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Empower Brand "You" #TChat Preview

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We’ve made the business case for the unemployed and helped to further humanize brands. The growing space in between elevates employee and employer to better see into each other’s yard. The Internet’s collaborative inter-connectivity empowers us all to own our online presence, our personal branding, our development, our successes, and our painful failures. And own them we must. This goes for professionals and the enterprise.

This new level of social transparency presents a peer-vetted playing field unprecedented in the world of work. We continue to learn from one another, mentor one another, give it to each other straight whether we live in the same town our across the globe — especially about professonal development and career decisions. Inject a little branded entertainment and you’ve potentially got something crazy good on your hands.

Or more precisely, something crazy good on your computer screen. Queue the wildly popular recruiting show called “Top Recruiter, The Competition Miami” reality show. Creator and executive producer Chris LaVoie brought together savvy recruiter pros and pitted them against one another with a variety of talent acquisition tasks, all in the name of helping professionals find promising employment. Mix in HR and recruiting thought-leader judges along with some melodramatic moments, and you’ve got a hit with season 1. (He’s working on season 2 now.)

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Listen to the #TChat Radio show

This week on TalentCulture’s #TChat Radio and Twitter #TChat, we’re going to discuss the good and the bad of putting such an important topic under the hyper-reality TV camera lens.

This week’s theme is world of work transparency and branded entertainment. Following are our very special guests:

Chris LaVoie (@TopRecruiterTV) — creator, executive producer and founder of “Top Recruiter, The Competition Miami” reality show, Chris enjoys creating and producing media that creates a fan base buzz in the digital marketing space for human resources and talent acquisition. He has a deep expertise in producing, advertising, marketing, branding, sourcing and social media, and he applies his channel knowledge in attracting the industry. Chris is the founder, as well, of LaVoie Entertainment and iccimedia.

Rayanne Thorn (@Ray_anne) — vice president of communications and branding for Evenbase US, Rayanne is one of the judges from season 1 of “Top Recruiter.”

And here are this week’s questions:

Q1: The level of transparency for job candidates, employees and employers is higher than ever. Good or bad? Why or why not?

Q2: Does the world of work need a reality-based TV show? Why or why not?

Q3: Do we really live in an online peer-vetted playing field? Why or why not?

Q4: Should we film our daily body of work? What other technologies should we use to empower our personal and corporate brands?

Q5: What should business leaders do to better improve the recruiting process and the candidate experience?

So please tune in. #TChat Radio is Tuesday Feb. 26 at 7:30pm ET / 4:30pm PT, when yours truly (@MeghanMBiro) and Kevin W. Grossman (@KevinWGrossman) will chat it up with Chris. Then, it’s on to the Twitter stream for our weekly #TChat Twitter conversation Wednesday, Feb. 27, from 7-8 pm ET, when Rayanne will guest moderate. We look forward to your tweets. Join us!

5 Steps for Career Branding: Make Employers Come to You

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In your job search, you, the job seeker, seek out the employer, but that doesn’t have to be the case throughout your entire career.  There are many ways that you can brand yourself to stand out, increase your visibility in front of career stakeholders and inevitably make employers come to you.

Here are just 5 ways you can change the game and get employers to come to you:

1. Start Blogging: Starting and maintaining your own blog requires investment and commitment of your time, energy and creativity.  While you can choose to blog on any topic you desire, focusing your blog’s theme and content to better serve your industry can be an outstanding way to show off your personal brand and demonstrate your unique value to potential employers and career stakeholders.  Not only can this blog be a great entrepreneurial venture to include on your resume and online profiles, but it shows your hiring managers and interviewers industry involvement and contribution outside of your full-time experience.  Blogs are very easy to get started.  There are both free and self-hosted platforms to choose from, including WordPress, Blogger and Typepad.

