Your professional brand should clearly communicate who you are, what you do, why you do it, and what makes you unique. In order to prepare a presentation that effectively communicates those key elements in an engaging way, address all of the prompts and questions below. Providing as much detail in the form of examples, facts, stories, and experiences from your professional career and your personal life can help you best understand and articulate your brand. Start with why. Why do you do what you do? What motivates you? Why do you want to wake up and go to work at a particular job? For example, do you want to help others? Are you motivated by creativity? Do you want to earn respect and prestige? What problems do you want to solve? Use your Module 4 – Discussion: Communicating Your Body of Work. You shared three major accomplishments and what you felt those experiences had in common. Does this communicate why you do what you do? Summarize your core “why” in a few sentences. This is your professional brand statement. Support and evidence. Now that you’ve figured out your core “why,” you must provide support and evidence for your professional brand statement. You must also figure out how to differentiate yourself from your competition. Answer the following questions: Define your professional goals. Where do you see yourself professionally in the long-term (10 years from now)? Where do you see yourself in the short-term (next year)? Be sure to include not just the career you want to hold but also detailed information about that career. What is the company like? What is your position like? What are your co-workers or clients like? What is your life like as you work to accomplish your professional goals? Define your strengths and skills. To achieve your professional goals, you must identify the strengths you possess and the skills you need to continue to build. List your strengths, the skills you’ve developed, and the important adjectives that describe you and your work ethic. Next, define some skills you need to continue to work on in order to achieve career success. Analyze your target audience. Who do you need to share your professional brand with in order to achieve your professional goals? Is it a specific company? If you want to be your own boss, do you need to share your brand with prospective clients and customers? Conduct a bit of research on what your target audience looks like. What does your target audience need from you? Analyze your competition. With over 7 billion people in the world, you’re bound to face competition as you work to accomplish your professional goals. What is it that you offer that other people cannot? Conduct a bit of research on your competition. What unique blend of character traits, goals, strengths, skills, and experiences do you possess? How do you stand out from the competition? You will use the answers to all of these questions to build your Professional Brand Presentation Outline. Part Two: Communicating Your Brand Once you’ve developed a clear understanding of your professional brand, it’s time to create a plan to share that brand with a target audience. Your Professional Brand Presentation outline should include the following key components: Introduction Attention-getter or hook Professional Brand Statement Body How you stand out from the competition Professional goals Strengths and skills Examples, stories, and support for your brand Explanation & Answer: 250 Words Oultline Tags: Professional Brand character traits goals strengths skills User generated content is uploaded by users for the purposes of learning and should be used following Studypool’s honor code & terms of service.
Reference List: Basic Rules
Note: This page reflects the latest version of the APA Publication Manual (i.e., APA 7), which released in October 2019. The equivalent resource for the older APA 6 style can be found here.
This resource, revised according to the 7th edition APA Publication Manual, provides fundamental guidelines for constructing the reference pages of research papers. For more information, please consult the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, (7th ed.).
Note: Because the information on this page pertains to virtually all citations, we’ve highlighted one important difference between APA 6 and APA 7 with an underlined note written in red.
Formatting a Reference List
Your reference list should appear at the end of your paper. It provides the information necessary for a reader to locate and retrieve any source you cite in the body of the paper. Each source you cite in the paper must appear in your reference list; likewise, each entry in the reference list must be cited in your text.
Your references should begin on a new page separate from the text of the essay; label this page “References” in bold, centered at the top of the page (do NOT underline or use quotation marks for the title). All text should be double-spaced just like the rest of your essay.
Basic Rules for Most Sources
- All lines after the first line of each entry in your reference list should be indented one-half inch from the left margin. This is called hanging indentation.
- All authors’ names should be inverted (i.e., last names should be provided first).
- Authors’ first and middle names should be written as initials.
- For example, the reference entry for a source written by Jane Marie Smith would begin with “Smith, J. M.”
- If a middle name isn’t available, just initialize the author’s first name: “Smith, J.”
- Give the last name and first/middle initials for all authors of a particular work up to and including 20 authors (this is a new rule, as APA 6 only required the first six authors). Separate each author’s initials from the next author in the list with a comma. Use an ampersand (&) before the last author’s name. If there are 21 or more authors, use an ellipsis (but no ampersand) after the 19th author, and then add the final author’s name.
- Reference list entries should be alphabetized by the last name of the first author of each work.
- For multiple articles by the same author, or authors listed in the same order, list the entries in chronological order, from earliest to most recent.
- When referring to the titles of books, chapters, articles, reports, webpages, or other sources, capitalize only the first letter of the first word of the title and subtitle, the first word after a colon or a dash in the title, and proper nouns.
- Note again that the titles of academic journals are subject to special rules. See section below.
- Italicize titles of longer works (e.g., books, edited collections, names of newspapers, and so on).
- Do not italicize, underline, or put quotes around the titles of shorter works such as chapters in books or essays in edited collections.
Basic Rules for Articles in Academic Journals
- Present journal titles in full.
- Italicize journal titles.
- Maintain any nonstandard punctuation and capitalization that is used by the journal in its title.
- For example, you should use PhiloSOPHIA instead of Philosophia, or Past & Present instead of Past and Present.
- Capitalize all major words in the titles of journals. Note that this differs from the rule for titling other common sources (like books, reports, webpages, and so on) described above.
- This distinction is based on the type of source being cited. Academic journal titles have all major words capitalized, while other sources’ titles do not.
- Capitalize the first word of the titles and subtitles of journal articles, as well as the first word after a colon or a dash in the title, and any proper nouns.
- Do not italicize or underline the article title.
- Do not enclose the article title in quotes.
- So, for example, if you need to cite an article titled “Deep Blue: The Mysteries of the Marianas Trench” that was published in the journal Oceanographic Study: A Peer-Reviewed Publication, you would write the article title as follows:
- Deep blue: The mysteries of the Marianas Trench.
- …but you would write the journal title as follows:
- Oceanographic Study: A Peer-Reviewed Publication
- So, for example, if you need to cite an article titled “Deep Blue: The Mysteries of the Marianas Trench” that was published in the journal Oceanographic Study: A Peer-Reviewed Publication, you would write the article title as follows:
Please note: While the APA manual provides examples of how to cite common types of sources, it does not cover all conceivable sources. If you must cite a source that APA does not address, the APA suggests finding an example that is similar to your source and using that format. For more information, see page 282 of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, 7th ed.
