Establishing your personal brand

- We've discussed many options and tips to help you improve your career in this course. And we're going to finish up by helping you set yourself up for success. No matter what your career goals are every professional can benefit from taking the time to create a personal brand, to network, to update your resume and portfolio and improve their online presence. Establishing a personal brand is what we're going to talk about today. Terri Trespicio is an individual who coaches visionaries, entrepreneurs, business figures and freelancers on personal branding and she's the co-creater of Lights, Camera, Expert. And what Terri has to say about your brand is that what you do and how you do it is important but it's also why your work matters to someone else. It's a combination of three things. It's a combination of your promise, what you say you will deliver, your presence, which is your personality and energy and your practice, how you plan and execute your work and how you respond to others. So it's important to know that your personal brand isn't just your business card, your portfolio and your website all carry the same logo. It's much more than that. It's really about letting people know what you specialize in and how you can help them. And it's through all of your touch points. So, Terri also emphasizes that your personal brand is a lifelong investment that's not tied to any one job or title. So what that means is that your personal brand is not something that you only pick up when you have a career change. It's something that you carry with you and it changes as your career path changes. Everything that goes into your personal brand include your strengths and your skills, what industry and specialties interest you most, your career goals and how you present it. How you present yourself and how you present your personal brand, either verbally, online or elsewhere. One of the things that you need to do to be prepared to present your personal brand is to create an elevator pitch and you've probably heard of this before but an elevator pitch is not just about a sales, it's a concise way of communicating your brand to someone that you may meet. So I'm going to challenge you to develop a 30 second pitch that explains who you are, what you do and what you specialize in. There's a couple of ways that you can do this. You can focus on the benefits that you bring. So, as an example, I do X for Y to achieve Z. An art director, using that example, could say, I oversee the art and design team for a marketing and branding agency to create customer-driven campaigns that align with brand standards. Very concisely communicates what you do but what the benefit is. The other thing you could do is you could tell your story. So it makes it much more personal. As an example, I fell in love with design in high school, and later I studied it in college. I was working as a graphic designer at an agency for five years when I became very interested in UX design. Most recently I wrapped a project to help improve a large tech company's website and now I'm looking for new opportunities with another tech organization. If you tell your story it tends to be a little bit longer but it's much more personalized. Another approach would be to target your market. So as an example, I work with Y types of organizations by doing X to achieve Z. So, it's what you do and what the benefits are. A graphic designer could begin with, I work closely with clothing designers to create original graphics to make their marketing and advertising programs more effective. Think about your promise, your presence and your practice. How can you incorporate this into your brand? Again, it's your promise, your presence and your practice. And this should be present not just in your elevator pitch but it's what should be present on your LinkedIn profile, on your resume, on your portfolio, on your website, on your social media accounts and more. So, I'd ask you to take some time to prepare your elevator pitch. Once you have your elevator pitch ready, now it's time to network and we're going to discuss this in the next video.