Internet marketing is the way of the future, and everybody needs to get on board. Not just businesses but individuals. It is very important to establish a personal brand identity online. Using the internet. Because that's how online works. If you didn't know. Regardless, being able to use the internet to your advantage is huge. I mean think about it, you are on my website right now. Not on a business or a major blog, but on my personal website, dedicated to my personal brand. This is what I have developed, and it's part of my personal brand. As is everything else I put on the internet. So if you are interested in developing your own brand and marketing yourself, here are some tips.

1.) Are you talking to yourself?

Think of your audience. Sometimes you have to be more aware of what they want. If you have two choices of something and one will connect with an audience and one won't, pick the one that connects. Readers like to feel apart of the story. If they are going to be reading or looking at your content, you want them to feel like they are doing something useful. We all know how tiring it is to read long bodies of text. But if you make it interesting they will read the whole thing without knowing it. If you are looking for more likes on content, be sure to relate to your audience. Hashtags, trends, and keywords are great tools here.

2.) Be Social

Social Media is amazing. If you aren't signed up for every major social channel, and continuing to be on the look-out for upcoming social trends, you are going to get left behind. Don't listen to the horror stories about somebody doing something bad on Social Media. If you are worried about it, then create a specific personal brand identity. You do not have to use your personal pages. Make pages that are specific to what you are and what you are trying to do. In my case, I open up all my social media to anybody, because my brand is about me, so I am not trying to hide myself behind false pages and accounts. But some people are in a different situation and they need to have a separation of the two. Either is fine. But once you create a personal page, or a "brand" page, you have to stick to one or the other for professional purposes. Do not mix the two sides.

3.) Create a Real Website

If you are trying to market on the internet, you kind of need to use the internet. A couple of years ago, having a website was enough to make you cool. Now that is no longer the case. Having a website is just about mandatory to succeed in personal marketing. Not only having it, but having a good one. You're little generic website with an about me paragraph and you're email on it is not going to work. Get a responsive website that will work on all platforms. Update your site regularly, and ALWAYS connect your social media, content, and other postings back to your website.

4.) Content is King

Create. Create. Create. The more you create the more chances somebody has to find you. The more your organic search goes up, and the more chances you have for somebody to also share your content. Make sure that you are creating different content too. Just to break it up a little bit. If you are a writer, maybe you occasionally make a video. If you are a video maker, maybe you occasionally write a blog. Try different things and see what works for you. The most successful personal brands utilize lots of different mediums of media. The more you create the better you will be. And the more different each piece is from the last, that's even better.

5.) Keep Consistent

People at some point in your career are going to be expecting content. If you post every day for a week and then you don't post for another month, people are going to lose interest. It doesn't have to be a dead set schedule, but you should have a general outline. For example, just telling yourself to post something twice a week, is better than posting something 3 days in a row and then not for another 13 days after that. As soon as you interest people, you need to keep them interested with more content. But don't flood them.

6.) Get Some Influence

FOLLOW COOL PEOPLE. Find people on social media who have successfully done what you are trying to do. They will help you a lot. Influencers are very active on social media, and most of them love to interact with their audience. Don't expect to have conversations on Twitter, but maybe give them a shout or give them a tag. You never know, they could help you out. Now-a-days they are also very willing to share. Snapchat has grown a lot recently, and you can get a behind the scenes look at just about anything you are interested in.

7.) Help You Help You

Link link link link link. Did you redo your homepage? Tweet about it and link it. Facebook link it. Post a picture on Instagram and Link it. Make a funny Snapchat video that calls them to do something. Help yourself. Did you post a cool photo on Instagram? Share it on everything else. Write a blog post? You better be sharing that content everywhere. Not everyone uses every social media. It is NOT redundant to post the same thing on all platforms when it's something like a new blog post, video, or other major piece of content. Do it. Do it. Do it.

8.) The Data Doesn't Lie

Data is very important. This could be a series of several posts on its own, but for now all I will say is Google. Use Google. For those of you that don't know it is more than a search engine. Google provides numerous tools to help you build a personal brand. Some you should go look at immediately are Google Trends, Google Analytics, and Google Business. They are all very good tools to help you watch your engagement and be able to keep track of how well you are doing, and also give you tips and tricks on how to keep succeeding.

9.) Keep up With Trending Mediums

Snapchat has become my favorite tool. It isn't exactly the greatest marketing tool in the world because you can't use it as its own marketing material. Where as Twitter and Facebook you can connect with people and give them something to do, and something to show, its harder to connect with people on Snapchat. But Snapchat is amazing. And I have been getting into Periscope more which is a Live Broadcasting app, that allows you to share video realtime. It's very similar to Snapchat, but it just keeps going. No 10 second limit. The point here is that whatever you can use to connect with your audience, you should use it. People love to connect on new ideas, and on new mediums. Keep up with where people are going, and go with them.

10.) Stay true to yourself

If you are going to try to be somebody else, people are eventually going to find out. There is going to be a time where people start to question you and if you ever slip on some fake identity that you created, then people are going to get angry with you and they are going to stop following you. Once you have established a personal brand and personal connection, people will want to keep it. And if you break that, then people are going to going to lose trust in you, and your brand is going to fall apart. Don't ever try to be somebody you aren't connect to your audience because they like who you are, not because they like somebody you are pretending to be.

Well that's it. Hopefully that helped some of you. I am sure that the younger you are the more important this is to you. Don't be dumb with your personal brand. Whether you know it or not, you are creating one every time you post something. Be smart with it, and if you have the ability and the time, you can utilize it to your benefit.