How to build your online personal brand

Your online personal brand is an online authentic representation of you. It can take the form of a website, blog, or a presence on social media.

LinkedIn

Your LinkedIn profile should not only be fully up-to-date and engaging but should also reflect your wellness passions.

It can be a somewhat delicate activity to update your LinkedIn if your employer doesn’t know you want to leave your current position, but there are ways to be sensitive.

• Turn off your notifications so people can’t see you’re updating your profile (if you don’t turn these off, every time you edit your profile, a post appears in the newsfeed).
• Get a free month of the premium service which opens you up to lots more LinkedIn tools. For example, you can directly email contacts you’re not connected with and you can also turn on a feature that makes you ‘discoverable’ to recruiters, but that your employer cannot see.

Your LinkedIn profile

But what about your actual profile? Here are some tips on how to make it wellness-focused:

• Follow companies and individuals in wellness that you’re passionate about and interested in.
• Update your qualifications and skills and add anything you’ve done that links to wellness.
• What does your personal profile really say about you? Use our tips from the CV updating section to help with this. Create a catchy headline and effective personal summary.
• Add in links to your personal website/portfolio/social media.
• For some, you will be in a position where you can be very open about your intention to secure a career in wellness. In your profile you can, therefore, include lots of details about your passions, beliefs, and values about your chosen industry.
• For those of you who do not want your current employer knowing that you’re looking to move, promoting your job search online is less straightforward. Nevertheless, you can still include all of the above but in a more discreet way, and perhaps have it as a personal passions section rather than in your main personal profile.
• Think of your LinkedIn profile as a digital CV.

Social media

Part of the difficulty of applying for jobs is being noticed in the crowd and trying to connect with someone behind the computer screen.

Sharing some of your personal life (via social media) and demonstrating your wellness passions is a sure-fire way to help with building a connection.

It doesn’t have to be a beautifully curated, business-worthy account. If you can demonstrate to the reader that you’re passionate about your chosen industry through pictures of you at events, fitness classes, or inspirational quotes then it is going to add value to your personal brand.

Top tip: Follow all your favourite brands and companies to be kept up to date with their news.

Personal blog or website

Create a basic online website/blog for very little investment!

Squarespace is very user friendly and has plenty of out-the-box templates that even the least tech-savvy person can use.

Top tips:

• Perfectionism will not serve you in this activity. You won’t know until you try, so don’t put so much pressure on yourself! This doesn’t need to be an all-singing, dancing project. What it needs to be is authentic and done with love. It can be an enjoyable, exciting and cathartic activity. Go on, give it a go.
• If you do decide to create something, give yourself boundaries. Depending on how much time you have, set aside one to two hours per week to keep it up-to-date. If you’re absolutely loving it, set aside more time! But, if you’re really, truly feeling like it’s a chore, and it’s creating more negative than positive in your life, perhaps it’s time to rethink and focus on another career transitioning strategy that is more in line with your personality.
• Check out the Health Bloggers Community in the See also section for more support on creating a successful blog.