Business | The Personal Branding Blog

Is your career facing a Kodak moment?

January 20, 2012 By Paul Copcutt 1 Comment

No doubt the business school case studies in years to come about the sad demise of Kodak and it’s brand will raise many questions about the effectiveness of it’s leaders. The filing of Chapter 11 bankruptcy by Kodak this week has many lessons for all businesses, but what can you learn from this and be sure that you are not facing the same in your career?

1. Don’t underestimate the impact your ideas have.
It was the mid-70′s when Kodak actually developed for the first digital camera. Can you imagine how far ahead they may have been in the market place and for how long had they moved on this revolutionary idea.

Personal Brand Lesson - just because your industry or vocation has done it the same way for a long time and everyone is comfortable with that way does not mean an idea out of left field is not a better one. Be willing to challenge the status quo.

2. Don’t be complacent or greedy.
Kodak leaders decided to shelve the digital camera because they felt it was going to do too much damage to their highly lucrative and profitable film business.

Personal Brand Lesson – it makes sense to maximise your value with the core strengths you have. But know that you need to continually develop yourself and add new skills. Demands and markets change, so your brand has to evolve over time. Anticipate demands and start adding to your skill set now.

3. Be Prepared to Re-brand
The plan for Kodak is to sell it’s $2 billion worth of patents and emerge as a more agile company in the printer business. They see revenue and profit in ink (HP generates $9 billion a year in ink cartridges). But does the tagline of the “Kodak Moment” still apply? Likely not, as they become less and less synonymous with photos a re-brand of the company would almost seem inevitable.

Personal Brand Lesson - the experts tell us that the workforce of the future might well be in many different vocation, not just jobs, in their lifetime. The foundation and core of your brand might remain the same, but sometimes the message and your target audience will change and a re-branding is necessary.

How do you see business the lessons from the likes of RIM and Kodak apply to your career and personal brand?

Paul Copcutt first aligned with personal branding after reading Tom Peters ‘Brand You 50’ in 1997. Now a sought after speaker and media resource he has been featured by Forbes, Reuters, the Wall Street Journal and Elle. He helps employees in leading Fortune 500 corporations realise they can be more successful and productive at work by NOT checking their personalities at the door.

Filed Under: Current Affairs, Everything is a Brand, Personal Branding for Careers, Personal Branding Quick Tips, Recession-Proof Your Career Tagged With: branding, Business, career, Career Management, Personal Brand

Paul Allen – Idea Man – a memoir by the co-founder of Microsoft

November 10, 2011 By Paul Copcutt Leave a Comment

Personal Brand Leadership – Book Review

PERSONAL BRAND LEADERSHIP POINTERS

From this book you will learn:

- The importance of having several avenues of interest to round out your brand.
- How you can enjoy your passions AND make it part of who you are.
- Remain true to your core beliefs and not wavering.
- Understand the power of doing what you’re uniquely good at.

Paul Allen is certainly best known by many as the co-founder of Microsoft, who left in the early 1980′s but still wound up a multi-billionaire. Many might also choose to pick up this book to find out the insider scoop on what really happened in his ‘fall out’ with Bill Gates. Certainly the publishers have positioned this book to portray these very two renowned key points.

However there is much more to this autobiography than just dishing the dirt and making billions from Microsoft. It could be argued that Allen has had more influence across a wider spectrum with his various successes and failures since, than an ever lasting impact with what remains of his legacy inside Microsoft. After all how much of Allen’s work or influence even is in what the company is now – over 35 years later?

What was more insightful was Allen’s ability to think ahead of the technology curve (and beyond tech.) in a number of ways. This is more where the title “Idea Man” comes in to play – he invested, in some cases more closely gambled, on technology such as streaming content, wireless technology, consumer space travel. Some proved successful, others failed, but likely more from being too soon than completely wrong.

The book can appear in places dry (read – too much technical information that may not have been needed) and although you learn of the trappings that wealth brings – yachts, sports teams, playing guitar with Bono – you certainly also understand Paul Allen to be a very private man, close to his immediate family but you learn little of his own personal life – something in an autobiography is lacking.

Overall an interesting insight in the personal brand leadership of a technology titan, a community leader and philanthropist and some interesting lessons about business.

Personal Brand Leadership Rating – 3.5 stars

Read about the Personal Brand that is Paul Allen HERE

Paul Copcutt first aligned with personal branding after reading Tom Peters ‘Brand You 50’ in 1997. Now a sought after speaker and media resource he has been featured by Forbes, Reuters, the Wall Street Journal and Elle. He works with executives, managers and teams for leading Fortune 500 corporations.

