My Career

Personal branding is an important practice that creates an impression to other people about one’s personality and career objectives (Chen, 2013). Personal branding help in marketing oneself and career as a brand to create an impression that is likeable. Personal branding gives advantage to professional, personal, and business life. Personal branding communicates to other professionals, employer, and business partners about the person they are engaging with. A good personal branding enables one to establish and get connected to desirable parties. Online presence refers to internet profile that is publicly available for viewing. An online presence portrays personal brand in the internet enabling connectivity for opportunity and getting hired (Edmiston, 2014).

The following report will present my personal branding and my social media profile to increase my online presence.

I want to pursue a career in marketing and work as a marketing assistant, analyst, or marketing manager. I want to be a marketer and help businesses create and meet demand for their products. Marketing will involve identifying what consumers want and providing them with products that satisfy their needs. The following are requirements that are required for marketers as outlined on Australian Job Portal;

Strong managerial skills for formulating and implementing marketing strategies: A marketing assistant collaborates with the company executives to formulate the marketing strategies that will be used to execute marketing activities to increase sales of the company. The assistant marketer of the company is directly involved in the implementation of the strategy to meet the long term objectives of the business (Gehl, 2011). The marketer works as an individual or with a team to implement marketing strategies of the company.

Market research skills: A marketer is involved in marketing research of the company brand and products. This involves planning for research and implementing research recommendations. The marketer works in collaboration with other marketing agency to undertake research and report results to the executive management of the company in order to drive improvements (Ward and Yates, 2013).

Good organizational skills: The company marketer is involved in organizing opportunities relevant to exhibiting company’s products. They include trade shows and publicity event that will exhibit company’s brands. The events management involves planning and organizing of the activities to ensure the company’s marketing activities are effective to increasing demand for the products (Labrecque, Markos and Milne, 2011).

Ability to drive online sales: The marketer has a responsibility of driving sales through internet platform. This has been enhanced by the current internet connectivity and adoption of online shopping by consumers around the globe. The marketer has a role of ensuring effective online marketing of product. This is done through internet promotion and sale of company’s products.

Ability to create market mapping: The company marketer is involved in marketing mapping and business development in order to increase products awareness. This role ensures the company increases it awareness to new areas and the brand is well established.

Knowledge on digital marketing: These include skills in mobile, videos and social medial creation and management. Sound knowledge is required in DSP, DMP etc. This knowledge is important in creation of brand advertisements. The marketer of the company has to work in collaboration with other agencies to write content and produce advertisements in form of videos, internet content, audios, and brochures that are used to reach target market (Milovanovic, Baltazarevic and Milovanovic, 2015).

Self-Analysis Online Personal Presence

Ability to work and adapt to different customer’s objectives: The marketer is required to possess adaptability skills that can adjust to meet different client’s requirements.

Good interpersonal skills: A marketer is required to be friendly, curious, professional, and readiness to learn while working in the company. These skills enable interaction of the marketer and the other teams in the organization.

Ability to work in a team: The marketer is required to have ability to work in collaboration with other people to achieve company’s predetermined goals.

My online presence is only available on social media. I have created a Facebook and twitter profile in the past. The profile is personal but not professional. The profile contains my background information and photos that I have been uploading for the past five years. The profile also contains many friends, news pages, entertainment pages, and celebs that they follow. When creating the social media profile, I did not think about the personal brand that was creating and the impression that the profile would make.

The potential employer or a business partner assessing my profile will not get right impression about me. First the profile does not display my career goals. The profile does not show my interest and ambitions to work as a marketer in the future. There is no connection between my profile on either twitter or Facebook that can show a potential employer or business partner that am planning to pursue a career in marketing. Secondly, my profile does not show my skill. The profile does not show my interpersonal skill that can create an impression to a potential employer. The profile is shallow and contains not display of my ability to work in a team or relate well with other people either in school or any workplace. Third, my online presence does not show my education achievement. I have not updated my current studies that show my knowledge in marketing. Education information is important to communicating level of knowledge that I have in the field and therefore potential employer or business partner will not be able to get by knowledge impression from my profile. Lastly, my profile doe not shows my interest to working or pursuing a career in marketing. My online presence does not show any creative or innovative skills that express my desire to pursue marketing after graduation. My profile does not contain any project that I have done in the past that is related to marketing. This shows that my online presence does not create a marketing impression to potential employers or business partners.

