Personal Branding

Even if you don't own your own consulting company, personal branding is important in the professional world. It is the way you represent yourself to your peers, colleagues, and potential employers. The first step in developing your personal brand is having your own website. We've already covered an excellent way of creating your online portfolio by using Google Sites in my previous blogpost Google Sites - Creating an E-Portfolio. You can look at my site for inspiration if you want! Just visit www.michellegallardo.com.

A part of your personal branding is your name. When you are your own brand, your name is what people should react to. Make sure you invest in your own name as a domain. Take it from someone who shares a name with a popular newscaster (Michelle Gallardo from abc7), not being able to own your name blows! I figured out a workaround for this by changing the spelling of my last name and creating a different username across my social media. LEt's connect on LinkedIn! Find me at @michellegllrdo!

Here is a quick recap on how to buy your own names as a domain through Google: read Google Domains.

The next thing to look at, and this is because I believe a strong, cohesive look says that you're professional, put-together, and knowledgable in branding guidelines, is colors, logos, and your overall "aesthetic." I know the word aesthetic gets thrown around a lot by GenZ, but it emotes an important message: how you are perceived by others. In this blog, I went a step further and also established fonts as part of my brand identity. More on that later.

To establish your personal brand, ask yourself this: what three things do you want people to instantly think about when they think about you? For me, the answers are:

• Well put-together
• Upbeat
• Strong but feminine

I believe I accomplished theses by following my personal branding guidelines. I used the same colors all throughout my blog, showing that I am well put-together. I use light-hearted words throughout my posts to show that I'm an upbeat person. My point of view, and font and color choices drive the point that I am knowledgeable in my field but no afraid to show my femininity.

Here are my favorite resources for creating your own branding guidelines:

• Coolors.co to create a cohesive color palette
• LogoMaker.com to create your own logo
• Canva.com is also a great way to create your own logo and any other design items you can think of!

Here is what my personal logo looks like after spending 5 minutes on Canva!