The 6 P’s of Online Branding

Another networking site, The Ladders, which claims to be “the world’s largest community catering exclusively to the $100k+ job market”, featured “The 6 P’s of Online Branding” by Kirsten Dixson and William Arruda in its Career Advice section.

After reading through the tips given by Dixson and Arruda, I had several more sites to check out and things to learn. I found it to be thorough, enlightening, and easy to remember because of the ‘Ps’. The article gives six suggestions for building your online brand, which of course, all begin with the letter ‘P’:

Publishing
Write articles or whitepapers, and get them published in online publications that your target audience reads. Your online profile will be even better if these publications are highly ranked in Google, Yahoo or MSN. You can also submit articles to article banks to have them syndicated.

Posting
If you’ve ever purchased a book from Amazon.com or BarnesandNoble.com, you can post a book review on these websites. It’s key to review books that are relevant to your area of expertise. Off-topic choices may confuse the perception of your online personal brand. Even if you love to cook, don’t review a cookbook if you don’t want to work in the food and beverage industry.

Pontificating
Posting comments on others’ blogs is a powerful way to build your brand – yet it’s probably the most overlooked online branding tool. Dan Schawbel is a marketing executive who has creatively used this technique to increase his visibility. In fact, this tool even garnered him a mention in Fast Company.

You can find relevant blogs on which to comment at Technorati.com or through Google’s blog search. Read a blog for a while before you comment to get a feel for the author’s style and whether you want this particular blog associated with your own brand. Remember, you can’t take back the comment once it’s posted, so ensure that it’s professional, well thought out, and error free.

If you’re hesitant about posting, go with your gut and sleep on it. Be sure to link the comment back to your own blog or website if you have one. You could also link it to your LinkedIn or Ziggs profile if you don’t have your own site.

Participating in online discussion forums also helps you to connect with and become more visible to others who share the same interests, though it’s not necessarily a part of your public online identity that will show up in a search. You can find forums through Google Groups or Yahoo Groups, and some by-invitation forums may be available to you through professional associations. Bernadette Martin, founder of Visibility Branding, says online forums can be a valuable way to formulate ideas and strategies before presenting them to the public on the internet.

Publicizing
Write press releases about your endeavors (solo business project successes, what you learned from attending a professional conference, noteworthy volunteer work, information about an upcoming speaking gig or article, etc.), and post them to free press release distribution sites like www.prleap.com.

You can find more sites like this by Googling “free press release services”. If you need the press release to rank highly (maybe you have digital dirt that you are trying to sweep under the virtual rug?), consider purchasing the search engine optimization services available from many of these content distribution sites.

Partnering
One of the most important elements of your brand environment is your professional network. Since your network can extend your brand for you by spreading the word about your unique value, it’s ideal to get others to write about you online. Cultivate relationships with journalists and bloggers. If you’re writing a blog that people read and enjoy, they’ll write about what you are saying and link back to you. It’s that simple!

Also, leverage social networking sites like LinkedIn, Ryze, ecademy and Facebook to connect with your network and keep them updated on your accomplishments. Aim for quality of contacts over quantity, and only add your real colleagues and clients to your online network.

Profiling
Use services like Ziggs, LinkedIn, Naymz, and ZoomInfo to create a basic online profile and increase the volume of Google results for your name. If your professional information already appears online, you are likely to have a profile in Zoominfo.

Since they automatically create your profile and twenty percent of the Fortune 500 use ZoomInfo for recruiting, you’ll want to claim your profile and update it regularly. To get the most out of these sites, post content that is consistent across all of your profiles and that matches your resume.

William Arruda and Kirsten Dixson are the authors of Career Distinction: Stand Out by Building Your Brand and partners in Reach , a global leader in personal branding for career-minded executives and professionals.

Classifieds are out; social media is in

Business Week Online featured an article by Dan Schawbel in which he declares that “LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and blogging are much better tools for finding jobs that speak to your passions than job boards and corporate Web sites”. The original article can be found here.

