Personal branding is a must for any professional out there. It’s the way to make sure potential clients, employers and business partners find out about you and what you have to offer. And though how you present yourself in the real world is essential, your online presence has become equally important.

Practically everything can be done online and this is where most people can be found. This is why it’s become vital that you make sure your personal brand thrives online.

How do you do this exactly? Here are some useful tips to help you get started.

1. Utilize social media

Social networks are where everyone’s increasing their time spent online. It’s important for your personal branding that you get out there and utilize social media. You want people to know about you, to consider you an expert at your niche, so it’s essential that you engage them in meaningful conversations. This is why you need social media.

Social media makes it easy for you to interact and connect with people who have similar interests as well as potential clients and employers. LinkedIn, for example, is a major social networking site for professionals, and it’s certainly a site you should participate in to discover companies and like-minded professionals. And, just recently released the ability to apply to positions directly from LinkedIn.

Creating a Facebook and Twitter account is also a great way for you to connect with others and highlight your personal style, interest, character and competence. Though less professional than LinkedIn, they’re great way to have meaningful two-way conversations with people who share similar interests.

And of course, creating a blog is a great way to showcase expertise and get people to interact with you. Make sure that you get a domain that contains your full name, to help with your personal branding campaign.

2. Don’t forget SEO

In order for your personal brand to thrive online, you definitely can’t forget to use SEO. As you know, Google is still the number one site utilized by people, and everyone is pretty much Googling everyone else. So you can be certain that potential clients, business partners and employers are Googling you to find out what information there is online about you.

This is why you can’t ignore SEO in your personal branding campaign. You want to make sure that your site, or blog, ranks well when people do a search on your name. You want to make sure that the information people can find about you is the right one.

3. Offer valuable content

When you offer great and useful content, you will always have an audience who keeps returning to learn more. It’s critical in your personal branding campaign online that you engage and keep your audience’s interest, so they don’t turn away from your site or blog and go to someone else.

The key here is to think of what your purpose is and what need it is among people that you want to address. As a professional, you’re basically offering your expertise or a solution to someone’s problem, so you should make sure that the content you offer shows this.

The newest network "on the scene" is Google+ and there you can do certain things to create a personal brand that is even more visible to the people and networks you are targeting. Be sure to fill out your profile completely and in the nickname section utilize your name that most people search for you under anyway.

Another useful part of the profile is the Other Names section.

List names like:

• Your maiden name

• Your business name

• Your title

All of this makes it easier for people to find you for what they know you for and it also associates those words, titles and business with your name, too.

Making your personal brand thrive online can be tricky, but utilizing social media, doing SEO and offering valuable content are excellent steps to get you started on it. Don’t let yourself become left behind in the online world. Make sure you start today in your online personal brand communication plan.