To many, personal branding is a buzz word that has been over extended throughout the social space.  You can categorize it as a “buzz term” or “fad trend” but you will most likely be neglecting the power that shaping your online persona can have on the rest of your life.

The video below dives into 4 absolutely vital principles to adopt when building your personal brand online.

Build a platform

We’re not talking about building your own Facebook or a massive blog.  Instead we are talking about a more figurative platform.  Build a platform by leveraging all the cool stuff you are doing right now.  If you work for a big company let people know what you’re doing (it got Scoble pretty far).  If you own a company…associate yourself with your company and the company with yourself.  If you have passions, shout it from a mountain top and see who you will connect with!

Don’t be bashful

I love that word…bashful.  In this case we’re going to treat it as a bad word.  For some people, such as myself, it can be quite difficult to talk about yourself.  Especially if you don’t feel like you have accomplished anything worthwhile.  At that point, you must think from this perspective: “there is always someone who wants to be where you are and wants to know how you got there”…cater to these people now and expand your audience as you grow.  Don’t be bashful, talk about your accomplishments, build up your credibility but please always put humility first.

Build up others

Focus on others before yourself.  When you connect two people that will benefit from each other you are building up your own importance indirectly.  When you showcase someone’s good work by tweeting it out to the world, you are validating their efforts.  When you focus on others, new possibilities open up, paths to new people emerge and you can now identify more opportunities and how it relates not just to you but to everyone else you are connected with.

Add value to the community

Have something uniquely valuable to say.  What you do online should be governed by the question “how am I adding value?”.  You can talk about yourself, your accomplishment but if it doesn’t help anyone else…no one will care about what you have to say.  Find ways to differentiate yourself and find new perspectives that not many have.  If you focus on adding value first, you will be moving in the right direction.