We’ve discussed the importance of extracting your brand through the 360 Reach personal brand assessment and personal brand 
consultation. What are the next steps, though, in leveraging your personal brand for effective career management?
Three Steps of Personal Branding
1. Extract: Find out what is unique and different about you and what makes you different than everyone with your same job title.
2. Exude: Determine your target audience (remember, this needs to comprise people who will facilitate you reaching your ultimate goal) and where they “hang out.” If you are a Marketing professional, some platforms may include LinkedIn, Marketing Groups on LinkedIn and Facebook, American Marketing Association, Marketing Profs, and more.
3. Express: Build your personal brand in online and offline activities with consistency and clarity about who you are and what you can uniquely deliver.
Tips for Finding Your Target Audience
Go to LinkedIn Groups Directory and/or Facebook and search on your industry keyword to find groups. On Facebook, you can search on the main search box, i.e. “Marketing Groups.” If your results on either platform return too many possibilities, try narrowing the search by typing not only the industry keyword, but also a geographic region (i.e., Marketing and Virginia).
Google is also a great tool for searching for groups and associations within your industry. You can use Boolean type searches, such as “Marketing Associations Virginia” to limit to specific regions as well.
Twitter is a perfect place to engage in the conversation with like-minded professionals. Twellow.com is a great resource to do industry searches to connect with people and companies on Twitter in your field.
Success Story
I had a client who joined groups that not only matched his industry, but also were within a close drive and discovered that he could attend in-person networking functions. During one networking event, he was able to meet with someone who worked at his dream company and that person hand-delivered his resume’ to the HR department the following day.
How to Become a “Passive” Candidate for Long-Term Success
Joining a select number of groups where you can actively participate, deliver value to your network, and build your personal brand visibility will facilitate your efforts in reaching long-term success. In the next article, we’ll look at the Top 3 social media sites that companies are using to identify and recruit candidates.
This article first appeared on Classroom to Cubicle and can be found at http://classroomtocubicle.com/ and is cross-posted at Career Design Coach.
Kristen Jacoway is the founder of Career Design Coach, providing professional speaking, training, and one-on-one consultation focused on next-generation career marketing services. She wrote the book, “I’m in a Job Search-Now What???” and the book has frequently ranked in the Top 100 in its’ category on Amazon.
