Building your brand is a continuous process that will last you your entire lifetime and there are countless ways that you can build and communicate your personal brand both online and in-person.

However, to get you started, I have put together what I’d like to consider a SparkNotes guide for establishing your brand and credibility in today’s career marketplace in 3 easy steps:

1. Get active and get visible online and offline:

If no one meets you or sees you, it won’t matter how strong your personal brand is. Therefore, it is critical that you get both your name and yourself in front of your target audience. Here are some ways to increase your visibility:

o Create a LinkedIn profile and follow the suggested steps to complete your profile 100%, making sure you include your personal brand and pitch in your subtitle and summary sections

o Create a Google account and profile for improved search engine optimization

o Include your personal brand on your resume, cover letter, business cards, email signature, voicemail message and across your other social networks, such as Twitter and Facebook

o Consider creating a personal website or blog site where you can store all of your professional information, including experience, education, skills, honors, entrepreneurial efforts and more

o Join associations or networking groups within your industry, both online and offline, and try attending their events to meet new contacts and build your target network. Be sure to share your personal brand with those new contacts you meet

o Conduct informational interviews with contacts in your target industry or companies (whether or not you’re seeking a job) and share your personal brand with them in your introductions

2. Offer consistent value:

Make sure that everything you contribute is valuable to those with whom you share it and also relevant to and supportive of your personal brand. Consistency is key, for the more consistent all of your own marketing efforts are both online and offline, the more powerful and memorable your personal brand impression will be on all current and prospective stakeholders in your career. Here are some ways you can start contributing value on a daily or weekly basis:

o Tweets

o Comments on other blog posts

o Blog articles or articles for print publications

o Discussions in LinkedIn Groups or in other forums

o Advice via LinkedIn Answers and other forums

o Book or product reviews

3. Develop thought leadership:

As you grow the quantity, quality and uniqueness of your contributions, you may be increasingly considered as an industry thought leader. Here are some ways to support and even expedite your rise to thought leadership:

o Start your own blog with a unique POV on your industry/area of interest

o Found a company with relevant and valuable products/services/resources for the industry

o Publish and offer print and/or electronic publications

o Get quoted in the media by joining HARO (HelpaReporter.com) and contributing advice, experiences and insights to writers and journalists seeking expert sources

o Find ways to bring fellow industry thought leaders together on a project or at an event

o Find ways to contribute to the projects or events of fellow industry experts

o Get recommended on LinkedIn and any other networks where you or your offerings are available and/or collect and display testimonials from customers, clients and partners

Chris Perry, MBA is a Gen Y brand and marketing “generator,” a career search and personal branding expert and the founder of Career Rocketeer and Launchpad.

LinkedIn recommendations seem to be a dime a dozen. Some profiles show hundreds of recommendations. Do they really matter?

The answer is YES. Here’s why:

LinkedIn is a fairly static social network that relies on the creator of the profile to provide all of their own information. As such, you could, if so inclined, make up your entire work history, education, specialties, etc.

What you can’t make up is your recommendations. (Well, I suppose by an elaborate scheme, you could…). Other people have to recommend you. Hopefully people who have worked with you, managed you, gone to school with you, done business with you, or interacted with you in some meaningful way. LinkedIn recommendations provide us with a means to TRUST what we read on a profile.

Giving and receiving recommendations on LinkedIn may seem uncomfortable or awkward at first. But don’t let that stop you. LinkedIn is built on recommendations, and you cannot have a complete profile without both giving and receiving a recommendation. It’s the norm.

What value does GIVING LinkedIn recommendations provide:

Giving a LinkedIn recommendation is like putting your footprint on someone else’s profile. It is a link back to your profile. It says something about you, about your communication style, about your willingness to give back.

Every time you recommend someone on LinkedIn, you are cementing a relationship with a connection. The person you recommend is more likely to recommend you in return. You are crafting a circle of influence where your word is trusted and you are seen as someone who is valuable as a connection.

What value does RECEIVING LinkedIn recommendations provide:

LinkedIn recommendations are social proof that you are who you say you are. Recommendations can be from a variety of connections who know you in a variety of areas and can provide a well-rounded picture of you as an employee and as an individual.

Receiving a LinkedIn recommendation, especially unsolicited, signals to you that one of your connections has cared enough to take the time to write something good about you. It also should be a signal that you should return the favor.

