With so many social networks, online portfolios, digital resumes, and video channels to showcase your work, the traditional business card has basically become obsolete. As a result, many people are turning to personal branding websites to have one place where they can build their online professional persona. But how do you decide which site to use?
Here are four top personal branding sites and the pros and cons to each.
With design features like drag-and-drop elements, simple font and color selection and a screen-filling background photo,
About.Me is one of the easiest and most professional personal brand options available. The ability to add as many social networks and HTML links as you’d like is a big draw, plus you’ll get some basic metrics to see how many people are viewing your profile and links.
Unfortunately, one of its strong points — the background photo — can also be a weakness. Not everyone has a professional head shot ready to go. You can upload a landscape photo, a logo, or use one of About.Me’s stock backgrounds, but you’ll find that the page feels a little sterile without that personal touch.
Flavors.Me offers many layouts, more than 200 fonts, and a full spectrum of colors to tweak your profile design. Like About.Me, there’s room for a big background image, but even the secondary “logo” picture is a good size. There are a variety of little adjustments to make the page more personalized, like changing the shape of the social network buttons, adding drop shadows, rounding corners and displaying your content in more than one column. Depending upon how much work you want to put into it, your Flavors.Me profile can really stand out.
The only downside to Flavors.Me is that many features on the site are unavailable unless you upgrade to a paid account. For example, a free account only allows five services, like Facebook, Twitter, or Dribbble, that are viewable directly on your profile. If you pay the $20 annual fee, you can add as many as you’d like, plus have access to other features like site statistics, more layouts, a mobile-optimized profile, a contact form, and the option of using a custom URL. If you prefer free, it’s a really good service, but if you’re willing to spend a little money, then Flavors.Me is a great service.
LinkedIn is a great way to leverage existing contacts to propel your career. However, it offers little opportunity for personalization. That’s where
Zerply comes in. It offers many of the same features, just wrapped in a prettier package. In fact, you can import your LinkedIn profile to make setting up your Zerply profile a snap. Then start endorsing colleagues or meet new people with similar interests thanks to a simple keyword search.
The site does have a few drawbacks, though. There are only a handful of free profile themes to choose from, with more available if you upgrade to a paid account. And while you can import your LinkedIn profile, you can’t import your contacts.
BrandYourself profile pages aren’t the prettiest out there. You only get four templates to choose from with minimal customization options.
Plus, you can’t embed your social network feeds, you only get one picture, and you can only show three links to your online work. Unless you want to upgrade. In case you’re wondering, there is an upside.
The key to BrandYourself’s profile pages is search engine optimization. Submit your top three links — maybe Twitter, Facebook, and your website — then use BrandYourself’s “boost” tips to help increase Google’s ability to index those links. Even if you don’t use a personal branding page as a business card, it can’t hurt to fill out a BrandYourself profile just so you can promote the work you want the world to see in search results. With a paid account, you’ll even get powerful analysis information to let you see who’s been looking for you.
Image courtesy of iStockphoto,
