Optimizing your personal branding

Part of managing your career is determining how you want others to perceive you and consistently presenting yourself in that light. It’s easy to think about personal branding for résumés and interview answers, but smaller details of your professional life should also match your personal brand.Email signature files. An email signature file is appended to every single message you send out. For something so common, it is surprising how little time most people spend on crafting it well. Your company may require you to use a template in emails sent from company addresses, but there is sometimes room for creativity too. Signature files should be succinct, offering only the most important information. This can include your full name, job title and organization, and contact information: address, phone number, email, and URL. Include social media handles if they’re relevant to your work. Consider supplying your pronouns.A signature file should include no more than five lines, with one or two blank lines above them to set the signature apart from the body of the email message. Each line should be no more than about 70 characters long to prevent text wrapping (or about 50 if your messages will likely be read on a cell phone). Using tabs instead of spaces to create blank space may help your information line up as intended on different platforms.If you manage multiple roles from a single email address, consider creating multiple signature files so that you can choose one that best matches your role in a