The article presents a staggering statistic regarding employee recruitment; “72% of companies plan to invest more in recruiting through social networks”. To give an idea of how many professionals are currently using social networking, as of the publication of the article, LinkedIn has “more than 40 million professional member profiles across all industries”. Also, “with 250 million users, Facebook is the largest social network and is home to both corporate recruiters and headhunters”. Schawbel describes one user that “landed his current job as a sales associate for EMC without even submitting his resume”. He goes on to describe how potential employees can use each of these three social media to their advantage in finding a job “faster than the competition.”

When using social networking for professional advancement, Schawbel offers several tips including:

• LinkedIn
  • “Construct a flawless profile that will impress recruiters”.
  • Use your professional headline “to position yourself for the job you want, not the job you have.
  • “Obtain your unique LinkedIn URL so that it appears as http://linkein.com/in/yourfullname”

    **this is called a vanity URL, which many social networking sites are using because it comes up faster in search engines.

• Blogging
  • “Recruiters can gain a better understanding of an individual based on a blog, compared to a resume that has the same boring standard fields, such as experience and education.”
  • Blogging gives hiring managers an idea of how an applicant “may fit into an organization’s culture and the specific role that needs to be filled”.
  • “To be a successful blogger, passion, hard work, integrity, and the ability to take criticism are required”.
• Twitter
  • A potential employee can post their resume “on Twitter using twtjobs.com”.
  • “You can search for jobs by going to twitterjobsearch.com”.
  • Because of the restrictions placed on Twitter users, Schawbel suggests that users “go to twitbacks.com and create a custom background, which can include more of your information to paint a stronger portrait of your personal brand.
  • “Focus your tweets on your expertise instead of randomly tweeting about anything that comes to your mind, so you can become the go-to source for information on that topic”.
  • “Follow people in your field, especially those employed at companies that you want to work for”.
• Facebook
  • “Hide those party pictures and set privacy settings”.
  • “Get your custom URL by going to facebook.com/usernames and selecting facebook.com/yourfullname”.
  • “Status updates can be a job-seeking tool”…”as a way of networking old contacts without harassing them”.

With applicable tips and good advice, this article is like a mini-guide for social media and job hunting. Schawbel calls social media “the great equalizer” because it gives job seekers the ability to “connect directly with hiring managers who work for companies you have genuine interest in instead of applying mindlessly through job boards”.

Social Media, Employers and Employees

I am very interested in the development of social media and its impact on corporate organizations and professionals. Lately, there has been more and more emphasis placed on the effective development of an acceptable online presence, as well as the avoidance of making errors in professional judgment by posting and sharing inappropriate material online. Celebrities have often been kind enough to lay the ground work for some of these “dos and don’ts”, but I have also heard stories and examples of employees being reprimanded and fired for inappropriate behavior online.

Several examples of social media include LinkedIn, Facebook, MySpace, PROpenMic, and Twitter. These organizations have been developed and become extremely popular and widespread in recent years. Through this study, I plan to address these questions and topics:

-          How and to what extent do HR departments and professionals screen employees before hiring by searching and examining their online presence?

-          What do they look for?

-          How many business organizations and what kinds of business organizations practice this?

-          How can social media be used as a tool to enhance one’s job application, professional career and networking abilities?

-          What does a professional online presence consist of?

-          What are the effects of social media as a screening tool on college students and recent graduates?

I plan to conduct this study through research over the next few weeks. Here is a tentative brief timeline which may change as my project develops:

-          Week 1, July 6-10: Research social media, its beginnings, outreach, and published research on social media as an HR tool; look for blogs to follow regarding social media topics; continue to brainstorm questions regarding the effects of social media on hiring/firing practices in corporate organizations.

-          Week 2, July 13-17: Research the growing use of social media in hiring practices, job searches, etc; continue to follow blogs; briefly interview 2-3 HR professionals regarding the use of social media.

-          Week 3, July 20-24: Research the use of social media as a corporate tool to enhance advertising, marketing, PR, and employee recruitment.

-          Week 4, July 27-31: Research the use of social media as a tool for individuals to build and enhance their professional identity; explore blogging as a career enhancer; address what creates a positive online presence.

-          Week 5, Aug 3-5: Draw conclusions.