18. Branching Out • After creating your personal brand, allow people to easily view what you’re aboutand apply to everything: • Business cards • Resume • Cover letter • Reference documents • Portfolio showcasing your work • LinkedIn profile • Facebook profile • Twitter profile • Google+ • Wardrobe

  19. Next Lecture Personal SEO – How to Rank for Your Name on Google March 31st 6:30pm What happens when you Google your name? Jump ahead of other candidates by ranking high for your name on search. Once you establish your personal brand, learn how to bolster search results and rock search engine optimization.

  20. Upcoming Digital District Events • Blurred Lines: Getting in Bed with Data without Getting Burned • February 26 at 6:30pm • Buffalo Billiards • Boring Subject? Turn it into Awesome Content • March 4 at 7pm • Web Event • Second Annual Career Success Fair • April 9 at 6:30pm • Continental Ballroom, Marvin Center GWU

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