My Personal Brand

When reading the two Forbes articles about personal branding it really made me start to think about my own personal brand and what I can do to improve it and make it unique. In the article called How to Conduct a Personal SWOT Analysis, the author explains that SWOT is an effective process that companies use to assess themselves and their competitors. SWOT stands for Strengths (internal), Weaknessess (internal), Opportunities (external), and Threats (external). Reading this article made me start to think about my own SWOT. My strengths would be my ability to communicate with all types of people, and being able to form relationships with people easily, along with being a decent presenter and being able to confidently speak in from of crowds. My weaknesses are that at times ai doubt myself, and get intimidated by challenges put in front of me, when really I just need to face them head on. On a personal note, I want to move to England after college and try and start my career internationally, so another weakness for me is that I am not from England, therefore it could be harder for me to get a job. My threats are other students my age from bigger, more prestigious universities trying to get the same job I am. However, my opportunity is being a student athlete and being able to say I have stuck out four years being a student athlete. SWOT was a really helpful tool that I will remember when working on my personal brand.

The other article we read called Personal Branding 101, was just about what a personal brand is and how you can improve your own. You have to think of yourself as a "product" and you need to stand out from others. The article gave some steps on how to achieve a successful personal brand. You must define your overall aspirations, meaning know what your goals are. My goal is to move to England after college and work in a different country. You also need to do research and see how successful people have made it to where they are today. You also need to determine your brand attributes, what do you want to convey to others? I would say since I enjoy public relations and marketing my personal brand should show that I am a good communicator, and can form relationships with others easily. Along with your attribute you must know what your current state is, they see how large is the gap between who you want to be and who you are. You also need to create and game plan and manage your brand. My game plan is to keep active on my LinkedIn and other forms of social media, and also to start sending out my resume early.

Both the articles were filled with valuable information about personal branding, and I will look back at them for advice when creating my personal brand in Digital Literacies.