Students Online Brand
As students in urban areas we have to utilize all possible avenues to be competitive when applying for Universities. We have to tackle admission to Universities and Colleges as adults tackle employment opportunities.
Colleges and Universities are looking for more than just good grades and great SAT scores. They are looking for a well-rounded student that will be an effective and positive representation of their college or University.
One of the ways that you can represent yourself as such is by using Social Media, which could allow potential Universities and Colleges to see you beyond how you present yourself on a sheet of paper.
Negative Social Media can reflect very poorly and can sometimes eliminate your chance of entering into the college of your choice or even having your admission withdrawn AFTER YOU'VE BEEN ADMITTED. So it is very important to present yourself in a positive manner at all times.
I am going to teach you how to create YOUR BRAND; this will allow you to demonstrate your best possible image to those that need to see it. So you will be BRANDING YOU. This will allow you to paint yourself as a very well rounded person that any college or university would be proud to have as a part of their student body.
1. I will need you to create a Gmail Account and Yahoo Account. These acconts will only be used to promote YOUR BRAND. Use your name or something that sounds professional. You’ll want to stay away from nicknames, like BooBear@Gmail.com for instance. My name is Anise Smith so I would use AniseSmith@Gmail.com or something similar.
2. Create a FREE GOOGLE Profile, this allows you to display information about yourself that presents YOUR BRAND in a favorable way. The Google profile allows you to create an online presence about yourself that people or Universities will have access to when they Google you. Notice that I said WHEN and not IF, most people use Google as a research tool to find information about people. This is one of the reasons that I am teaching you all this.
3. Create a YOUTUBE channel for YOUR BRAND. YouTube is the second most utilized search engine after Google, and is in fact owned by Google. The goal here is to create a channel with videos of yourself involved in school activities, playing instruments, at the library, studying with your friends or similar education based activity. If you do not have a video camera see if any of your friends have one and if they are willing to create a short 2 minute video of you. You can return the favor. Also add education-based videos to your channel. Search YouTube for videos of colleges, SAT Preparation, Advanced studies or any other education related videos and save these videos to your Channel as well. You can also use sports videos, cooking videos or something related to a hobby. This will give the viewers and idea of what kind of person you are, that you are serious about studies, what you do for fun and things that you like. It will demonstrate that you are a well-rounded person, that you are focused on education and college.
4. Create a FLICKR account for YOUR BRAND. Flicker is a Yahoo company so you can create the Flickr account using the Yahoo email address/account that you created earlier. Flickr is the largest Photo Sharing website on the Internet. Take some pictures of yourself at school sporting events, playing sports if you participate, at any volunteer events, have some with you hanging out with friends at the library, recreation center, and involved in additional extracurricular activities. This is a way to display yourself as more than just words on a college application but to display what you like, who you are and things that you enjoy doing. This presents a very well rounded image to Universities. Also, people really LOVE to look at pictures.
5. Create a very easy Blog/Website using BLOGGER, which is also a Google company so you will be able to create this using the Gmail account that you created earlier. The Blogger account will allow you to write some things about yourself, things you like to do, where you want to go to college, how you're doing in school, what sports teams you play on in school and things about who you are personally. Share information about your family, talk about family outings and having fun with your friends. What’s really great about Blogger is that you can write as often as you want by creating different posts for different events. It’s like a journal, except that it is in an online format. Another thing, you can add videos from the YouTube Channel you created, and images from the Flickr account as well to your Blog.
6. Facebook is very important in creation of YOUR BRAND. If you have a personal Facebook account make sure everything on your Facebook account is something that you use to make a positive impression. You can DOWNLOAD my FREE FB Privacy ebook, it has step-by-step instructions to help you set your privacy preferences on your Facebook personal page to ensure that you are only displaying the most positive information possible. Also create a FACEBOOK/COMMUNITY PAGE, discuss your school life, what your extra curricular activities are, your favorite subjects and invite people to LIKE your page.
7. ItsMyURLS.com is a website that allows you to integrate ALL of your social media avenues and allows you to use one URL. So you could create one Url to be used on your resumes and college applications to display your entire online presence easily. So after you create these accounts create a ItsMyUrls.com account and add all of these accounts to it.
All of these things when place together online allow you to present a positive picture to colleges and universities and that may increase your chances of competing to get into the college of your choice.
Branding You Presentation Below
Branding You Presentation Below
