There are a million freelancers out there. The question is, how are you going to get noticed and help people remember you and the type of freelance work you do?

A brand is anything—a symbol, design, name, sound, reputation, emotion, employees, tone, and much more—that separates one thing from another. In the case of McDonald’s, the golden arches became part of the brand. Those arches separate their product from all other fast food restaurants and they’re a recognizable symbol even with kids.

You’ve worked long and hard, sacrificing to build a solid reputation. When you’re out of the room, you know what they’re saying: He’s an innovative marketer. She’s a terrific patent lawyer. He knows everything about the Latvian export market. But what if you now want to rebrand yourself?

June 8, 2015 The Ultimate Guide to Personal Branding Written by Emma Brudner | @emmajs24 SHARE 154 inShare stand_out-2.jpg "Personal brand" can seem like an oxymoron. "Personal" refers to an individual while "brand" is often associated with companies or collectives. On the surface, the two parts of the term don't really jibe.

In the past few years personal branding has been discussed exhaustively throughout the Net. The difference between today and over ten years ago when it was first mentioned by Tom Peters, is the rise of social technologies that have made branding not only more personal, but within reach.

Sure, everyone knows what a brand is. Coke, Pepsi, McDonald’s. But that buzzword is getting thrown around a whole lot in career and job search conversations these days, too. And you might be thinking to yourself, “why do I really have to care about this?”

When I was starting out in my corporate career, the idea of personal branding hadn’t yet come into being. So I did what any self-respecting “nice Chinese girl” would do: put my head down, worked hard to learn and become excellent at the job, and waited for someone to recognize my talents and raise me up.

I was asked recently to do a workshop at a local college on branding. I agreed with the intention of talking about branding as a meta-concept. Little did I know, that the talk was pre-titled as a part of a larger ongoing series…and the title of the talk I was booked to do was, “Creating Your Own Brand.”

I realized it early in my career. In every job and at every stage of my life, I had unique content that gave me an edge and propelled me ahead of the pack, from the scaffolds of Manhattan to the c-suites of Madison Avenue.

In 2016, I decided to step up my game on Medium.com with a new strategy to help boost my personal brand. I want to start using as my eCommerce Diary where I share 3 things I did that day related to eCommerce.