A LinkedIn recommendation can say about you things that you cannot (or should not) say about yourself. The fact that someone else said them, is equivalent to that person putting their stamp of approval on your profile.

A few hard-and-fast rules concerning LinkedIn recommendations:

• Only recommend people that you know well.
• Only ask for recommendations from people that you know well.
• When requesting a recommendation, give the writer a specific aspect of your work to recommend you for
• If you can, reciprocate when receiving a recommendation
• Keep it short and sweet
• Give more than you get

This isn’t rocket science. People can’t recommend you if you’ve only met them for coffee once or twice. You shouldn’t be recommending them either. Wait until you have something of substance to say.

LinkedIn recommendations are not like those your professor wrote for you when you applied for grad school. They are about a paragraph. Leave out the fluff, and stick to the meat.

The last part is about generosity. Being generous is one of the unwritten rules of success on the social web. When people see that your are recommending others often, and writing really decent recommendations, they will want to get in on the action. Maybe they will recommend you, and then you’ll recommend them, and the circle grows.

So today, go and look through your list of connections, find a few who you know really well and have something of value to tell others about. Write those recommendations and see what kind of reaction you get. You may find it makes you feel good, and it will definitely make them feel good.

Then make it a habit.

We all know by now that Twitter is more than just a fun place to talk to people and learn what’s new, it’s also a huge personal brand generator.

Whether it’s Alyssa Milano, a perennial B-list actress with in excess of one million followers and a klout score higher than Barack Obama, or Justin, the 29-year old who’s twitter account @sh*tmydadsays has now been made into a book and a TV series, stories abound of people who have become famous (or more famous) because of their twitter presence.

While you may never have a million followers, it is possible to become known on Twitter, to become an ‘expert’ in your field or even a ‘thought leader.’ I have found a simple tool that is an easy way to gain influence, grow your following and expand your personal brand: the twitter chat.

If you’re not a devotee of chats, as many are, you may have noticed from time to time that your stream fills up with hashtags such as #genychat, #mbachat or #jobhuntchat, and either wondered what everyone is talking about, or gotten annoyed that these tweets keep filling up your stream with something you’re not involved in.

Next time that happens, instead of tuning out, tune in. Search for the hashtag so you can see the tweets in real-time, use a tool like tweetchat.com. That way you will get a feel for what the whole conversation looks like rather than just a few snippets here and there. If it’s a topic you know something about, feel free to join in ~ twitter chats are open to all and generally very welcoming to newcomers.

Here’s a few tips for chats and why you might want to join:

1) Meet interesting new tweeps. Chats usually attract people from outside your sphere, so it is almost assured you will be exposed to some tweeps you have not previously been aware of. If they seem interesting, follow them.

2) Put your two cents in. Like I said, if you know something about the topic, it’s perfectly fine to add your thoughts. You do not have to be an expert on the subject. Everyone has a different level of expertise, so you don’t know who your tweet will help or appeal to.

3) Retweet people. This will give them a chance to interact with you later. It also helps your audience if you are tweeting good information at them.

4) Add a comment to a tweet. Have conversations within the chat…this is the time to engage…everyone is expecting that, they all came here for the same reason.

5) Since most chats move quickly, the more you tweet within a chat, the more likely you will be noticed and pick up new followers. Generally these are people with at least some similar interests and can become valuable new sources of information and engagement. Follow them back.

6) By engaging in chats, you are using Twitter for what it was designed for ~ conversation.

7) There is usually a digest published after the chat with select tweets, along with a transcript of the entire chat. More tweeps who did not get to participate in the chat, but who are interested in the topic will seek that out, and will find you there.

8) Tweet a link to the digest or transcript to your followers and ask them to join the next chat. And make sure to thank the moderators of the chat at the conclusion.

9) Growing a presence among twitter chatters will increase your opportunities to know and be known by influencers within a given field.

10) Twitter chats are fun!

Joining in a twitter chat is a first step level of engagement. Eventually, you may want to co-moderate a chat of your own. To get started, check out this complete up-to-date list of twitter chats. You are sure to find one that fits your interests and goals: http://bit.ly/bOTzCe.

My next post will outline how to create and host a twitter chat.

