Personal Branding for Students of Professional Courses


Personal Branding is a time taking process and the sooner you start the better it is. Students of professional courses can benefit a lot by learning- how to use social media to build their online brand, increase their job opportunities and international/cross-cultural exposure and how to grow as a person too in the entire process.


What to do for Personal Branding? (Focus Areas)

The main areas which students need to learn are:-
  1. What is personal branding and how to use social media to build their brand?
  2. How to use Linkedin (and optimize the profile) to get job offers?
  3. How to constructively use Facebook for motivation and learning?
  4. How to inspire trust in online relationships and bring them offline?
  5. How to network internationally and learn best practices in the industry?
  6. How to add value to the community and create win-win situations?
  7. How to tell your story (storytelling skills) without sounding self-promotional?
  8. What are the good manners required on social media?

"If a story is not about the hearer, he will not listen. And here I make a rule—a great and interesting story is about everyone or it will not last.”

John Steinbeck


How to do Personal Branding?

While undertaking the above process, it is important to set the right goals, stay focused, monitor the performance and do course correction if required. Here is an international case study from an international university which has included personal branding in their course curriculum.


Why do Personal Branding?

Many institutes in India have taken pioneering initiatives to teach personal branding to students. As students get ready to work in an increasingly globalised environment and get exposure to international practices through exchange programmes, programs offered by International Universities, international business programmes / 3 continents MBA and so on, it becomes important for Indian students to learn the personal branding side of social media too. 

Personal growth is also a component of personal branding and the transparent nature of social media needs it. An interesting question came up from a Lancaster University student (in India for summer camp of GD Goenka World Institute). As I was emphasizing the importance of personal growth for social media success, a student asked, “If I am growing as a person only to become successful on social media, is it not selfish?” A challenging question indeed. My answer was, “In every relationship there is an energy exchange be it financial or non-financial. If we get something from a relationship, our conscience asks us to return the favour in some way or sometimes we do a favour anticipating a favour in return. This energy exchange is natural and any relationship exists for mutual benefit (except in case of social work)”





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To know more visit www.dramitnagpal.com

Image courtesy : moderndignity.com

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