Promote Yourself (12 page)

Poor use of the Internet is as detrimental to your career as showing up late for a client meeting in your pajamas. Employers see your online reputation as a direct reflection of their brand. In other words, the who-you-are-online-is-who-you-are-period thing goes a step further and becomes who
you
are online is who
your employer
is online–whether it's on Facebook, Twitter, your personal blog, or the company Web site. A damaged rep online can be a firing offense, which means managing your online reputation is now an unwritten part of your job description.

But managing your reputation isn't just about not getting fired. Your online brand is how you position yourself in the company, how you demonstrate your expertise, how you define the way managers and coworkers see you. Managing your online brand is one of your most powerful tools for career advancement, and it's something you need to do thoughtfully, regularly, and proactively.

 

Building Your Online Brand

The best way to proactively build your online brand is by making deliberate postings that position you the way you want to be seen. That could be thoughtful comments on articles related to your job, relevant information you publish on Twitter and your personal blog, or videos you post showcasing your latest project. These and other postings together define you to your managers, your industry, and the world. They pop you up to the top of that Google search; they flesh out your profile on LinkedIn, and they define you in the corporate talent pool where promotion decisions are made.

It's all about creating, controlling, and managing your own reputation so it can help you build the career you want. If you aren't consistently posting to social media, you aren't linking to relevant blogs, you aren't leaving comments on other people's blogs and sharing information that's relevant to your job, and if you aren't networking through LinkedIn, updating your online résumé, or you don't know what
this week's
Google search will reveal about you, you're letting other people control your reputation—and that's a huge mistake.

Young employees often ask me why, if their goal is simply to rise to the top of their company, is it so important to build their brand in the “outside” world? My answer is this: Because becoming a recognized expert in your field increases your value to your company. If your blog is widely read, if people comment on it and pass it along, if your articles appear in online journals and you're invited to speak on panels, your company will perceive you as an expert; you'll be recruited for higher level jobs. And with good reason. You aren't just
acting
like an expert—all show and no substance—you'll
be
an expert. By regularly gathering and analyzing data and transforming it into your own Web content, you'll be developing insights that make you a valuable company resource. Your brand will be an accurate reflection of what you bring to the job.

“One of my first projects when I started my job was to create a recruiting blog that would tell Intel's story and connect with our target audience, job seekers,” says Sejal Patel, a Social Media Strategist at Intel. “I joined several online forums and discussion groups. After my first online chat, I made a connection with a local recruiting professional who was writing a white paper on social media and recruitment. She ended up interviewing my manager and me and included us in her paper. A few months after that, she invited me to be part of a panel discussing social media and recruitment at a well-known recruiting conference! That helped build my company's brand, but definitely helped me build my own as well.”

Jason Duty, Director of Global Social Outreach Services at computer giant Dell, told me a story about how building a social media presence also built a young man's career. “I originally met him at a Dell event for social media practitioners. At the time, he actually had very little social media experience, not even a Twitter handle, and had just graduated college with an undergrad degree. During the event, it was very apparent that he was a total nut for technology, and you could see his interest piquing during the day as we got deeper and deeper into social media conversations. After the event, we kept in touch, primarily through social media. The following year, we hosted the same event and invited many of the original participants back, including this young fellow. I was amazed at how he had embraced social media—in just a year he had accumulated a lot of Twitter followers, but more importantly he had launched a blog with significant multimedia content and podcasts and had built his subscriber base up into the tens of thousands. He also completely wowed Michael Dell with his knowledge of technology and how it's used by various demographics. It just so happened that at the time I was creating a role on my team for a social media program manager, and I immediately thought this guy would be a great fit. Honestly, even without that role being created, I still would have found some way to hire him. He just joined a few months ago and is already having a significant impact on my org's capabilities in social media.”

 

Your Blog: Good for You, Good for Your Company

Blogging doesn't just bring attention to you; it can also bring eyeballs to your company. According to a 2009 survey by Technorati,
4
71 percent of bloggers surveyed said their blogs have increased visibility for their company, 63 percent converted prospects into purchasers through their blog, and 56 percent said their blogs bring recognition to their company as a thought leader in the industry. Can't hurt the annual review, can it?

 

Creating Your Online Identity

You already have an e-mail account—probably several. Facebook and Twitter accounts too. And you may be on LinkedIn or other social networks. But that's only the beginning. A critical component of your online brand is your online identity, and that goes well beyond just using e-mail and social media. The process actually starts with something as simple as your name, or, since we're talking about the Internet, your domain name. Here's how to create your online identity.

REGISTER YOUR DOMAIN NAME.
   Your domain name (
www.yourname.com
) is the central hub for your digital reputation. It's usually the first thing to come up when someone searches for you online, so the more control you have over it, the better. You don't want a cybersquatter registering it before you do and then charging you an arm and a leg for the rights to your own name. (Yes, it happens.)

Register your domain name even if you don't plan to create a personal Web site (although I'll tell you below why you should create one anyway). The cost is minimal—about $10 a year, possibly a little less if you register or renew for more than one year at a time. The easiest way to do it is at
GoDaddy.com
.