Every so often I see a tweet or Facebook post that is along the lines of someone “quitting social media” for a period of time. It almost seems they’ve become fatigued with the heavy lifting of sharing, posting, and the commenting that’s necessary to stay relevant in social media. Relevant being a key word.

If you are anything like me, there are long periods where I do great and then there are times when I have extreme peaks and valleys. At any period of time you can catch me racing - posting here, tweeting there, engaging with people through blog comments over there….and then…it drops. Let me tell you *in Bill Cosby voice*– Do as I say and not as I do.

That is the wrong way to stay RELEVANT.

Our lives are busy and sometimes being active in social media is at the back of our minds and for most of us thats ok. For us trailblazers, we must show the way. Personal branding content sources such as this blog and conferences like BrandCamp 2010 are VERY important for this space. It pushes forward use cases for social media and personal branding using the internet. We are the social authority! Scary? Nah.

Is IT still sexy?
Yes. Social Media as we know it – social networking, blogging, location-based services, and real-time-publishing is definitely still evolving. Meanwhile, us who champion the social media cause, we have significant jobs to do. For our personal benefit and for the community. In order to maintain the social media sexy, we need to be consistent and challenge ourselves to pump out GREAT content.

The Internet is still a teenager, at around 15 years old, it is just coming into its own.

Entrepreneur’s, large organizations, individuals, you are all welcome - join the party. We will be rocking for a while.

Today Brand Camp University is excited to announce the addition of two new Adjunct Lecturers (Bloggers): Kelly Lux and Lawrence Riddick. They bring a great deal of knowledge and incite from their career experience and we are very happy that they have decided to share content on BrandCampU.com. They will be posting content that is career, social media, and personal branding related. For more information about Kelly and Lawrence her bio have been included below.

Kelly Lux - School of Information Studies (iSchool) at Syracuse University as Social Media Manager

I recently joined the School of Information Studies (iSchool) at Syracuse University as Social Media Manager. My duties entail designing strategies for the social media efforts of the Syracuse iSchool and Syracuse University. I manage SM accounts on a variety of platforms and engage with a set of diverse populations, while building community and brand awareness.

We are forging partnerships with a variety of social media companies in order to build and expand Syracuse University’s presence in this space. It is our intention to make SU the leader in social media among our peers.

I lead a team of graduate and undergraduate students on a variety of social media projects designed to enhance the social media experience of prospective and current students, alumni, potential donors, employers, researchers, educators and the community.

At the iSchool I am a member of the iComm Team which is responsible for internal & external print, social and web communications content and design.

Most recently, I worked in Career Services at SU managing the Mentor @ SU program, making connections between students & alumni for networking, using social media, one on one meetings and workshops to deliver career advice, and planning and hosting networking events across the country.

For more information follow Kelly at: @KellyLux

Lawrence Riddick - Principal at Clarity Consulting & Design

Lawrence is a dynamic marketing professional with over 8 years of experience in helping brands and ideas emerge and evolve. He has working experience in marketing, design, project management, publishing, and writing.
Most recently while at Experience Marketing as an Experience Director, Lawrence helped his team execute and activate hundreds of sponsored events on behalf of General Motors. Prior to Experience Marketing he worked as a project manager in the branded content publishing division of Campbell-Ewald Advertising on publications such Corvette Quarterly and OnStar Magazine.
Lawrence started his career with an entrepreneurial effort as owner of an agency, The Riddick Group, that serviced small to mid-size businesses with marketing communication solutions. In addition to creating marketing plans and ad campaigns for clients, he expressed his design and writing abilities, as publisher of a branded publication for the apparel company DAVERSE in Detroit, MI.

He is currently consulting individuals and small organizations at Clarity Consulting and Design on marketing, branding, and content creation in the web 2.0 space.

For more information follow Lawrence at: @Riddick3point0

One of the lessons that I received over the weekend, had to do with keeping your faith young. In most cases when we reach maturity in things we do, we are at our best. However being young in something doesn’t always have to be a direct correlation with immaturity.

I recently came a across a slide show that I put together for a really good friend’s wedding. On the soundtrack is a great song, called Forever Young, by Rod Stewart. Although the lyrics seem to be targeted towards a relationship with a son or daughter, I felt the song generally inspires us to stay young.