Filed Under: Books, Executive Branding, Expressing Your Brand, Exuding Your Brand, Personal Branding For Entrepreneurs, Sports, Strong Personal Brands, Web/Tech Tagged With: Business, careers, leadership, personal branding

To Tweet or Not to Tweet?

August 8, 2011 By Kristen Jacoway 3 Comments

Several months ago, I read an article about “How Social Media Can Hurt Your Job” by Rachel Zupeck, and it gave me pause. Why? Because I have had people ask me who can read their tweets. If you have your tweets on a public timeline, then everyone can read your tweets.

Companies have taken proactive measures to “listen” to their brand being discussed on social media platforms. It’s really quite easy for them to know if you are talking about them or not. Tweetbeep, Google Alerts, Radian6, Company Buzz (LinkedIn application), etc. makes it very easy for them to “hear” when their name has been mentioned on a social media platform.

So, before you decide to give negative press about a company or its’ people, remember that it’s quite possible they are listening with one of these tools and will discover it. Remember, once you click “submit,” the tweet has been seen. Sure, there is a trashcan icon where you can delete a tweet, but who’s already seen it? Worse yet–who’s already retweeted you? Tweets, pictures, videos, etc. can go viral before you blink an eye, so be very careful.

7 Ideas for Tweeting to Promote Your Personal Brand

Share resources and articles in your area of expertise.
Retweet another person who has shared a blog post, article, and more in your industry.
Tweet an inspirational quote — remember to give the author credit.
Post a blog post you have written that supports your thought leadership.
Answer questions posed by others. Tip: Type a keyword in your industry and a “?” For example, I will type “job search” and a “?” in Twitter’s search box and then reply to people’s questions.
Engage with your followers by visiting their website, LinkedIn profile, etc. and commenting on something that interests you. I once read some blog posts of someone who I was following and @ replied how interesting I found her post on Personal Branding and Social Media. Not only did I forge a connection, but I also found a blog that I now follow in my Google Reader.
Introduce people through Twitter who would benefit from knowing each other. I’ve had people wanting to learn how to design a WordPress blog and I will introduce them to @ErinBlaskie who teaches a WordPress Blog Bootcamp.

Twitter is a great place to forge new networking relationships and can provide opportunities for people to find you via the keywords you use in your tweets. Become familiar with your industry keywords and trending topics that are occurring in the news. Share resources, ideas, and more!

Kristen Jacoway is the founder of Career Design Coach, providing professional speaking, training, and one-on-one consultation focused on next-generation career marketing services. She wrote the book, “I’m in a Job Search-Now What???” and the book has frequently ranked in the Top 100 in its’ category on Amazon.

Filed Under: Social Media Tagged With: Business, careers, Company Buzz, Employment, Google Alerts, Radian6, Tweetbeep, Twitter

5 Quick Tips for Using Twitter in Your Job Search

August 1, 2011 By Kristen Jacoway 2 Comments

Twitter is a growing platform for recruiters and employers to identify and recruit potential employees. In fact, Twitter has exploded in growth, experiencing a 5000% surge from 2008 to 2011! Twitter is a great place to increase personal brand awareness by following these simple steps:

1. Complete your profile thoroughly! I cannot stress this point enough because, many times, I run across profiles with just the Twitter name and worse, no picture. Your profile should be filled with keywords that are applicable to your background and experience. Also, upload a nice headshot of yourself—people like to see a picture of the person with whom they are connecting.

2. Use keywords. One useful tool to locate keywords that employers and recruiters might be using in their search parameters is job postings in your career track. Go through several postings with a highlighter and highlight noun and noun phrases. What are commonly used keywords? If they apply to you, make sure to use the most important in your Twitter profile (remember your profile, also sometimes referred to a twesume’, only allows 160 characters at this writing).

3. Claim your own name on Twitter. If possible, this will help to produce more results for online identity building. What if you have a common name, such as Bob Smith? You might possibly use a middle name (and then build your personal brand around Bob Jacoway Smith). You could also attach a phrase for which you are known following your name (i.e. Bob Smith, HR).

4. Post tweets that demonstrate your thought leadership. A rule of thumb is to provide more helpful information than self-promoting. You could tweet inspirational quotes (always give credit to the author), links to helpful resources, answers to other Twitter users’ questions, and more. You want to be sure to tweet relevant, on-brand information. Using hashtags (like we discussed in a previous article) will also help people find you who are interested in what you have to offer.

