Recently, I had a great email exchange with one of my college classmates about the role that personal branding can play in one’s career search. She is starting up her own job search and is deciding on how to best present her experiences, qualifications, and interests to new contacts and/or potential employers. This is something about which I’ve thought a lot, so it was like the words just flew through my fingers on this one. I tend to blend the ideas of personal branding, professional branding, networking, and career positioning, which comes out when I give advice on these topics.

After finishing that email exchange with my friend, I thought the advice that I sent over would be timely and relevant to some of the readers of this site. I hope some of you find the following to be helpful.

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Starter tips on personal branding

As you develop your personal brand, I would recommend asking yourself about the following issues:

• Who are you and what is your professional brand?: This is basically all about how you want to position yourself professionally. In other words, when you meet people, what do you want them to walk away thinking about you? For example, I brand myself as a business strategist, coach, advisor, and mentor. I think I have an idea of how you’d brand yourself, but that’s something that you’d ultimately have to decide on.

• Self-marketing collateral: In my experience, the biggest and best self-marketing collateral that anyone can have is a professional-looking and informative personal website. This website can be basic and doesn’t need any bells and whistles, but it should offer good information about your background and/or interests…most importantly, it should give off a professional impression of you. First, you should think about what you’d want on a website that represents you. I assume that you’d have a blog, but would you also want a bio, virtual resume, description of services that you can offer, listing of publications, etc? In addition to a website, you could get some professionally done business cards to hand out at events or when meeting people out in the streets. If you get these cards, you’ll have to figure out what you want them to say about you. For example, when a friend of mine was laid off from an investment bank, he ordered business cards with his name on the front with “Financial Analyst, Investment Banker, M&A Professional” as the headline and, on the back, he had a summary of his educational background and a quick blow-by-blow of his work experiences. Some might consider this to be overkill, but it worked well for him and I found it to be a really effective way to make an impression on other business professionals. Is this something that you’d want to do for yourself?

• What are your goals?: Are you just trying to find the next good job opportunity? Or, are you trying to position yourself as someone with expertise in one or more areas? Maybe your goal is just to meet people and build a network of contacts that will give you a killer Rolodex in your city/region, nationally, or globally. Perhaps, you’re trying to set yourself up to be considered for side consulting gigs. The answer to all of these questions could be “yes”, but I think you will want to ask yourself these questions in order to properly map out your self-branding approach.

• What do you bring to the table?: This is somewhat related to the first point, but I’m breaking it out separately. While the first point is all about how you want people to see you, this one is all about you taking a long look at your education, work experiences, and current skill set in order to map out what it is that you can truly offer to your contacts, potential employers, and potential clients. You may not have to run through these details with someone in a conversation, but it would be really good if you have a thorough answer to this question. This will help you to be strategic in your interactions with people and make sure you’re making your best showing as you connect with people, whether it is in person, via email, or via your online presence.

Please know that these aren’t the only issues that you should think about when developing your personal branding strategy. The list above is only meant to be a starting point for you to map out a few basics to serve as a foundation for that strategy. As you solidify your approach, other issues may pop up, but these 4 points should allow you to more easily address those issues. I just want to make sure that you’re not flying blind when it comes to positioning yourself in the business game.

Good luck!