I strongly feel this is how we should approach our personal brand. Staying young in heart and mind allows you to stay invigorated, passionate, and most important - teachable. As we mature in life, some of the ways to maintain youth is to continue to learn different things that allow you to sharpen your skills and your knowledge base. Here are a few more things to consider:

Pay Attention to Accidental Inspiration
Although I think it is necessary to be purposeful in everything we do,inspiration and creativity many times is accidental. For instance a combination of experiences allowed for me to be inspired to write this post as explained above. I think it is always good to keep the juices flowing by mixing up the monotony and allowing yourself to be inspired by your experiences. Allowing yourself to be open to different genres and creating new relationships are good ways to mix things up. Just like a fruit smoothie, if you don’t mix it up you will find that all the good stuff is at the bottom.

Be Prepared for a Pivot
Good entrepreneurs are always ready for a potential pivot. Sometimes you start a business or initiative going in a specific direction. However things in the market could change or your customer evolves and you find that you have to take your idea in a different direction. To be prepared for a pivot you have your hand on the pulse of the market and be prepared to make a pivot in another profitable direction. Changing directions sometimes requires energy; it helps to stay young in the mind and be able to learn new things. This can apply to career’s and passion projects as well.

Maintain Momentum
Sometimes it is natural for us to get comfortable and on auto-pilot with our day-to-day responsibilities. Keeping our batteries charged through rest and recuperation, maintaining a healthy lifestyle, and constantly staying in practice allows us to keep up with the pace of our purpose in life.

These are things that can edify your day-to-day duties on-the-job or business, relationships with your spouse and kids, and in our friendships. Stay Invigorated and Forever Young.

Do you want to be influential or are you comfortable with being mediocre? As a personal brand, there is no prerequisite saying that you have to be influential over millions of people. However while maintaining a personal brand online, you are secretly charged with being a curator of content or solutions for the people who follow you. This is the value that you offer to your audience, regardless to if you have 1 million followers or 300.

As a curator, you share the best content or solutions online for your followers and advocates to consume. For years, news organizations, magazine editors, radio disc jockey’s, and fashion stylists have curated pop culture for us and when we sniffed, bit, and accepted what they offered, many brands have reaped major success in return. With social media giving some of that power back to us, we have individually been able to take on the role of civilian editors; sharing and publishing content links. Doing this successfully, can pay considerable dividends for your personal brand. We have 7-Tips, that we think will help you do this effectively to maintain a healthy brand and establish influence with your audience.

Passion
The internet oozes with passionate people. Everyone online usually stakes the house on what they believe in. Passion is necessary in order to get people to believe in you and the things you share. If you recommend content, products, or any type of solution online, you better show them with strong conviction why you think it was great. Otherwise they may perceive your offering as a waste of their time. Inject energy and passion into anything you publish and share.

Don’t Ride the Wave of Fads
Fads come and go like the wind. If you want to have a personal brand that is relevant, make sure your recommendations have substance that transcends fad status. There are also many things you recommend that naturally have short life cycles. So for instance if you recommend the iPhone 3GS and the new iPhone 4 comes out, that is a natural progression in that product. This doesn’t mean they are in fad status and as a curator you have to be able to decipher which is what. For example, Myspace wasn’t necessarily a fad, however the company failed to innovate, which helped it secure it’s approaching spot in oblivion.

Fan-boy-ism is Allowed
Fan-boys and fan-girls are mocked and ridiculed; many times rightful so. Heres the skinny, if you are crazy about a brand or a good piece of published works — sing its praises to the roof tops! However, be able to recognize any faults of a brand you recommend. Don’t be a blind lover, see the truth and the truth only.

Regurgitate Excerpts, But Only With Your Personality
One of the tenets of being a curator of content online is that if you are going to recommend or share existing published works, do so with respect. When you do this, it is good to link back to the source. Regurgitating someone else’s good work, gets your personal brand card revoked real quick. When referencing someone else’s work, point back to that content through linking and give your own personalized twist on why you thought it was a great piece of work.

Quality is King
Museum curators are heralded because of the great body of work they manage to source in their museum. This is no different for your personal brand. Share and present works to your followers that is tasty. It helps if the content or brand you are sharing is relevant and current to the times. Reality is that quality is in the eye of the beholder, but if you have a good handle on who your followers are, you will hit the mark most of the time. Which brings us to our next point…

Know Your Followers
When engaging your followers, its best to know the make up of the group. If you don’t have a connection with many people that are super tech savvy, it wouldn’t be wise to talk about computer motherboards or microprocessors. It’s not relevant to them and the information doesn’t add value to them.

