Social networking for personal branding...

Musicians, writers and artists have been using social networking sites and services such as MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter to market themselves and create personal brands for some time now. With the current economic recession, other professionals are also looking to exploit all possible networking avenues available to them.

A recent article in Knowledge@Wharton explores personal branding through social networking: "Advertising Yourself: Building a Personal Brand through Social Networks". Some of the specific tips, from various sources cited, include the following:

• "...come up with three simple words to define a personal brand -- words that could describe a specialized skill set..."
• "You need to seed the right people, to develop a word-of-mouth army.... Everyone should have a list of 20 or 30 people who will act as their ambassadors."
• "...it is usually helpful to build a following by giving away something for free -- even if it's just nuggets of information or personal wisdom..."
• "Branding is something that does not necessarily come with a short-term payoff. It's a long-term investment. .... it's about building brand awareness."

The article also notes that social networking is a booming business as well -- businesses reportedly spent nearly $2.2 billion on social networking in 2008, primarily through advertising on popular sites.