How do you promote yourself online?

How many of you are like me and think that promoting yourself is either bragging or just not something you personally should do? I should say I used to be like that but now I’m slowly realizing that if I want to be successful with my online businesses I have to promote myself along with my business.

Now I’m not an expert by any means when it comes to online personal branding let me say that straight off. However what I’ve come to realize is that a lot of it is just common sense. If you have an an online business for example a website where you want people to buy your products well they want to know who they’re buying from. I personally think it’s an advantage sometimes to be a small business owner as I can provide that personal touch that the big box stores can’t.

I’m a real person can and will answer the questions my customer’s ask and provide that extra bit of customer service by being personable and not just sending them an automated email response. I’ll follow up myself and let them know I’m the owner of the “company” and I’m here to help them because their business is very important to me where every sale truly is a gift to me.

So how do you go about promoting yourself online? There are so many ways and I’m still weeding through them myself but a few things I have found that resonated with me were 1) writing a personal branding statement. I like this one because it’s well personal and tells you a bit more about what I believe in and want for the direction of my business.

Here on Powered by Mom Blog my philosophy is about building communities of support, sharing stories, ideas, a place for fun for families and the community and generally just to help each other in whatever way we can. I hope that says something about me and Powered by Mom 🙂 It’s also as you may guess from my blog picture about how moms and women “power” the world. We multi-task home, work, kids and 5 million other things while trying to nurture and be a mom, wife, sister, friend etc.. you get the picture.

Talk about pictures here’s an example this one could convey a few different thoughts all positive I think. Reach for your dreams, accomplishments, celebrate etc..  This is part of my cohort at our 2010 Convocation for our Master of Arts in Leadership. One dream that came true to me was being awarded this degree.

My best advice when trying to sort through the huge amount of information out there is to go with what resonates with you and that you feel comfortable with. After all we are talking about personal branding so be personable. Don’t be afraid to post a picture of yourself, talk a little bit about yourself and just let people know what you’re about.

What do you do for online personal branding? I would love to know leave a comment below.