2. Get Quoted: Whether or not you start your own blog or contribute guest posts regularly to industry-related blogs, getting quoted online in blogs and other online magazines or offline in books or other periodicals on a topic relevant and valuable to your industry and target employers adds a new credential for you to taut in your job search, but also really boosts your personal brand for your long-term career.  HelpaReporter.com (HARO) is a FREE service that links reporters, journalists, bloggers and authors with experts and experts-to-be to get quoted in print or online media.  Sign-up to receive daily queries from HARO and respond as often as possible and appropriate to any related to your field or areas of interest.  Before long, you may be quoted in the Wall Street Journal, a published book or interviewed for leading blog, which will increase your credibility  across your network and beyond.

3. Get to the People Behind the Postings: Most job seekers and professionals neglect informational interviews, likely because they sound boring, hard to get, ineffective and/or all of the above.  Informational interviews are actually powerfully effective both in your job search and in your career networking.  By reaching out and asking for a few minutes to learn about a fellow professional’s career, experience and advice (Note: this does not mean asking for a job), you get a chance to introduce yourself and your brand, share your value and make a stronger connection with someone new.  While this person may not be in the position to hire or ready to hire at the time of your interview, you are now on that individual’s radar and maybe a first go-to candidate for the next opportunity that comes up.

4. Offer Your Ideas: If you’re willing to put a little work into targeted job searches and take a small, calculated risk, you might consider doing a little research for your chosen company, identify the right contacts within and offer them a free proposal of fresh ideas related to trends and opportunities in the industry or functional area.  Consider sharing some relevant case studies that support your suggestions and spark more thought.  It will be essential that you really think these through in putting them together and that they be grammatically correct etc., as these may be someone’s first or last impression of you.  Offering your ideas or suggestions is risky in the sense that it opens the door for rejection or no response; however, it immediately shows the recipient your investment, your creativity 7and ultimately the value you offer the organization.

5. Step Up to the Podium: If you like the opportunity to speak publically and have something relevant to share with your peers, whether it be advice, experience or case studies, consider developing a presentation or presentations that you can pitch to present for various industry associations, alumni groups and other organizations.  Whether they are webinars or in-person events, presenting to an audience sets you apart as a confident thought leader who has true value to share with others, whether it be an audience or an employer.  Do a little background research on both what organizations and associations are out there and exactly what topics and events are currently being offered so to determine how you could offer something to serve unmet needs or compliment their current event programing.

Chris Perry, MBA is a Gen Y brand and marketing generator, a career search and personal branding expert and the founder of Career Rocketeer, Launchpad, Blogaristo and more.

Ten Ways to Kill Your Twitter Brand

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Twitter is a powerful social networking tool that helps you brand yourself and grow your own community of followers. Just as with any professional or social network, everything you do on Twitter can have a positive or negative impact on you, your personal brand and your reputation.

Whether you’ve been tweeting for a while or are just getting started, protect your Twitter brand by avoiding these 10 fatal Twitter personal branding mistakes:

1) Mixing Business and Pleasure

If you are on Twitter with the objective of building your personal brand for career advancement, focus more on tweets you would feel comfortable sharing with an employer.  This doesn’t mean you can’t tweet anything personal.  I simply suggest you create a separate profile for your social life so not to confuse and/or turn off either group of followers.

2) Spamming

One of the top reasons people lose followers on Twitter is that they over-promote themselves, their businesses, their blogs and/or their offerings.  Always maintain the 80/20 balance in your contributions: 80% of your tweets should be free and value-added and the remaining 20% can be more self-serving in nature.

3) Not Helping Your Network

Helping others, whether it be promoting their efforts, re-tweeting their content, sharing a valuable resource with them or answering a question they have posted, can earn you a loyal following and help build your network.  As a Twitter rule of thumb, always make sure to give more than you receive.

4) Not Tweeting Enough

It is estimated that over a quarter of all Twitter accounts are inactive.  If you are inactive or infrequent in your Twitter contributions and activity, it is going to be very apparent to any potential followers and/or network contacts. Be sure to invest some time and energy into your account and tweet on a regular basis so to engage and build a network of followers.

