Personal Visibility – The Power of You!

In a word, yes. It applies to everyone–one way or another. Whether you’re the semi-retired 70-something that barely uses the internet, the I’m-too-busy-to-use-social-media-stay-at-home-mom, a recent college graduate who will get to it later, an hourly worker that thinks it doesn’t matter, a small business owner that just can’t seem to find the time or my favorite–“I don’t do Facebook, LinkedIn or any of the rest of that crap so it just doesn’t matter”. Let me start with the latter, the so-called ghost. Being a “ghost” is basically a brand in and of itself and in today’s environment everyone leaves a digital footprint, so to remain completely anonymous requires just about as much effort as building and amplifying a more mainstream and beneficial personal brand. And taking control of your brand is becoming more and more important, particularly with our rapidly growing use and reliance on technology. Take for instance the announcement from Facebook this past week regarding what some are considering to be a real category-killer related to search engine functionality–Graph Search or what has been referred to as “the global mapping of everybody and how they are related”. Think of it like the Kevin Bacon game called Six Degrees of Separation! Mark Zuckerberg described it as a utility that allows users to sort through content that has been shared with them. Put differently, people will be able to find you in new and different ways that are ultimately far more efficient–scary, huh? And no doubt that advertisers (and Facebook) will leverage that same data to create more targeted and personalized messages in the future, but that’s another storyline all together. The point being, finding out things about any of us is getting easier and easier, therefore, each of us is best served to be in control of our personal information–all of those digital bits and pieces add up to your brand. The question is: Are you in control of that brand?

I’ve suggested in previous articles to establish a baseline brand by using a networking site like LinkedIn, even if you don’t have any real interest in networking or changing jobs. It just so happens to be the largest, most visible and user-friendly networking site and it would serve you well to set up a profile and invest the time and energy to fine-tune that profile to the point that it tells your complete story–whatever that might be. So, whether you’re the 70-something, the hourly worker, a mid-level manager, the stay-at-home-mom or a recent graduate, you have a story to tell and you should tell it well. You should also be acutely aware that people are looking at you on the internet and it’s certainly in your best interest to take control of how your brand is being communicated to anyone choosing to look. And, there’s way more people looking than you might think! Your neighbors, moms in your play group, co-workers, committee members, employers (current and potential), recruiters and new acquaintances just to name a few. And you never know when a new opportunity is going to present itself–personally or professionally. Don’t miss out, huh.

You will find LinkedIn to be very user friendly. Yes, it will take some time. Yes, it will be worth the effort. LinkedIn began as a networking site, however, the recent success of LinkedIn centers largely on their transition to a recruiting and employment platform, particularly given the fees they are collecting from employers that use the platform as a very cost effective recruiting and hiring tool–its certainly marginalizing the headhunters and traditional employment agencies. However, recruiting and networking aside, the primary reason to create and fine-tune a LinkedIn profile is because of the role it plays in your overall personal branding strategy. This also becomes important in the optimization of your name in the various search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo or LinkedIn’s very own search engine being used by employers to identify hiring candidates–you may not be looking but what if a better opportunity found you? It happens every day…

And maybe the most important reason: Once you have your LinkedIn profile completed to your satisfaction you can either transfer or paste and copy your information over to a myriad of other sites and those sites will work together in optimizing your personal brand and visibility. We’ll talk about those steps next.

Stay tuned…