Have you ever tried to hammer a nail with the heel of your shoe? I did once, when I was a kid and didn’t have a hammer handy. It can be done, but I can assure you, it’s difficult – very, very difficult. So too is trying to build a business without branding yourself.

So, what exactly is personal branding?

In essence, personal branding is the process by which business people differentiate themselves by identifying and effectively articulating what makes them different or unique from their competitors – what makes them stand out from the crowd – a sort of personal USP (Unique Selling Proposition), if you will. This is especially important if you’re a service provider in a competitive field.

Why is personal branding so important?

Because if you don’t stand out from the crowd, that means you’re just like everyone else – a white jelly bean in a jar full of white jelly beans. And if you’re just like everyone else, why should customers or clients choose you over your competitors? Answer: They shouldn’t, and they probably won’t!

Using myself as a real-life example, let me illustrate the importance of personal branding, and how it can make you stand out in a crowded field.

My name, “David Jackson” is a relatively common name. To make matters worse, there are many other David Jackson’s with business websites who have been online a lot longer than I have and are far more established.

But if you type “david jackson marketing” into Google without the quotation marks, I rank at the #1 position out of nearly 3 million pages. And if you just type in the name “david jackson” without the quotation marks. I rank #4 out of over 42 million pages. That didn’t happen by accident. That happened because I was relentless in establishing my personal brand.

When I created my website 3 years ago, my #1 objective was to have people associate my name with marketing – consistently solid marketing advice and quality marketing articles. And I was relentless in pursing that objective. Mission accomplished, but I’m not resting on my laurels.

Today, I’m just as relentless in trying to hold on to my top Google ranking. The numerous published articles on my site, as well as top authority sites keeps me highly visible, as well as provide the search engine spiders with plenty of fresh, quality, relevant nourishment.

And what are the overall results of all my hard work? Well, because of my personal branding efforts, I’m so busy with my consulting business, I’m actually turning clients away. Such is the power of personal branding and relentless execution.

Following are 5 profitable reasons why you should establish your personal brand:

1. Gain Expert Status

Without branding yourself, people will not perceive you as an expert. You will simply be another carnival barker in a sea full of carnival barkers. Branding yourself will give you expert status (provided, of course, you really are an expert) – and a much bigger megaphone.

2. Credibility and Trust

With the advent of the Internet and the world-wide dominance of Google, nowadays, as a business person, you are pretty much your Google search results. Let’s face it, any responsible person considering doing business with you is going to do their due diligence and search for information about you online to see if you’re legitimate and trustworthy. And if they can’t find you, or have a hard time finding you in Google’s universe, guess who’s going to get their business?

That’s right, if your competitors are more visible than you are in the search results, the perception will be, they’re more professional and trustworthy than you are. That means they’re going to get the business you could be getting. The best way to prevent that from happening is to effectively establish your personal brand – stand out in the crowd.

3. Gain An Edge On Your Competition

Earlier, I described personal branding as “the process by which business people differentiate themselves by identifying and effectively articulating what makes them different or unique from their competitors – what makes them stand out from the crowd – sort of a personal USP (Unique Selling Proposition).”

I also said, “If you don’t stand out from the crowd, that means you’re just like everyone else – a white jelly bean in a jar full of white jelly beans. And if you’re just like everyone else, why should customers or clients choose you over your competitors?”

Well, by effectively establishing your personal brand, you automatically become a black jelly bean in a jar full of white jelly beans. You stand out!

4. Increase Your Value

Establishing your personal brand will increase your perceived value and give you the ability to charge higher fees – provided, of course, you’re good at what you do. This will automatically increase your income. And if you are really good at what you do and your clients are satisfied, they will refer you to other clients. Higher fees, satisfied clients and referrals…This personal branding thing is sounding better all the time, isn’t it?

5. Gain Confidence

As you become more and more successful because of your personal branding efforts, you will also become more confident. This confidence will be obvious to everyone who comes into contact with you, including potential clients who will be magnetically attracted to you because of your confidence.

In closing, I didn’t write this article to teach you “how” to brand yourself. I wrote it to educate you on “why” you should brand yourself. If you want to learn how to brand yourself, there are personal branding experts far more qualified than I who can teach you about personal branding. One of the absolute best is Dan Schwabel (PersonalBrandingBlog.com).

There are also some excellent books on the subject. Two of my favorites are You Are a Brand!: How Smart People Brand Themselves for Business Success by Catherine Kaputa and The 10Ks of Personal Branding: Create a Better You by Kaplan Mobray.

David Jackson is a marketing consultant and the owner of Free-Marketing-Tips-Blog.com – Powerful, free marketing tips to help grow your business! http://free-marketing-tips-blog.com

According to the latest social networking news, Twitter has begun to outpace Facebook. Reportedly, Facebook lost six million users in the last month. Twitter appears to be the new generation in social networking. Twitter is being used worldwide to educate, sell products, and socialize. New research reveals that people who use virtual networking are healthier than those who do not participate.

1. Define the Target Market Precisely, and Stay Focused.

The biggest mistake new Twitter marketers make is that they attempt to reach everyone who might be interested in their product or service. But Twitter doesn’t work that way. In order to maintain subscribers, you have to engage.

For examples, consider how many of the largest corporations use Twitter solely to target their young consumers.

2. Proactively Acquire Followers.

Another big yet common mistake is the expectation that followers will magically arrive. Instead, we must earn our followers. A great way to do this is to follow high-profile individuals and groups in the appropriate market, and then communicate with them, which will draw attention to your account if that communication is engaging enough.

3. Quantity Matters

Do not waste time wrestling with quality versus quantity. An active presence is a key to recognition and to maintaining a large subscriber base. That doesn’t mean you ought to tweet nonsense, but your followers will quickly forget a tweet that falls flat, and that failed tweet still has the cumulative effect of making your presence felt.

4. Share Content from Others.

A good means of consistently delivering interesting tweets is to share tweets from others that you think will engage your base. This has a number of positive effects, including possible recognition from the original poster. A consistent effort in this regard can get you talked about by Twitter users who are influential within the target niche.

5. Leverage Automation.

We don’t have to do all tweeting by hand, and we can use automation to great effect to maintain our presence. For instance, a number of sites provide free Twitter automation based on RSS. Simply choose a relevant, high-profile blog, and then the service auto-tweets each time it publishes a post; you can even filter it based on tags and such.

6. Use Followers like a Focus Group.

Most Twitter users understand that they have to engage their audience, but they find it difficult to so. The truth is it’s not that difficult if you approach your followers as you would a focus group. Twitter followers follow because they’re interested. They also want to exchange ideas. After all, communication is what social networking is all about.

7. Do Not Fear Controversy.

In fact, controversy is so effective that many Twitter marketers go out of their way to create it. You don’t necessarily have to go that far, but if you have a hot topic that is relevant to your niche, you should tweet it, encourage conversation and run with it as far as it will take you. Of course, always be careful not to alienate your base.

8. Be Human.

When operating a business online, people tend to act professional to the point where it becomes impersonal. We don’t want to make this mistake on Twitter because emotional connection is a big part of what makes Twitter so productive.

Be business like, but don’t be afraid to have fun and to engage with your base on a personal level, have fun with your twitter marketing.

Complete twitter marketing was used as a resource for this article. The site provides articles, information and products available for general twitter marketing http://completetwittermarketing.com