5. Find networking contacts and engage. One of my favorite tools for identifying companies and employees of a particular company with a Twitter account is a service called Twellow. If you sign up for an account, you can follow people directly from the Twellow directory. Twellow allows you to search by industry (i.e. healthcare), thus making it an ideal tool for someone in a job search.

Many people you follow will follow you back, but keep in mind that to maintain this network you want to be interesting, thoughtful, post regularly, and engage. Sometimes, I’ll visit the websites of a new Twitter follower and will comment on something that I’ve found interesting about that person.

As the picture above illustrates, though, you need to put this theory into a consistent practice. Creating a Twitter profile and then never doing anything to facilitate growing a strong network will yield no results. In my next article, we’ll look at some of the commonly used ways to engage with others on Twitter and some Twitter management tools that will streamline your efforts.

Filed Under: Social Media Tagged With: Business, careers, Employment, Profile Optimization, social media, social networking, Twitter

3 Twitter Tools to Accelerate Your Job Search

July 18, 2011 By Kristen Jacoway Leave a Comment

According to the 2010 JobVite Study, Twitter is one of the Top 3 social media sites for employers and recruiters to use to identify and source potential job candidates. Twitter is also a platform for someone in a job search to find job advice and job openings.

My Top 3 Twitter Tools for a Person in Career Transition

1) Hashtags: Hashtags has the # sign preceding the words. Most commonly seen is the #FF / #FollowFriday where people on Twitter recommend some of their favorite people with whom they follow on Twitter.

Essentially, hashtags create a filing cabinet. Type a hashtag in the Twitter search box and you will arrive on a page that is filled with tweets containing that hashtag. I recommend for people to find the most commonly used hashtags at a website called hashtags.org. You can type in your keyword and find the most commonly used hashtag for that keyword. If you are looking for an IT job, you could type #ITjobs in the Twitter search box and yield job postings for that particular career track.

2) TweetMyJobs: This website is a job board for Twitter. TweetMyJobs reports that they have had 1.6 million+ job postings from Twitter in the last 30 days. Pretty overwhelming, right? The beauty of this job board is that you are able to enter in your search parameters and zone in on jobs within a certain geographic location or even a company. While hashtags are good to understand and use, Twitter job boards such as TweetMyJobs makes locating jobs of interest on Twitter a snap.

3) Joining Chats: When you are launching a job search, many people have questions – i.e. best formats for resumes, what is personal branding, how to prepare for an interview, etc. Twitter has career professionals who have chats that occur on a scheduled basis. Some of the most common include #brandchat, #jobhuntchat, #careerchat, and #hirefriday. Go to Twitter and enter in the hashtag, i.e. #jobhuntchat, on the scheduled time it meets. You will need to enter this hashtag at the end of your question or comment for it to appear real-time in the Twitter chat.

Additionally, you can type in hashtags, such as #jobseekers, #jobsearch, #resume, #resumewriting, and more to see tweets that contain advice, links to articles, blog posts, resources, and more.

Twitter is a fertile ground for forging networking connections through chats and identifying potential job opportunities. Learning how to utilize the tools available through Twitter will facilitate your job searching efforts and may be the door to open for new possibilities. In my next article, I will show you how to set up for your Twitter profile on the new Twitter platform that has recently launched, giving you critical information that you need to fast-track your success with Twitter.

Filed Under: Social Media Tagged With: Business, careers, Employment, Hashtags, social networking, Tweet My Jobs, Twitter, Twitter Chats

The Role LinkedIn Plays in Uncovering Career Goals

June 20, 2011 By Kristen Jacoway Leave a Comment

Did you know that the Department of Labor has estimated that by a time a person is 38 years old, they will have had between 10 and 14 jobs on average? For some people, they will follow the same career path, but others might choose to go in a different direction for a myriad of reasons: industry has offshored or downsized, want to pursue something new, and more.

Did you know that LinkedIn is a great resource for helping you to find job titles in an area of interest? If you are passionate about baseball, but don’t know the various job possibilities in that industry, you can run a keyword search and find like-minded people in that industry. You will be able to see their job titles, LinkedIn groups to which they belong, companies where they’ve worked, and have an opportunity to reach out to network.

Additionally, you can conduct research on targeted companies. LinkedIn incorporated the ability to “follow” companies a few months ago. If you are targeting certain companies for which you may see as part of your long-term career objective, this information is very valuable. You will not only find out what’s newsworthy, but you will also see when a person is promoted or has left the company and the job title they have just vacated. Ever wonder about how to “tap the hidden job market?” Well, here you have that access.

