3 More Personal Branding Predictions for 2011

  • 1 min read

Recently, Dan Schawbel released his seven personal branding predictions for 2011. Among them:

  • Your online personal brand will be consolidated
  • Soft skills become more important than hard skills
  • As the economy gets better, the war for talent ignites
  • Social networks will become completely ineffective for one-to-many marketing efforts
  • Personal brands have more responsibilities
  • Social media becomes widely used in the workplace
  • People establishing their online brands earlier in life

I’d add three others:

  • Marketing your online brand will be increasingly important as more jobs open
  • Online reputation management will continue to be important for both individuals and companies
  • Mobile tools will influence the future of personal branding

Marketing your online brand

This was a difficult year for job seekers. Recent college graduates and seasoned professionals alike were struggling and competing for the small number of available jobs in the market. However, an important lesson came out of the intense competition: You need to know how to market (and brand) yourself effectively in order to stand out in a tough market. Many job seekers in 2010 learned this the hard way—spending months unemployed and wondering if they’d ever find work.

In 2011, I predict that many job seekers will realize the importance of marketing themselves (and not just in marketing-related industries). Creating and maintaining a personal brand is much like marketing a company or product—except that product is you.

Monitoring your reputation online

With the job market looking up in 2011, both employers and candidates will continue watching their brands closely on the Internet. People will want more in-depth brand monitoring solutions as they strive to create a positive online impression of themselves or their company.

An up-and-coming solutions for job seekers is Vizibility.

Mobile applications & websites

Mobile Internet, e-mail, and applications are already popular—but they’ll continue to grow over the next year as more people purchase smart phones and unlimited cell phone plans. Personal branding applications and solutions will become more widely available to a variety of providers and cell phone models.

Picture of Heather R. Huhman

Heather R. Huhman

Heather R. Huhman is a career expert and founder & president ​of Come Recommended, a career and workplace education and consulting firm specializing in young professionals. She is also the author of#ENTRYLEVELtweet: Taking Your Career from Classroom to Cubicle (2010), national entry-level careers columnist forExaminer.com and blogs about career advice at HeatherHuhman.com.

TRENDING AROUND THE WEB

The signs of a hard childhood rarely look dramatic by adulthood, therapists who work with trauma survivors say; more often it is a habit of apologizing before speaking, flinching at a raised voice that was never aimed at them, or checking that everyone else is okay before letting themselves relax.

The signs of a hard childhood rarely look dramatic by adulthood, therapists who work with trauma survivors say; more often it is a habit of apologizing before speaking, flinching at a raised voice that was never aimed at them, or checking that everyone else is okay before letting themselves relax.

Global English Editing
A national survey found that the share of men reporting they have no close friends at all climbed from 3 percent in 1990 to 15 percent by 2021, with the steepest rise showing up right around the age most men leave the workforce

A national survey found that the share of men reporting they have no close friends at all climbed from 3 percent in 1990 to 15 percent by 2021, with the steepest rise showing up right around the age most men leave the workforce

Global English Editing
People who apologize before anyone’s said what’s wrong may be doing more than displaying extra manners — research on parentification has found that children who grow up feeling responsible for a parent’s emotional state can carry that habit of anticipating, managing, and taking responsibility for other people’s feelings into their adult relationships, long after the household that taught it is gone.

People who apologize before anyone’s said what’s wrong may be doing more than displaying extra manners — research on parentification has found that children who grow up feeling responsible for a parent’s emotional state can carry that habit of anticipating, managing, and taking responsibility for other people’s feelings into their adult relationships, long after the household that taught it is gone.

Global English Editing
People keeping a secret reported hiding it in conversation far less often than it simply came to mind on its own, and it was those uninvited moments that went with feeling worse

People keeping a secret reported hiding it in conversation far less often than it simply came to mind on its own, and it was those uninvited moments that went with feeling worse

The Vessel
Picture next week and notice which way it runs, left to right, or toward you, or away, because whichever answer you just got, there are people who grew up finding a completely different one every bit as obvious as yours

Picture next week and notice which way it runs, left to right, or toward you, or away, because whichever answer you just got, there are people who grew up finding a completely different one every bit as obvious as yours

The Vessel
There are things about a life that are worth keeping to yourself even with people you trust completely, not because there is anything shameful in them, but because privacy is one of the few forms of ownership nobody can take from you once you have given it away.

There are things about a life that are worth keeping to yourself even with people you trust completely, not because there is anything shameful in them, but because privacy is one of the few forms of ownership nobody can take from you once you have given it away.

Global English Editing
Load more
CATEGORIES
Explore