Are You Looking like Superman or Invisibleman Online? Three Steps to Strengthen Your Personal Image Online

By Shashi Bellamkonda (@shashib) and Priya Ramesh (newpr)

I am so honored to have Shashi Bellamkonda, Social Media Director, Network Solutions, a CRT/tanaka client guest post with me today. Shashi is very well known in the DC region as a community evangelist for Network Solutions and was recently recognized as Washington’s Top-100 Tech Titans. He never ceases to amaze me with his knowledge of social media tools and applications, an innate sense of humor and willingness to help the Network Solutions community, all key ingredients for a good brand evangelist. Thank you Shashi!

This post is intended to help you create and maintain a strong online presence so when someone Googles your name, you appear to walk the social media talk. If done right, you could become a successful personal brand but please note that our philosophy on personal branding is to leverage it for community building NOT to turn into a narcissist that likes to tute his/her own horn 24/7 on social networks. We have a lot of those already. So let’s get started:

1) Setting up a Twitter account:

• Search for your friends in your contact list and connect with them
• Send an email to friends and colleagues that you have joined Twitter
• Set up a Twitter search for your keywords that are important to you that you may be looking for in Google ( example: Your name, company name, products, competitor)
• Check  and reply to mentions of @yourTwitter id
• Reply to DMs
• Share articles that interest you, good news about you, an event that  inspired you
• Retweet your network’s interesting tweets

2) Update and complete your LinkedIn profile:

• Connect to friends and colleagues
• Identify professional LinkedIn groups to join and participate in

3) Take Your Online Connections Offline to Increase Brand Exposure

• Attend local grass roots events
• Volunteer to conduct workshops and speak on topics you are skilled at
• Seek opportunities to attend and speak at events

4) Thought leadership through Content:

• Talk about the latest trends in your perspective preferably non- political and takes a view of how news and events affect common man
• Talk about good news and events of yourself and events of your close network
• Talk about your interests
• Announce your speaking events other announcements
• Invite guest posters or interview them using email questions

The above steps might seem a little daunting and time consuming but YOU can do it. If you want to see the results of what a robust online image looks like, just Google up Shashi Bellamkonda and you will see what I am talking about. I want to thank Shashi once again for sharing some great tips on how to walk the social talk. Now let’s get you there!