The advent of social media and mobile devices has begun to homogenize business and leisure lifestyles. Do you check your work email before retiring for the night? Is it the first thing you do in the morning, even before lifting your head off the pillow? Hey, some sleep with it under their pillow!!

Any personal or leisure correspondence/posting you create online is considered fair game in the construction your personal business brand by a third party. Like it or not, it’s out there forever, and future employers will have no problem taking in to account everything they see and read about you. The web never forgets so you had better make sure you’re being honest with yourself and others; no sense being opaque in the new transparent world.

Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.   — Oscar Wilde

And it’s not just execs who need to consider their online persona; sales associates can make just as big of a splash on the social playing field.

So why is personal branding so important now?

There is no such thing as a lifetime job.

The days of holding onto a job for over 10 years are gone and as a result, the number of self-employed individuals has skyrocketed over the last decade. And why not! We are all connected, all the time.

So embrace your personal brand and build it carefully because it’s lifetime value.