5 Ways To Refresh Your Brand Before Conference And Networking Season

Conference season has a way of arriving faster than expected. One week you are scrolling event announcements, and the next you are standing in a hotel lobby handing someone a business card you printed two years ago with a job title you no longer hold.

Your brand is a living thing. It needs maintenance, so here is where to start.

Before adding anything new, take stock of what exists. Pull up your LinkedIn profile, your portfolio or personal website, your resume, your email signature, and any bio you have used recently for a speaking engagement, panel, or guest post. Read them as if you are meeting yourself for the first time.

Ask: Does this reflect who I am right now, or who I was 12 months ago? Are my current title, projects, and skills represented? Is the tone consistent across platforms, or does my LinkedIn sound like a corporate memo while my website sounds like a different person entirely?

Most people discover at least one thing that is outdated, inconsistent, or underselling them. Fix those first before building anything new.

Your headline should not just be your job title. It should signal what you do and who you do it for. Your About section should read as a person wrote it, because it did. If your most recent recommendation is from 2021, request a few updated ones from colleagues or collaborators before conference season starts. Social proof compounds quickly when someone is deciding whether to follow up with you after a conversation.

“Different people use LinkedIn for different purposes, like building networks, getting hired, staying updated on industry news, etc,” according to this Forbes article. “But no matter what your goal is, if used strategically, LinkedIn can help you achieve it and boost your professional growth to a great extent.” 

According to industry surveys cited by Research Nester, around 25 to 30% of professionals now prefer digital business cards over paper ones, citing ease of sharing and storage, with adoption particularly strong in tech companies where over 50% have shifted to digital cards entirely.

There are different platforms that allow you to build a card that includes your photo, contact information, social links, and portfolio in a format that can be shared via QR code, text, or tap in seconds. The advantage over paper is that your digital card can be updated in real time, so the version someone saves to their phone is (almost) always current. 

Write out two versions: a one-sentence answer for casual introductions and a version for more substantive conversations. Both should name what you do, who you serve or work with, and what makes your approach specific. However, as author Robert Kovach, Ph.D., notes in this Psychology Todayarticle, “Part of the challenge of communication is that we all have very different styles and expectations. This is especially important to understand in a diverse workplace (…) There are countless different factors in our psychological makeup and socialization that inform our communication styles.” 

But, in general, we can all agree that verbal and nonverbal communication need to be consistent for a personal brand to land, and practicing your talking points with a trusted person before an important meeting or an event is a good form of preparation.

If you have a portfolio, a personal website, or even a curated PDF of your work, check that your three to five most recent and most relevant projects are front and center. Conference connections often follow up online before they email, and what they find in those first few minutes either reinforces the impression you made in person or quietly undermines it.

If you do not have a portfolio yet, a simple one-page PDF that showcases two or three projects with brief context is enough to start. Online tools can get you there in a weekend without requiring a design background — but please, make sure it looks good! It’s part of your personal presentation. The goal is to make sure the brand you already have is working as hard as you are when you walk into the room.