Be Right.
If you say that something is good or encourage people to try a brand, your recommendation has to be right. Are you going to knock it out of the park all the time? Probably not. Will people the click links to every single article you send their way? Probably not. But the higher you’re batting average, the more people will be eager to listen to what you have to say.

Go out and curate, I am looking forward to being influenced by you.

As someone who is reading this blog, I think it is safe to say that you are a forward-thinking individual, who understands the importance of personal branding. It’s a fair guess that most of us, who have established a brand online have started since we have been out of college or have done so because our jobs have called for us to do so. Have you ever thought what it would have been like to start branding yourself online earlier?

Here are what I think are five compelling reasons why I think youth should establish their personal brand online:

1. Domain name
According to a Market Watch article, as of 2009 the Internet has surpassed a total of 193 Million domain names registered. With that stat being said, it is very important for youth to dip into the pool of names left and register the domain that matches their personal name at least. This way they don’t have to cobble together a URL, because nothing that resembles their name is available. Using their name as a URL is important for branding on a resume or for SEO (search engine optimization), which we will get into later.

2. Content Creation
Teaching your kids while they are young on how to create content on the web could advance them light years. The story from the proverbial book of “The Internet” is telling us that content consumption is moving from the TV to the Internet. Although the jury is out on whether content will completely move to the Internet, it appears that this is the trend. Knowing how to maneuver and establish themselves online could be the difference in whether your kids land career opportunities in the future. Obviously the content that a young person would create would ideally be targeted to their respective age group. The goal is not to teach them how create a huge audience, but to teach young people how to create relevant content to the audience they would want to focus on. Whether their audience is their friends from school or as small as their family, the experience they would gain would be very beneficial.

3. Good SEO out the gate
Google has made SEO (search engine optimization) a very important term on the Internet. Having a presence online early would allow search engines like Google, who crawl the Internet to find everything that exists, to populate the content that your child creates in its search engine results. Having an early start could be the difference between a young person with a common name like John Smith, having optimal search engine results online. Although you would have to maintain fresh content for these results to remain, a good linking structure on the website or blog would allow for decent results over a long period of time. To learn more about SEO, this article at searchengineland.com is a good start.

4. Seasoned Virtual Appearance
You may have aspirations for your child to become a million-dollar entrepreneur, however even if they become a worker-bee at a large organization, having tenure online can help. With a track record of providing content online, when the young person becomes an adult, people can see a past history of their contribution to a subject matter. Seeing an evolution in a young person can also show their potential, which is very important for employers.

5. Education Value
Creating a personal brand online through contributing content, allows a young person to prove that they can commit to something other than school. It could expand on their experiences whether social or educational. Additionally, when kids go off to college knowing how to create content online, they will have the edge of being able to express themselves via the Internet and will also have had the opportunity to establish a social network that could be valuable to them later on. Most importantly, they will have knowledge on how to use tools for content creation. Tools such as WordPress and Blogger for blog platforms, as well as social media tools like Twitter and Facebook that help them connect with other people and content creators online.

The Internet can be a scary place to let kids run wild and until they are mature enough to handle the responsibility, they may need a personal shepherd. If you are shepherding them along as they embark on this experience, you can curate their interaction and places they visit.

I feel whatever negatives exist for the personal branding of young people; the positives far outweigh any negatives that could pop up. A professor that I learned a great deal from, the late Professor Dr. Dale Haywood (creator of The Economics of Private Enterprise in a 12-cell Matrix) taught every student that they should create a Self-Designed Supplemental Curriculum (SDSC) and reach beyond our educational requirements. By encouraging young people to establish a presence online, it allows them to start training on how they want to present themselves to the world professionally, recreationally, or through creative contribution to the world. Personal Branding? For Kids? Yes.

Lawrence Riddick is a small business consultant and marketer at Clarity Consulting & Design and blogger at The Ideas That Stick.

Let’s explore the differences between personal branding and career branding, and determine which path is right for you.

There is a lot of advice and information out there on branding yourself for the job search; however, personal branding isn’t just a one-time activity. Personal branding is an ongoing process that can not only help you advance your career once you get an opportunity, but also help you to keep your job in tough economic times.