If possible, register your full name: BenSmith.com. If your name is taken, use your middle initial (
BenRSmith.com
), your full middle name (BenRickSmith.com), or your name with your industry association (BenSmithPR.com). This ensures that someone doesn't think a different Ben Smith is you. It's hard enough managing your own online brand; you don't want to worry about being confused with someone else! If all the .com's are taken, you can also register the .net and .me URLs.

CREATE PROFILES ON SELECTED SOCIAL NETWORKS.
   If you don't already have profiles on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Google
+
, now's the time to create them. They're the easiest way to create your online identity and promote yourself to others. When establishing your social profiles, you want your online identity to be consistent, so use the same name, picture, and profile information for every account. Use the domain name you registered (even if it includes your middle name, initial, or professional association) to distinguish your profile from another with the same name.

I
deally, you want to register on the four biggest platforms: Facebook, Google
+
, Twitter, and LinkedIn, but (and this is a big but) be mindful of your time. Once you create a social media profile, you'll need to actively manage it. That means checking it
daily
,
if possible, to create and respond to posts and see what others are saying about you.
So don't register for more networks than you can actively manage.

 

Special note: I'm suggesting that you try to keep your profile names consistent across all the social networks you're on. Because there are so many, there's a good chance that the name you want may not be available on all platforms. You may want to use
KnowEm.com
, which matches your name against hundreds of social networks so you can see where it's available.

FACEBOOK
   is the largest social network in the world. If it were a country, its more than one billion members would make it three times the size of the U.S. Half of all Facebook users log in every day.

If you're a Facebook power user, feel free to skip ahead to the next section. But because the most common question I get from people is “What's the best way to manage my personal and professional Facebook presence?” I want to spend a couple of minutes on exactly that.

I suggest that you use your Facebook profile as your personal page and create a Fan Page (or separate profile) for your professional image. A Fan Page acts just like a regular profile: You can post photos, videos, links, and everything else you need to promote your personal brand. If you then make your regular profile “Friends Only,” everyone else who searches for you will find only your Fan Page. It's one solution for keeping your public and private selves safely apart. Facebook offers complete instructions for creating a Fan Page here:
facebook.com/pages/create.php
.

Although it's a little riskier, if you really want to, you can have a single profile for your combined personal and professional lives. You'll just need to be really careful to put your friends and business contacts in separate groups. Then when you post updates, you can select which group or groups you want to what you reach. Once you've made a Fan Page, be sure to make your regular profile private. To do this, go to your Privacy Settings and:

 

1. Make your Default Privacy setting “Friends” only. If you have already friended professional contacts, tell them about the change and give them your Fan Page link. Then unfriend them from your personal page.

 

2. Set “Who can look me up?” to “Friends” only and uncheck “Let other search engines link to your timeline.” This will give you more control over who can find and view your profile.

 

3. Don't let people tag you in photos. Tagging opens you up to public viewing, and since you can't control what other people post or tag, why take a chance? To do this you'll need to go into Timeline and Tagging from the Privacy menu and set the checkbox so you can approve all tags before they're posted on your wall.

 

4. Turn off all platform apps, games, and Web sites. With few exceptions, which we'll talk about below, they look unprofessional.

 

5. Limit the Audience for Past Posts to “Friends.” If you've already posted something your colleagues shouldn't see, this will minimize the damage. Another approach (albeit a pretty time-consuming one) is to change the Privacy settings on each individual status update that you, or someone else, has posted on your wall since you first started using Facebook. As a last resort, you can change the date on each status update, hide the status update altogether, or remove it from Facebook completely.

With Facebook Timeline profiles, it's more important than ever to proactively manage your privacy settings. If you don't, your updates may be viewed by your management, and they might think less of you based on all of those party pictures or political-bashing updates that you've published. When your timeline is visible, people can look back at what you've posted years ago too. I don't know about you, but I was the party chair for my fraternity in college, and I don't want clients seeing pictures or updates from my past. I spent three hours reviewing all of my updates from 2004 to 2006 in order to ensure everything was protected, and it was time well spent. Then, I turned on all moderation settings for posts and pictures tagged with my name and disabled the ability for others to write on my wall. This gives me full control of my profile.

Another question I hear often is, “Why should I build my brand on Facebook?” The answer is pretty simple. You do it because almost everyone you know or would want to know is there. That includes your friends and coworkers. But it also includes employers, recruiters, and potential business partners who use Facebook (often along with LinkedIn) to find great people for their organizations. Facebook is an extremely effective way to keep people you know up to date on what you're doing, and to let the rest of the world know how great you are. And here are some tips on how to boost your brand using your Facebook Timeline:

 

• Create a branded Timeline cover image. The dimensions of the cover are 840 pixels wide by 310 pixels tall. Use Photoshop, Paint, or another program, as well as professional pictures to create a Timeline that captures who you are and what you're interested in. You can also get creative by putting the URL of your Web site as part of the picture.

 

• Add applications to your Timeline by going to
facebook.com/about/timeline/apps
. These apps can notify your friends and viewers about your interests and hobbies. One of my favorites is the “Washington Post Social Reader,” which allows you to share recent stories you're reading and will keep you up to date on news and developments in your industry.

 

• Feature specific status updates that you are most proud of by using the star feature. You can show your major accomplishments immediately when someone lands on your profile, which can help boost your brand.