3 Ways To Build Your Personal Brand As A Career Counselor

This post was updated to bring you the most up-to-date tips, October 2020.

More employers than ever are using video to interview candidates from across the country. Students and job seekers are tweeting links to their portfolios to employers. The modern digital world is moving fast, and it’s changing the rules for employers and job seekers. The same goes for those who give career advice to professional and student job seekers, too.

Whether it’s news, the latest music video or an answer to a burning question, most of today’s information is accessed online. People search for answers 5.8 billion times each day on Google alone.

It seems fit that career counselors should also hang out in this space to help do what they do best — advise others. One of the best ways to do this is to use blogs and social media to build a personal brand and become online thought leaders.

Use your online presence to relate to those whom you advise. Chances are, they are on social media trying to establish a following, too. If not, they may need to get out there for the sake of networking for a career.

Here are some tips for building your personal brand through today’s online tools:

Become a Guest Blogger

Guest writing for various online publications can help you establish credibility as a thought leader. Within some guest articles, you may be able to link to your blog or website, generating exposure for your brand. If you don’t have time to maintain a regular blog, guest blogging is the perfect opportunity to become a thought leader.

To find guest blogging opportunities, check groups on LinkedIn or Twitter for postings. Scope out existing blogs that cover relevant topics to which you’d like to contribute, or perhaps your colleagues, friends, or online connections have blogs for which you can ask to be a contributing writer. Additionally, online publications like The Huffington Post, Forbes, and The Muse allow contributing writers to submit posts. Just check the posting guidelines first.

If you choose to manage your professional blog, you may also offer for students to contribute to your blog as a guest writer.

Grow Your Social Following

With 72% of people using social media, counselors can quickly become thought leaders by growing their following. With so many channels out there, you may not have time to develop and maintain a presence on all of them, but you can still choose a few to maintain well.

One technique for gaining followers on virtually every social channel is first following others who show interest in your industry. Follow your target audience: job seekers, HR professionals, or whomever you think would benefit from the information you post. Follow other career services and learn from the techniques they use to engage their audience.

Comment on the content of those you follow to get people talking to you. As your followers grow, post interesting and relevant content to engage them in conversation, such as links to interesting articles and your guest and personal blog posts. Balance industry topics with timely, popular information. Ask questions, and encourage others to share their opinions.

Use Multimedia

No matter how brilliant or insightful, lines and lines of text alone can get boring after a while. Break up the text a little by including multimedia and visual elements throughout your social media channels and blog. Post “how-to” videos and video interviews with opinion leaders covering buzzworthy topics. Make creative memes to illustrate a career-related scenario. Every once in a while, throw in a relevant, yet hilarious photo.

Studies show website visitors stay longer when they view a video. More than half of shoppers say online video has helped them decide which specific brand or product to buy, according to a 2019 survey by Google. Now, as a counselor, you may not sell products, but in a sense, you do “sell” your personal brand; multimedia elements can increase the value of your content to your audience.

Career counselors will have to build their personal brands online to stay above water in this digital wave, at least to teach those they mentor to do the same. Building a personal brand and network gives job seekers the competitive advantage they need to get a dream job. If you can achieve success through this yourself, you can lead others to do so as well.

What are some other ways you can build your personal brand as a career counselor?