From this evaluation of my personal online presence, I can conclude that I have a poor personal branding that cannot impress potential employers or business partners. Therefore, I need to create new profiles on the interest that will create an impression that can give me an advantage to getting a business opportunity or get hired to a position of interest.

Strength	Weakness
Photos Background information Number of online friends	No career goals No interests expresses No educational information

There are several social networking available on the internet. The following are among the many; LinkedIn, Google+, Fotki and Tumblr. These sites are useful to creating networks via the internet and the profile can be viewed by public. These social networking sites can be used to increase someone’s online presence that can be used to crease personal branding. LinkedIn is a professional and business networking site that was launched in 2003 as a recruiting avenue by human resource managers. Google+ is a general popular social network owned and run by Google Company that is subscription by more than 1600000000 people around the globe (Cantrice, 2013). The Google+ enables an individual to create a profile and update information relating to their profession or interests. Fotki is a social networking that allows users to share photos, photo contests, video hosting, and journals online. This site allows users to share to the public their interests to create personal brand about their abilities. Lastly, is Tumblr is a social networking site that allows users to share content through microblogging platform. The micro blogging platform enables the user to share the interests through writing contents about the field they are passionate about.

From the analysis of four social networking, I choose LinkedIn and Google+ sites to create my profile in order to have an online presence. The following factors are the reasons for choosing LinkedIn; first, LinkedIn has more than 200million users. The site has many connections to create thereby increasing the chances of networking with more professional. Second, the LinkedIn is largely dominated by professionals and business community. LinkedIn therefore has a good platform that is interested with my skills and interest in marketing. Lastly, LinkedIn enables creation of a professional profile that match ones skills with employers and business community. On the other side, Google+ provides a good platform to connect and share to more that 1.6B people around the globe. Google+ provides a good platform to share content in video, writing, and photos forms. This allows the user to express interests that create personal brand. Lastly, Google+ allows users to create communities that connect people of the same interests thereby creating opportunities for ventures and hiring.

Conclusion

From the discussion on personal branding and online presence, I have realized that one’s profile can only be impressive if it created with an objective of creating personal brand. Online presence is an important platform to creating impression to potential employers and business partners. I therefore concluded that student should use their social networking site presence to create personal brands that represent their personalities and interest to the careers they want to pursue in order to create impression to people seeking their information. This will increase individual’s opportunities to a venture of interest or get hired to a certain job.

References

Chen, C. (2013). Exploring Personal Branding on YouTube. Journal of Internet Commerce, 12(4), pp.332-347.

Cantrice, D. (2013). You!: branding yourself for success.

Dirckinck-Holmfeld, L., Hodgson, V. E., & Mcconnell, D. (2012). Exploring the theory, pedagogy and practice of networked learning. New York, NY, Springer. https://public.eblib.com/choice/publicfullrecord.aspx?p=884080.

Edmiston, D. (2014). Creating a Personal Competitive Advantage by Developing a Professional Online Presence. Marketing Education Review, 24(1), pp.21-24.

Gehl, R. (2011). Ladders, samurai, and blue collars: Personal branding in Web 2.0. First Monday, 16(9).

Frischmann, R. M. (2014). Online personal brand: skill set, aura, and identity. Charleston, SC, CreateSpace.

Labrecque, L., Markos, E. and Milne, G. (2011). Online Personal Branding: Processes, Challenges, and Implications. Journal of Interactive Marketing, 25(1), pp.37-50.

Milovanovic, S., Baltazarevic, B. and Milovanovic, N. (2015). Personal branding through leadership. International Review, (3-4), pp.75-81.

Rampersad, H. K. (2009). Authentic personal branding: a new blueprint for building and aligning a powerful leadership brand. Charlotte, NC, Information Age Pub.

Ward, C. and Yates, D. (2013). Personal Branding And e-Professionalism. Journal of Service Science (JSS), 6(1), p.101.