Creating and maintaining your personal brand may seem very time-consuming to some people. While it’s important to create an authentic brand and product results, it doesn’t mean you have to spend a ton of time doing so.
Great yield and less time
Check out these few ways to reach the same outcome but with less effort and time:
Import your existing resume or branding documents when signing up for new sites. Many professional networking sites, such as LinkedIn, support document upload and will quickly and easily fill in the areas of the profile for you with existing information. While you probably shouldn’t do this for every profile (different websites have different audiences—plus, you wouldn’t want the exact same information on every website), it’s something to get you started with little time and effort.
Signup with your Facebook or Twitter accounts to instantly create a presence. A lot of new websites are allowing Facebook or Twitter signup/login to avoid the sense of “account overload” that many people feel today. Since you already have a presence on both of these social media sites, you can easily use your existing account to create a presence on other websites to continue building your brand.
Connect accounts together to share information across networks. Although you certainly shouldn’t do this for every profile, it can be beneficial to connect your Twitter updates to Facebook or LinkedIn (or use the hashtag #in on specific tweets you’d like to share) to skip the step of visiting each profile to post it. You can also use tools such as Hootsuite, where you can connect several profiles and accounts, to update all of them within one tool.
Develop a concise, comprehensive elevator pitch or biography to post across multiple sites. A vital piece of your personal brand is how you describe yourself and your expertise. By creating a consistent message, others will know exactly who you are and what to expect from you.
Send automatic updates of content you share regularly. Sign up for a tool such as Twitterfeed to automatically share your RSS feed to your network across Twitter or Facebook. No longer will you have to remember to share content the day it posts—it will do it for you.
Keep your network organized and stay up-to-date with key contacts through lists and groups. If you’re following or friending too many people to keep up with, create a list for those accounts you would like to read everyday. It will make your network of contacts much more organized, and you’ll be able to interact with each individual better because of that organization.