Here are 7 tips on how personal branding can help you increase your job security at work:

Demonstrate to your boss that you get it. Make it known that you know what needs to get done and are doing it and a lot more. Today job security is about company security. Any employer feeling on the financial ropes looks for ways to lighten the load. All too often, that means reductions in force, or simply put, layoffs. The people aren’t casualties are those who bring real value to the enterprise. Smart employees brand themselves by making it clear to the leadership that they understand the harsh realities of business and aren’t afraid. They demonstrate that by identifying problems and fixing them, by seeing opportunities and seizing them, and by being a strong voice that motivates positive action. If you’re a whiner and naysayer, you’re toast! If you’re a “I’m with you no matter what,” can-doer, you’re golden. - Dawn Lennon, ConsultBigPicture.com

Be mindful of who you need to be influencing. In many cases, it may not be just your immediate boss or even people in the same office or country. Be very clear about who makes the decisions about your role and department and that they are aware of the contribution you are making. - Paul Copcutt, SquarePegSolution.com

Find an internal champion who can speak knowledgeably about your contributions. A mentor is the best person to serve in this capacity. If you have a mentor who is well placed in the organization, this person is in an excellent position to speak up for you. Very often employees are let go because upper management does not know that they are very valuable. Having an internal champion to speak for you can go a long way in terms of persuading management that you are too valuable to lose. Some organizations have formal mentoring programs in place. If your organization does have such a program, make sure that you take advantage of it. If they don’t look around to see who might fill this role for you. - Cheryl Palmer, CallToCareer.com

Go the extra mile in your role. While you’re building your external brand, you also need to build your brand within your company. If everyone knows you, and knows that you add value to your team through contributions, industry knowledge and industry research, you’ll become more difficult to get rid of. - Erik Vermeulen, ErikVermeulen.com

Go above and beyond your role by getting involved. The more involved and active you can become in the company, the more entrenched and indispensable you become. This could be joining a cross-functional committee, writing for the company blog, sharing/contributing ideas, expertise or opportunities to other functions and teams within the organization, offering to start, lead or coordinate company-wide initiatives and more. This will showcase your value and talents, but also your loyalty and commitment to the company’s long-term success. And who wouldn’t want someone with those assets on the team? - Chris Perry, CareerRocketeer.com

Become the Subject Matter Expert (SME) in your area of expertise! When you are the SME for your area, it is very difficult for a company to let you go unless you are an extremely difficult person to work with, or the company completely changes direction whereby eliminating your functional expertise. However, in addition to becoming a SME in just your area, having a strong foundation of understanding about the overall business of your company and picking your spots strategically for where you add sound judgment and advice in a respectful, thoughtful and positive manner, could also help you stave off being let go involuntarily. - David Kimmelman, GetTheJob.com

Cross-train so that you can backfill a position, if necessary. In an era of cutbacks, you make yourself more valuable if you are flexible and can do more than one job. If your company does not formally cross train its employees, volunteer to be cross trained. - Cheryl Palmer, CallToCareer.com

Special thanks to everyone who contributed to this wealth of personal branding insight!

Chris Perry, MBA is a Gen Y brand and marketing “generator,” a career search and personal branding expert and the founder of Career Rocketeer and Launchpad.

Right, you’ve done the hard bit and defined your personal brand and created a toolkit. Now what?

Chances are you set out to create your brand in order to attract more business or interest from employers, peers and investors. Let’s reach out to these target groups and bring your brand to market. You will have to be where your customers are and the goal will be to be perceived as better than the competition.

Here are a few steps you can take:

1. 1. Be the expert

Everyone wants to work with or buy from the expert in their field. This means the expert can pick and choose who to work with and they can set their own price. Becoming the expert is a long-term process but it starts with you making sure to know more than others. You should read blogs, books and periodicals, listen and discuss with industry leaders and fully immerse yourself in your subject matter. In addition to that, always strive to develop new ideas so that you are able to deliver eye-opening concepts to your audience. Look at Seth Godin, this man’s ideas are usually ahead of their time and I would venture to say that he reads and listens more than most of his peers. (Note: Being an expert is not a title that you anoint yourself with but is confirmed by the community you serve.)

