Tuesday, July 27, 2004

Using Blogs to create a personal Brand

We all have a brand that we manage - and this brand is one that we have been managing since we were born: our personal brand. When we apply make up or style our hair in the morning we are thinking about how we appear to the rest of the world - our brand image. All of us have a brand but we are not all in the habit of increasing awareness of our personal brand, with the exception of job-hunting.
When someone is looking for a new job, that person is marketing themselves to prospective employers. Many people use portfolios and/or resumes to showcase their talents. However these advertisements are normally sent to specific targets - akin to direct marketing. We rarely expose our resumes to the masses. Even when one has a resume on the web, it is likely only read by those searching specifically for information contained within.
Job interviews can be pretty frustrating as you have limited time to express yourself and demonstrate worthiness. What if you could walk into an interview with an employer and command the same respect as an established journalist whose reputation precedes them and has already had their talents exposed to the employer through their public work? I bet they never get asked questions that aim to prove knowledge of their chosen sector.
Weblogs can provide a means to not only advertise yourself to potential employers but also to provide extra info that the interview missed. Even if you are not trying to get a job in journalism, you could use a blog to demonstrate knowledge of your field of expertise. Once other bloggers see how good your writing is, your blog will be referenced in many places in the web, thus increasing the exposure of your personal brand. There is even a specialist blog hosting provider, jobsearchblogs.com that will help job-seekers create blogs to achieve this.
Hiring managers expect to understand the applicant within 10 seconds of reading each resume. A blog gives you extra staying power and builds the strength of your own personal brand.

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