Online personal branding and marketing helps not only your company search engine optimization, but also your own personal search engine optimization efforts. Whether you are trying to find a job or marketing your company, the bottom line is you should strive to build your name as a leader in your industry.
The following are some low cost personal online branding resources to consider:
1. LinkedIn – If you have a LinkedIn account but haven’t touched it in many years now might be the time to get in there and really beef it up. If you don’t have one make the effort and launch one. Make it nice and robust by filling it up with every bit of information you can that will directly reflect your business. Utilize keywords that people might be using in the search engines for things like titles and descriptions. This will give you an opportunity to start ranking in search results.
2. Facebook – A Facebook account is a must. They often times rank extremely well in search engines so make sure it is appropriate and relevant to your business. Fill in as many fields as you can in order to make it clear on what type of service it is that you offer. Understand that if you are using your Facebook account for personal purposes, try creating two different accounts, one for business and personal. And whatever you do, please be careful of the types of things you post to your account if you are only using one account…everyone can see it 
3. Twitter – Twitter will be a great place to not only be visible but bring in some new possible business as well. Same principals apply, launch an account and fill it out completely and start following people that are following your competition. This will get you on the map in front of your audience and over time they will start following you as well.
4. Blog – Launch a blog and start writing about your industry and your area of expertise. Once you start writing you will then be able to leverage your blog posts through the social media channels list above. Over time you will build a loyal following of readers and eventually some of those readers could turn into clients.
5. Profile Image – Make sure to use the same profile image throughout all your profiles. This way you can brand yourself even more for when people bump into your other profiles. They will be able to make the connection almost immediately if you keep your image consistent. Your face will be the logo of your business with social media.
5. Profile Links – Make sure you consistently add your company website (or cross link your other social networking profiles) throughout all of your profiles. Also, some social networking sites allow links of your RSS feeds, please be sure to add this in as it will help generate more visitors to your blog and website overall.
6. Portfolio - Depending on what type of business you have you should keep some sort of portfolio to showcase your work for other potential clients to see.
These are just some of the things you can do to market yourself online and help your online personal brand. Most don’t even cost any money they just require time and patience.
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How to Break Into the SEO Clique
If you are in the search engine optimization industry or you are trying to break into this incredibly saturated industry to make a name for yourself you might have a difficult time getting excepted into the circle of friends at the top of the food chain. The “elite” group that has been in the industry [...]
If you are in the search engine optimization industry or you are trying to break into this incredibly saturated industry to make a name for yourself you might have a difficult time getting excepted into the circle of friends at the top of the food chain. The “elite” group that has been in the industry since day one and think they are the all mighty of the industry. The SEO industry leaders have become a tough group of individuals to become friendly with and it doesn’t seem to be getting any easier. All the “gurus” at the top that think they know every about everything seem to feel that they run this industry like they own it. The SEO industry is kind of like an open source program that should be treated like a group effort. There is plenty of business to go around. Lots of businesses out there that need help promoting themselves in the online space. People need to participate, communicate and get involved to make it a better place for everyone. One person tries something that works well they write about and things spread leading to better online marketing efforts.
I have been actively working in the internet marketing industry for over 12 years, have built Brick Marketing for 5 years successfully and have helped hundreds of clients in the field of SEO yet my educational comments that I leave on certain search engine marketing blogs get deleted, why do you think this happens? Leaving all names aside a certain someone contacted me not too long ago and asked me to stop commenting on a certain blog. Yes, I left a comment on each blog very frequently but isn’t that the whole purpose of starting a blog. These where all well written comments that where generated with real thought process adding to the overall message the blog post was trying to convey. Isn’t the whole idea of a blog to get the community interacting in your conversation? Since when is it bad to leave an educated comment on someone’s blog? Even if the frequency was high it shouldn’t really matter. I have seen this occur with other websites as well. I have seen the tone of this click with others trying to make a name for themselves in the industry and I often see a certain nastiness resonating in the tone of a variety of online discussions. Don’t get me wrong I understand this is a tough industry and if you spend some time in it you get beat up a little but that doesn’t mean you have to be nasty to your colleagues and peers around you especially if they own and operate a successful search engine marketing firm. I apologize if I have not visited you at the trade shows and stroked your ego like many people do. Is it that I don’t kiss the asses of every individual in the “cool group”?
There is plenty of room in the school yard for everyone to get along. Is it because I am a threat to them or the industry? Sometimes I feel like this industry is a lot like high school all over again. You got your cool kids that think they are too good for everyone else and you got everyone else trying to shine in front of their eyes. I by no means want to break into the “cool” click and become one of those has to have their ass kissed by everyone else.
Why is it so hard for people in this industry to come together and work as a team? I understand that everyone is trying to grow their own business but there is no reason why so many internet marketing professionals have to have such a cold shoulder towards each other. We are all in the same game and we do the best we can to provide our clients with great service.
If you are an internet marketer or SEO person do you feel like our industry is heading in this direction as well? Please leave your comments and any related experiences or stories below!
http://www.searchengineoptimizationjournal.com