My Personal Brand Journey - Part 1

First and foremost, let me introduce myself: My name is Melissa Townsend and by looking at my online portfolio, you’re looking to find more information about who I am, what makes me strive for success, previous digital work, or even attributes that fit into your company’s overall style among its employees. Of course, my goal is to make sure all your questions, or at least most of them, are answered by looking at my personal portfolio. At this very moment, I wanted to document my journey through my personal branding. By jotting down my experience, it can help you get to know my creative processes when it comes to any type of branding.

I am a few months out after walking across the stage and receiving my Bachelor’s from my university. Since then, I have been slowly building up my personal brand online and in person. But don’t worry, I always worked on my brand even during college, but now is the best time to reinvent myself as I am presenting myself to potential employers. I have been gathering work, projects, and ideas that I have completed, in the process of completing, or wish to work on in the future, to increase my online presence and promote my work.

I wish to share with you a few challenges I have faced throughout my personal brand journey. Successful digital marketers are always trying to stay on trend and keeping up with current events. But students in college typically don’t see the value until they are already out in the real world, after leaving their sheltered lifestyle of living on campus and going to class. And that includes me. Between going to class and working part-time on the weekends, I never truly cared about how I showcased myself online or commented on international trending topics on social media. As a student, I, and many other students that I have observed, just don’t see the value in personal branding. We felt that, since we do not have any long term “work experience,” we should just hide in the shadows of social media and present ourselves when we have a full blown portfolio.

Oh, how college has failed us. Professors advised students not to upload a resume or a demo reel until it’s perfect. However, that whole time you are revising your resume, writing samples, or video reels at home, your profile online remains empty. Even if you’re not applying to jobs, your profile on LinkedIn, Facebook, or even Instagram is being looked at by - you guessed it - potential employers. When I graduated college last Spring, I realized my LinkedIn had the bare minimum, which was only required by a mandatory student seminar course I took in college. We had to fill out the standard information like name, education, work experiences, a bio and then upload a profile picture. As long as you did those, you got an A. However, professors never stressed the importance of having content throughout your profile. Having a completed profile with personal information is one thing, but if you don’t post or share a variety of content to your page, your page looks empty for viewers.

I ran into that problem when I was applying to jobs after graduating and they required my LinkedIn profile on the application. My information was filled in, but my page had no content on it. I knew if I started to throw things up there to fill it, it would be a jumbled mess. So I had to strategize.

I gathered up all the media projects I had and chose which ones I wanted to feature. With that, I made a simple website to use as my digital portfolio. That way, employers can see a personalized web page that I created and get a sense of my style. I knew it was never going to be perfect, so I uploaded what I can, knowing that every few months I will change it up based on my new skills, projects, and updated style.

For my LinkedIn account, I am slowly posting, sharing, and commenting on trending topics and fellow connections’ publications. Building a profile takes time, and something I learned on my own is that you can’t just upload your content all at once, like many of my professors advised. But take the time each day to interact with others’ content and built your own content and post as you go. If you find a typo, take it down, fix it, and then repost it for new shares. Not having anything up until it’s “perfect” means you’re afraid of the Publish button and in the digital marketing realm, you must have a comfortable relationship with that infamous button. Everyday I am strengthening this bond and learning to post content even when I think it isn’t “perfect.”

So, for the first part of my personal branding journey, I learned through experiences. Taking time in between life to focus on my content for my social profiles will boost my image of being a thought leader in my field. Revising and updating is a crucial part of content marketing, and letting go of perfectionism will free you from the fear of pushing that button. Just remember, keep on creating! Personal branding is a continuous process, so don’t ever stop.

Stay tuned for Part 2 of my Personal Brand Journey where I dive into my new experiences and analyze how viewers interact with personal brands. Feel free to scroll through my digital portfolio.