2. Share your expertise

This is all about believing in the law of reciprocity and trusting that your hard work will come back to you. Although the obvious way of doing this is by blogging, there are lots of other ways you can offer free information, advice or coaching. The point here is that you want to be seen as a person that happily shares great advice with others and this will attract a need for your services as an up-sell. A great example of this would be Chris Brogan, who churns out quality content every day that ensures he stay at the top of his game. His up-sell are consulting services to major blue-chip companies, I suspect you wouldn’t mind being in his shoes.

3. Be well-connected

With the power social media it’s easier than ever to get to know people. Make sure you are active on Twitter www.twitter.com as this is where you can get a feel for what is going on in your industry. Using a combination of offline www.meetup.com and online networking tends to be very effective. Get to know the ‘big cheeses’ in your industry, it really not that hard – they are just regular people that have more experience than you. See your peers as colleagues and not competition, there is plenty of work to go around. Make sure you connect your contacts with other contacts, as they will do the same for you.

4. Work all angles

Avoid becoming a one-trick pony and risk boring people to bits. Mix things up a bit by writing and speaking about your hobbies, about your family and generally injecting a bit of personality in your brand. Don’t just be in ‘work mode’ when you are working and don’t just be in ‘chill-mode’ when you are not. Some of the most lucrative business partnerships ever have been formed outside of the professional arena, when it’s actually a great deal easier to fly in under the radar and create solid contacts.

5. Stay in business mode

The downside to promoting your personal brand is that you can easily get carried away. Taking on too many speaking opportunities, attending too many networking events or blogging too much are all symptoms of this. Your first focus has to be on sales and you have to stay profitable no matter what phase your branding exercise is in. Remember that success breeds success and you will only achieve monetary success by keeping your eye on the business first of all. Richard Branson has one of the greatest brands ever but the no. 1 factor that brought him there is his strong business acumen.

Bottom line

That’s the smoking hot tips for you today; these tips have worked well for others and will work for you. Just bear in mind that whatever you do has to stay authentic and above all consistent with your brand. If there is any discrepancy or discord in people’s minds, you risk doing more harm than good to your personal brand.

Jorgen Sundberg is a London based personal branding consultant with a passion for social media and blogging. He blogs at JorgenSundberg.net http://jorgensundberg.net and his company site is Personal Branding UK http://personalbrandinguk.com. You can connect with him on Twitter @jorgensundberg

Here are 5 specific web locations that allow you to directly answer questions - showcasing your expertise in the process.

Here are three forgotten ways to build your personal brand - and how you can put a “2010 spin” on each of them.

Communicating your unique and differentiating value doesn’t stop once you get a job. Personal branding is important for all professionals across industries whether they are seeking new career opportunities or seeking opportunities for advancement within their current organization.

Here are 7 effective ways you can begin positioning yourself for movement up the corporate ladder:

Communicate Your Goals: Make sure that your managers and/or career stakeholders within your organization are aware of and kept up-to-date on your career goals. You can do this by scheduling career discussions or lunches with them every few months. This not only allows you to share with them your career aspirations, but also provides you an opportunity to solicit more casual feedback from them to better understand where you stand in their minds with respect to potential advancement opportunities. - Chris Perry, CareerRocketeer.com

Weekly Update: Employees often work hard at their jobs, but they do little to communicate to others what they’ve accomplished. Result: the perception is that they’re not that valuable. To avoid this oversight send your boss a weekly update on what you’re doing. Also, check with them to see if it’s OK for you to send a copy to senior management “to keep them up to date.” This 15 minute “Weekly Update” may have more impact on your career than any other report you write. - Jeff Mowatt, JeffMowatt.com

Competency: I advise employees to demonstrate to the boss that they are capable and ready to be promoted. This may seem obvious, but employees should be able to show that they have mastered their current positions before they try to persuade the boss that they are ready for the next level. - Cheryl Palmer, CalltoCareer.com

Volunteer: Assume or accept leadership positions on projects. The more you show your willingness (first) and then the results (second) to take responsibility in your organization, the more visible you become. Hiding in the herd will not get you promoted. - Erik Vermeulen, ErikVermeulen.com

Call with No News: Answering questions/solving problems is a daily activity. Sometimes, however, it takes us longer than we expect to find the answer/solution. Calling to say, “I don’t have that answer for you yet, but I’m working on it,” goes a long way toward inspiring trust and confidence in others. - Frances Cole Jones, TheWowFactor-TheBook.com