LinkedIn has so many features in addition to the professional networking aspect for people in career transition or management. Remember to define your long-term goal and determine the steps you will need to take to reach those goals. What are the job titles in-between Marketing Assistant/Intern to Chief Marketing Officer? Unleash the power of LinkedIn to discover the career titles and network you will need to achieve your ultimate vision.

Filed Under: Social Media Tagged With: Business, Career Exploration, careers, Company Research, Employment, LinkedIn, social networking

Do You See What I See?

June 13, 2011 By Kristen Jacoway 2 Comments

The overwhelming majority of employers and recruiters Google potential candidates and the more I poll audiences to see if they realize this possibility, the more I find that at least half of the attendees never considered this probability. Have you Googled your name? If not, put your name in quotations (e.g. “Kristen Jacoway”) and see the results you obtain on the first 3 pages. Why only 3 pages? iProspect did a study that found that 92% of respondents do not click past page 3 of a Google search result.

Three Tools for Evaluating Your Own Online Brand

1. Online ID Calculator: The online identity calculator was developed by William Arruda and Kirsten Dixson who wrote Career Distinction. You will enter some data about yourself plus the results you receive when you Google your name. The calculator will score this information and rank you as Digitally Disguised, Digitally Dissed (means you have unfavorable results), Digitally Dabbling, and Digitally Distinct.

2. Addictomatic: You can search many different types of platforms to get a clearer picture of what the Internet says about you. Addictomatic shows tweets, posts through FriendFeed, videos on YouTube, Truveo Video Search, blogs, Wikio, Bing, Yahoo, Flickr, and more.

3. Klout: Klout is becoming a standard to measure your social influence online. Scores range from 1 to 100 using more than 35 variables on Facebook and Twitter to measure the following factors: True Reach, Amplification Probability, and Network Score.

In December 2009, research commissioned by Microsoft found that 79% of U.S. hiring managers and job recruiters reviewed online information about potential job candidates. If someone Googled you, are they likely to find information that supports that personal brand for which you want to be known or not? Consider this-in this same study, they found that 70% of U.S. hiring managers have rejected candidates based on what they found online about that person.

Tips to Protect Your Online Reputation

Be mindful of what you tweet or comment on Facebook: Companies have employed the utilization of social media listening tools like Radian6, TweetBeep, Google Alerts, Company Buzz, and more. The majority will “hear” if you use their name. Likewise, be careful of what you say in general. I had a client that made a negative comment on a Facebook Fan Page and the comment ended up being on page 1 of her Google results. If you wouldn’t want a potential employer to read it, then don’t type it!

Set Your Privacy Settings: Most social networking sites offer privacy settings. If you are using a social network strictly for personal use, then set high privacy controls. Think about your objective for using the site—is it to establish your thought leadership and expertise? If so, you will not want high privacy settings so that you can be found.

Be careful of what you are doing AT ALL TIMES: Not to increase paranoia, but be mindful of what you are doing. With the rise of people having cameras and video cameras on their phones, all it takes is a couple of clicks for a compromising picture or video to be uploaded to the Internet with your name tagged (making it a searchable result). The very nature of the Internet is viral and can be spread very quickly causing it to be difficult to remove.

Sign-up for Google Alerts for Your Name: Go to Google.com/alerts and sign-up to receive an email when your name appears on the Internet. Again, put your name in quotation marks to receive clean results. Monitor your online brand so that you can be proactive in managing your reputation.

How to Deal with Digital Dirt

Contact the owner of the website or administrator of the page and ask nicely for the content to be removed.

Contract with a company such as Reputation Defender if your attempts to get content removed are not successful.

Hire an Online Identity Strategist who can consult with you on ways to build a stellar online presence. Reach Communications certifies people worldwide as online identity strategists.

Develop relevant, on-brand results for the Internet via articles, book reviews, blogging, and more to try to push the results past page 3 of a Google search.

To summarize, be proactive about your personal brand both offline and online. At one point statistics showed that for every job opening, there were approximately seven qualified people on the candidate list. Monitoring your online brand is more critical today than ever in this tight job market.

Filed Under: Personal Branding for Careers, Personal Branding For Entrepreneurs, Social Media Tagged With: Business, careers, Employment, Google, online identity, social media, social networks, Twitter, William Arruda

Blog Link or WordPress Application

My first favorite app is the “Blog Link” or “WordPress” if you are blogging in your area of thought leadership. This app allows for your blog to automatically feed into your LinkedIn profile. The feature I appreciate is that it gives a teaser to your blog post; however, for a person to read the entire post, they have to click the title to continue reading it on your blog thus driving traffic to your website.

