Marketing yourself is a process. Whether your strategy is physical or digital, you want to give your audience a taste of your capabilities. From education in school to your upbringing and what your family taught you, you have mastery in some subjects but may be clueless in others. Each individual within the public has an upbringing forming their interests.

These masteries that each individual has, however, can be shared. Shared mastery creates familiarity, which is a form of bond. With the rise of digital marketing and the evolution of technology, creating an online portfolio or website is ideal for marketing your skills.

As technology can instantly reach audiences globally, effectively representing your skills online has the potential to create familiarity with any viewer. Through individual interactions and common themes, your target audience becomes more apparent. To the reader, discovering something that they are familiar with instantly attracts them.

If what you wrote matches the reader's interests, a bond is instantly created between you and that individual through a shared interest.

As I have reached my 20s, I have created a vast field of knowledge based on my interests and upbringing. I still have many years to continue increasing my knowledge in various fields. Based on what I know, the transition into the workforce with job searching and getting used to greater freedom outside of a school curriculum has been a massive change in my life.

In the process of transitioning my mindset off of a highly regulated environment, the sudden instance of freedom creates a form of culture shock. This sudden transition and the emotions that occur, however, are shortlived. Not everyone is in the stage of switching from the habits of education to the workforce, as it makes up a fraction of a percentage of a lifetime.

You could have already experienced this transition and have work experience, or you could have yet to experience it. Either way,

This is happening right now for me, so I can offer a brand new perspective that is considered different but possibly interesting to my audience. This is only one idea of marketing my experience since I'm experiencing this as this blog is released.

Despite having experience in other fields, focusing on what is fresh in the mind allows one to go into detail about the current personal experience.

increased my knowledge in marketing communications, familiarity is what I decided was the best fit for what I have to offer. Relatability is one of the best forms of attention-grabbing, especially as newer generations are being introduced to the workforce.

We have reached a modern era of digital growth, where technology is more important than ever. Unfortunately, traditional marketing and advertising have become less prominent in spreading the word as the internet can. This resulted in a large disruption in traditional media like radio, television, and print, forcing many to switch to digital platforms.

As we continue to advance technologically by generation, social media and digitally marketing yourself or your company have become essential to getting the reach you want and finding individuals who are a part of your targeted audience. Luckily, modern technology is capable of targeting audiences through discrete mathematics like user interaction data and letting you know who is interacting with your content and viewing your pages.

Now that we know technology plays such a big factor in advertising and marketing oneself or one's company, it is now up to us as people to decide who our target audience is. Sure, statistics are very useful in understanding who is seeing our content or interaction, but that doesn't directly tell us who our target audience is. Rather the statistics show those interested in the content or that had it randomly appear on their feed., which is not what you are looking for.

Finding your target market comes through a few questions you can ask yourself to determine what kind of individual you want to reach. What problem are you trying to solve? What kind of first impression do you want the viewer to experience? What emotions are you trying to instill into the viewer's mind and how do you want them to act upon it?

Aside from those example questions, you can get into specifics to understand what message you are trying to convey, which in turn results in finding your target audience. A common ground like the tactic I use is using familiarity and relatability. For the viewer to be drawn in, you want your content to match their interests as it relates to them on a personal level.

However, the public is a mixture of individuals with different mindsets that your objectives are to find parts of the public that your content associates with and create interest in people who are unfamiliar. That "AHA!" moment feeling of consumers realizing they have obtained a new interest in something based on what they have viewed is something most digital marketers strive for.

Not only does it increase their overall fanbase or consumers interested, but it widens the variety of demographics within their targeted portion of the public.

Despite that AI is excellent in using algorithms and statistics to determine what reach you are getting, its lack of ability to interpret and understand consumer feedback means that it can't do all the work for you. AI has served as an incredible algorithmic tool to quickly interpret data and increase efficiency for humans to understand who they are working with.

Us humans are very complex creatures in having both cognitive abilities and "human" qualities that allow us to take logical actions based on feedback. We are the ones in control in this case with using AI, so it is up to us to take the wheel in understanding our consumers.

Everyone is going to market themselves differently to the public based on their personal skills and interests, which means that individuals need to look within themselves (as cheesy as that sounds) to find who they want to reach out to.

This process is by no means immediate, as I am still looking to find my target demographic and market around advertising, marketing, communications, and human resources. Finding that balance is going to take time, and sometimes working with other individuals with similar (or even different) mindsets can help. The "humanity" aspect in understand consumers is the most essential part of marketing, as nobody wants to speak with a computer that is programmed to respond in certain ways based on key words.

I have social media, LinkedIn, my email, or a phone where you can reach out directly for that second set of eyes if you need that push in the right direction. Once you understand yourself as a marketer online and possibly find yourself stuck, it doesn't hurt to turn your head to another with any questions, and I am more than happy to step in as someone on the same page as you.