Network Internally: Get to know people and make sure people know who you are through socializing. Brazen self-promotion would likely have the opposite effect, but sharing your insights and experience in a non-threatening and informational way will allow others to see your benefits. - David Kimmelman, GetTheJob.com

Stay clear of office politics: During the recession most companies have become breeding grounds for consistent complaint. Leaders are looking to retain and promote talent that will facilitate a positive workplace culture. - Alexia Vernon, GenerationWeCoach.com

Special thanks to everyone who contributed to this wealth of personal branding insight!

Chris Perry, MBA is a Gen Y brand and marketing “generator,” a career search and personal branding expert and the founder of Career Rocketeer and Launchpad.

Photo Credit: some_maya_sketches_by_hahatem, originally uploaded by _hatem_.

From personal experience, I can confidently say that communicating a strong personal brand in your interviews can be the difference between getting the position and going home empty-handed.

However, just verbally telling an interviewer what your personal brand is may not be enough. Part of communicating a strong brand is making a strong connection with your target audience (i.e. your interviewer).

The following are some top tips on how to make stronger and lasting connections in your interviews and in turn, more effectively communicate your personal brand:

• Don’t be afraid to ask questions. You need to make sure the job and company are a good fit for you just as they need to determine if you are a good fit for them. Think of it as a two-way interview. This will allow your character and personality to shine through, as well as give you insight into the position. - Lisa Quast, CareerWomanInc.com

• Help them relate to you. When doing informational interviews or interviews with managers beyond HR who are actually in your chosen functional area or industry, you can create a stronger connection with them by asking them to share their own career search journey. Ask questions like, “How did you break into [insert industry, functional area or company name]?” and “Do you have any advice for someone trying to get his foot in the door in [insert industry, functional area or company name]?” These questions not only engage them in conversation which often creates a more personal connection, but often remind them of what it’s like to be in the job seeker’s shoes which may help them relate to the challenges you are facing and which may motivate them to assist you in other ways to overcome them. - Chris Perry, CareerRocketeer.com

• Identify their interests or passions. One way to make a personal connection with interviewers while still remaining professional is to comment on something in their office. Don’t pick anything too personal, such as family photos, but perhaps a piece of artwork on their desk or an item that appears to be a souvenir from traveling. If you’re able to make a genuine comment or pose a sincere question, it can be a great way to get interviewers to open up and talk about themselves. Pick the right item, and the interviewers will remember a warm conversation and that you showed an interest in them. - Laurie Berenson, SterlingCareerConcepts.com

• Try the path less travelled. When I was a consultant and had to regularly job hunt to keep the paychecks coming, I made a habit of requesting a walkthrough of the area and an introduction to a couple of people that I would be working with, so they could also look me over. I wanted to make a personal connection with as many people as possible, so they would be sure to remember me. Plus, I knew that most interviewees are too terrified to make such a request. While my interviewer was introducing me to someone, I would smile at the person and offer a warm handshake. I would then ask how the role for which I was interviewing would assist them with their daily duties. When possible, I would look for something around their desk that I might have in common with them and could comment on. This not only worked like a charm with respect to building a rapport, but once I started the assignment, I already felt like a part of the group. - Monique LaCour-Henry, CenterStageGroup.com

• Tell a story. Tell a brief story that illustrates one of your core values or skills. With the job market so tight, the employee’s character matters even more than ever before, and besides, telling the right story can highlight your communication skills. So how do you pick the right story? You can go one of two ways: tell about an event that helped make you the person you are today (i.e., someone they want to hire); or tell a tale that highlights your problem-solving ability. After all, that’s why you’re being considered — to solve a problem or fill a need that the company has. Keep your tale short and sweet. Make sure your anecdote follows the basic form of situation-problem-resolution. And if you pick a story with genuine emotion in it, your interviewer will feel a connection with you. - Bruce Hale, BruceTalks.com

Thank you to all of the experts who contributed to this wealth of interview insight!

Chris Perry, MBA is a Gen Y brand and marketing “generator,” a career search and personal branding expert and the founder of Career Rocketeer and Launchpad.

Photo Credit: untitled, originally uploaded by .faramarz.