One piece of advice: If your blog is about your cooking passion and you are trying to build your brand as an IT expert, then feeding your cooking blog into your LinkedIn profile will confuse the brand you are trying to build.

Google Presentation Application

My second favorite app is “Google Presentation.” I use it to showcase video presentations I’ve done. I also know a number of people who have had a videoBIO (to see a videoBIO visit http://www.videoBIO.com ). Utilizing videos in brand-building is a cutting-edge technique not widely done at this time, so it can really set you apart from your competition.

10 Quick Steps on How to Add Video via “Google Presentations”

1. Once you sign in your LinkedIn account, go to the toolbar and find “More.” Select either “Applications” or “Get More Applications.”
2. Choose “Google Presentations.”
3. Once you install the Google Presentations’ application, select “Go to Application.”
4. From this page, you will be prompted to go to your Google account sign-in page.
5. On the left-hand side of your Google Docs page, select “Create New” and then select “Presentation.”
6. Select “Insert” and then click “Video” (your video will need to be uploaded to YouTube).
7. Search for your video and select to be inserted into the slide.
8. Title your video and save.
9. Return to LinkedIn and select the hyperlinked title of your presentation to share.
10. Lastly, click “Post to Profile.” Voila! You now have the ability to showcase your video presentation directly on your LinkedIn profile.

Tweets Application

The other app I have found very helpful is “Tweets.” You can display your most recent tweets on your LinkedIn profile. You can check the box that say “Twitter” when you post a LinkedIn status update and automatically update your Twitter status. Consider your audience when posting updates — make sure it applies to both your Twitter and LinkedIn audiences.

If you want to add other applications to your LinkedIn profile, sign in to your LinkedIn account. On the toolbar, select “More” and either select “Applications” or “Get More Applications.” At this writing, there are 19 apps available, including SlideShare Presentations, Reading List by Amazon, Events, Polls and more.

Filed Under: Social Media Tagged With: Business, career, Employment, Google, LinkedIn, LinkedIn Apps, social media, social networks, Twitter

5 Reasons Personal Branding is Critical in Career Management

April 5, 2011 By Kristen Jacoway 4 Comments

The importance of personal branding in a job search and career management is critical. You can get a 15-day free password to the Reach 360 Personal Brand assessment by clicking here. In the personal branding process, you will go through three phases to uncover what’s real and authentic about you.

Top Five Benefits of the Personal Branding Process

1. Knowing your personal brand helps you to stand apart from your competition.
2. Since your personal brand is real and authentic to you, you aren’t masquerading to be something you are not. Personal branding instills self-confidence.
3. If you are inside a corporation, personal branding facilitates using your strengths to support the corporate brand.
4. The personal branding process helps you to define your vision, purpose, values, and passions.
5. In turn, uncovering your personal brand attributes and defining your vision, purpose, values, and passions facilitates in you defining your ultimate role and place where you want to work (whether it be a company or for yourself).

Three Phases of the Personal Branding Process

The three phases of Reach Communications personal branding process includes extract, express, and exude. All three play a pivotal role in career management. The extract phase includes taking the Reach 360 Personal Brand assessment. The Reach 360 is a Web-based evaluation that takes your respondents approximately 5-10 minutes to complete.

What is a 360-Degree Personal Brand Evaluation?

You may have heard of 360 evaluations that are utilized in companies. Reach 360 evaluations are different because it protects the confidentiality of people’s responses as it is Web-based. A 360 evaluation allows input from people who are closest to you: friends, family, and colleagues. You will complete a 360 evaluation on yourself and then you can see how the personal brand attributes, team role, leadership role, strengths, etc. compare to what others say about you. How does it compare? Do people see you in the way for which you want to be known? If not, what steps can you take?

Another Resource

Another tool I recommend is the Strengthsfinder assessment. You will have to purchase the book by Marcus Buckingham (well worth the cost, though – excellent information!). After taking this assessment, you will be provided with your top strengths that will help you answer the interview or employer’s question, “What are your strengths?”

Conclusion

Extracting this information will position you to leverage your core competencies in your organization. In the next article, we will look at tools and resources to help you uncover your values and define your long- and short-term goals.

Filed Under: Discovering Your Brand, Personal Branding for Careers Tagged With: Business, Employment, Marcus Buckingham, Personal Brand, social media