3 Quick Tips to Get You to Start Building Your Very Own Online Brand

Location: Hilton Resort & Spa, Cebu – Reading Time: 9mins

It’s amazing to see how the web is constantly changing the world. Nowadays it is imperative for you to own your own slice of the internet. Thankfully, you can make your online presence felt in a flash and let your brand be known to the world. Building your offline (you know, the REAL world!) brand is a long process. However, creating your own online brand can be a lot easier, and take a lot less time. And believe it or not, you don’t actually have to be overly-savvy or an absolute know-it-all in the area that you decide to focus on – you just have to be creative and alert. Those interested in embracing the Virtual Business Lifestyle are the type of people that want to work less and either make the same amount of money, or more money (I prefer the latter, obviously!). And more of those type of people are creating their online brands every day!

Bottom line is, whatever market, niche or industry you decide to focus on, in regards to building up your own brand around, you just have to know the basics. You can start from scratch and slowly work your way up. All you have to do is to invest a great deal of your time, patience and your skills – eventually, you’ll see things bounce into place.

Over the holiday period I’ve had a handful of emails from people that say that really want to get involved in trying to find their ‘muse’ (ala Tim Ferriss’ 4HWW), but don’t really know where to start. In response to this, there is one major tip – pick something you are PASSIONATE about. If that’s dog care, write about looking after dogs; if it’s vintage cars, write about ways to create a vintage car collection, or how to look after the cars themselves. It doesn’t matter what the subject, or focus, is – just make sure you’re passionate about it. Following that one simple tip, here are a few more to help you build your own online brand going into 2010.

Create a Blog or Website. The first thing you have to do is make your online presence felt by establishing an online identity that is uniquely yours. Start building your online brand with your own website and personal blog. You can choose from the many blogging platforms that are available for free. Wordpress has been a top favorite of mine for quite some time. It provides templates that are easy to edit and allows for cross-blog communication, comments, spam protection, upgrades, plug-ins and many other features.

Be sure to invest in a domain name, otherwise you’ll just slip into the realm of nobodyknowsme.wordpress.com. Don’t worry about design too much at first – just get the thing up and running, and get writing. Besides, as I said, they have some pretty cool ‘freebie’ templates now, and you can even Google for more!

Stay Updated. Building your online brand requires that you know what everybody else is doing. That includes your target audience and your competitors (although don’t get too caught up in reading every word they publish online – seriously, there is MUCH better stuff you can, and SHOULD be doing with your time!). You have to listen to what’s happening around you so you know where you stand and how to position yourself effectively. Subscribe to RSS feeds using a service like Google Reader (which is free!) and get the latest news streams and updates on your favorite website and blogs regularly.

Now that you’re ‘in the know’, you have to reinforce your online brand by actively engaging others in conversations in a consistent manner.

Use Social Media. Now bring your online brand to life by letting the magic of online networking do its work using the different social media tools available. Can you say Twitter? Or Facebook? LinkedIn is best for your business needs (refer to my previous blog titled “5 Top Tips Building your Entrepreneurial Network through LinkedIn“). LinkedIn not only allows you to keep in touch with your old friends but also join or create groups in your industry – a perfect way to get new connections, and spread your word of wisdom! And don’t forget popular Bookmarking sites such as Digg, StumbleUpon and YahooBuzz to name a few.

Contribute. Once you’ve been going for a while, start doing extra little bits and pieces online to get your name out there more often, and in other places. Contact some of those blogs that you’ve been commenting on over the last few months and ask the blogger if they would be interested in a Guest Post from the guy or gal behind www.yourwebsite.com!

You can also start writing for other well known sites like eZineArticles and eHow – not only will this help get your name ‘out there’ further online, but they also allow links back to YOUR website, meaning will check out your own site when they are done reading your informative content!

Creating your blog or website, getting noticed and connecting to the right people through social media and other sites are just the tip of the iceberg in the grand scale of building your online brand. The real work is in consistently sustaining and growing your online presence on a daily basis. As mentioned earlier, although its faster to build your reputation online than it is offline, its still a PROCESS. However, in time the online brand that you establish will assume a personality of its own, one that people will remember.

You have to work on your brand until it becomes synonymous to solid information, a nice personality and fundamentally, TRUST. Which, in the final analysis, becomes the yardstick for your success in the overall scheme of building your own online brand.

Good luck!

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