Importance of Creating a Personal Brand

With the competition in today's society it has become very important to properly display yourself in a professional manner. When I declared myself a marketing major I would tell family and friends the importance of marketing in everyones lives. Whether you are a doctor, accountant, or an actress you have to be able to properly market yourself to become a strong candidate for the position you are looking to fill. Communicating your value is something that is not taught in other professions but with marketing I have found that there is an indirect lesson being taught about how to sell yourself and your abilities that you uniquely bring to the table. A tool and platform used to communicate this is LinkedIn and other social media websites. This is someones opportunity to sell themself while they aren't actively present. Another element into what message you are trying to display about yourself is your privacy options. When an employer does research on an applicant they often look at media pages of them and if they are all private then that will show how professional this person is looking to be. The times have moved from handing someone a business card to letting them know your LinkedIn and connecting that way. A business card and someones personal brand was limited to each person that you individually talked to versus everyone that comes across your "brand" in your LinkedIn page. This tool really has much greater than potential than traditional tools in the past that is why it is so crucial to create a personal brand and a compelling one.