How do you start to build your personal brand?

Inspired by Elon Musk's acquisition of Twitter, here are 10 marketing tactics that will help you make the most of the big changes in your company. Franchising could be the secret to reaping the fruits of an economy in crisis. Instead of trying to create a large and wide audience, change your focus to becoming the leader of a community in a specific niche. Define your target audience and create a community for them to interact with each other, share ideas, support each other and contact you directly.

At Northeastern, faculty and students collaborate in our more than 30 federally funded research centers to address some of the biggest challenges in health, safety and sustainability. For example, if your goal is to reach hiring managers and recruiters, you can start by creating or updating your LinkedIn profile. Why? Because 92 percent of recruiters use social networks to find high-quality candidates, and of those, 87 percent use LinkedIn. When developing your personal brand, remember to highlight what differentiates you from others, including your unique interests, values, professional experience and educational background.

For example, if you have an advanced degree, this can help you differentiate yourself from other professionals in your field and demonstrate your experience. Consider one of Northeastern's more than 200 degree and certification programs as you develop your personal brand to help you stand out from the crowd. Explore our more than 150 industry-aligned graduate and certificate programs. You'd do well to focus on creating an impressive online portfolio and promoting it on more widespread social media platforms.

When you care about your brand, you control the way you promote yourself, which allows you to manage your actions and choices to build credibility and reliability. It's no coincidence that today's most successful personal brands (Grant Cardone, Marie Forleo, Gary Vaynerchuck, just to name a few) publish significant amounts of content online to help build and nurture their audience. Anyone with access to the Internet and social networks can create an audience, position themselves as an expert and start to attract customers for their business.

Reggie Pickens
Reggie Pickens

Hipster-friendly coffee fan. Award-winning social media geek. Incurable burrito junkie. Total coffee lover. Infuriatingly humble burrito practitioner. Friendly tv buff.