The Importance of Personal Branding for Online Journalists

To survive and make it to the top of the heap in the world of online journalism, there are three things that are essential to making one stand out in the already over-crowded ballroom of journalism: Personal brand, Online community and Journalistic voice. Today we'll cover a bit about personal branding.

Brand - What is it?

For a journalist, a personal brand is what sets them apart from all the others - what makes them unique and special. Think of it this way: in a room full of people, what would one do to set one's self apart from the rest? How would one make one's self-known and visible among so many? This is the basic premise of a brand.

Top branded individuals

Those individuals already at the top of their game have this personal branding thing down cold.

Seth Godin uses his own bald head as his brand.  This is a perfect example of taking something unique about one's self and utilizing in a positive way to brand one's self.

Pete Cashmore of Mashable also uses his own image for branding.  This handsome face is well known by many within social media and web technology circles.  His face immediately invokes the domain Mashable.com.

More than just a pretty face

Branding isn't just about one's face or body features - it also encompasses such things as a domain name, being authentic and valuable and in being the first one to share what one knows or has learned. Joe Grimm at JobsPage.com does an excellent job of explaining exactly how personal branding works and the importance of being exceptional and consistent.

Putting personalized branding into practice

Once what makes one unique has been pinpointed, the work begins. The newly created personal brand has to be out there on the web every day. The consistent use of the same personal brand is key to ensuring one is on the minds of readers. Dan Schawbel at Personal Branding Blog has some excellent pointers on how to have a strong personal brand.

Social media and branding

Social media can play a big role in getting one's brand in front of possible audience members. It is important to choose social media outlets that will garner the reader types that one wants. Joining a site such as YouTube when the style of media one will be putting out the online public is in text format will do nothing with regard to readership.  Similarly, it makes little sense to submit nothing but video work to a social media site such as Twitter.

Domain naming

Making it easy for potential readers to find one is an important element as well. Most well read journalists have a domain utilizing their own name as part of their branding - Robert Scoble has www.scobleizer.com, Seth Godin has www.sethgodin.com.

Conclusion

Creating and implementing a personal brand is no easy task. It takes a lot of self-contemplation and self-evaluation and, once created, it's a daily activity to ensure a personal brand gets out there for all to see. However, if done well and carefully crafted on an ongoing basis, a personal brand will go a long way to pulling one to the top of the journalistic heap.