5) Forgetting a Personal Avatar

In today’s digital world, it is even more important to get the people out from behind the profiles.  Skip the business logo and make sure that you include your own personal photo as your avatar so potential followers can see who they are interacting with.

6) Wasting Your Real Estate

Your Twitter profile offers you a lot of real estate that you can leverage to promote yourself, your profiles, your blog and more.  First, make sure to include a personal bio or summary and site or profile link in your profile sidebar.  Also, don’t forget to create a personalized background.  This can include a personal photo, your business logo, as well as business, personal and/or contact information and links.

7) Following Everyone Under the Twitter Sun

While building your network does involve you following other Twitter users, it comes across desperate and less professional when you have thousands of followees, but much fewer followers.  Be patient in your network building and avoid letting the number of your followees overtake the number of your followers.

8 ) Plagiarizing

Don’t take credit for a tweet or idea that isn’t your own.  While it technically isn’t a crime, it isn’t right or professional, won’t build a good relationship with the originator and may hurt your brand if your current and potential followers were to find out.  Whenever you are sharing something with your followers that you are sourcing from someone else, be sure to add an “RT” at the beginning to show that you are re-tweeting it and/or include @JohnSmith at the end to give credit to the originator.

9) Only Re-Tweeting

Re-tweeting others’ tweets and links can help you build stronger relationships with your followers and with others within the Twitter universe; however, make sure that you contribute your own POV and your thoughts, opinions and resources and are not guilty of solely re-tweeting everyone else’s.  You won’t build your brand as a thought leader if you don’t have any thoughts of your own.

10) Not Creating a Dialogue

Obviously, to be active on Twitter, you have to start tweeting.  However, to be truly effective on Twitter, you must go beyond your own tweets and engage others in two-way conversation.  This can be down by asking questions of your followers and answering those they post, initiating or participating in Twitter chats and responding promptly to any direct messages or @ messages sent to you.

Chris Perry, MBA is a Gen Y brand and marketing generator, a career search and personal branding expert and the founder of Career Rocketeer, Launchpad, Blogaristo and more.

Creating an Interactive Personal Brand

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More and more people are talking about the importance of personal branding both in your career search and in your career development. Effective personal branding not only makes you stand out from the crowd to employers and recruiters; it can also increase your job security by communicating your value as a leader and team player to your organization.

What is personal branding?

Personal branding is the process of identifying the unique and differentiating value that you can bring to an organization, team and/or project, and communicating it in a professionally memorable and consistent manner in all of your actions and outputs, both online and offline, to all current and prospective stakeholders in your career.

Everyone has a unique personal brand. You communicate your own brand in everything you do — whether you know it or not. It is important to remember that personal branding is so much more than what you put on your social networks or what you write on a blog.

It’s who you are inside and out, online AND offline. Your personal brand is your reputation.

How do you create your personal brand?

1)     Write down your differentiating strengths (those you feel make you stand out from the rest)

2)     Ask your friends, family and colleagues/managers to do the same

3)     Identify the top 3 to 5 strengths that you feel will support the career direction you want to pursue

4)     Create/find a word or phrase that can become your personal brand and that represents these strengths

5)     Develop a short pitch that can follow your brand, describing your strengths in more detail

Note: Ensure that your word or phrase is versatile and can change with your direction

How do you build your personal brand?

There are many ways that you can build and communicate your personal brand both online and in-person; however, to get you started, here are some topline recommendations for establishing your brand and credibility in today’s career marketplace:

Get active and get visible online and offline: If no one meets you or sees you, it won’t matter how strong your personal brand is.  Therefore, it is essential that you get your name and yourself in front of your target network.  Here are some ways to increase your visibility:

  • Create a LinkedIn profile and follow the suggested steps to complete your profile 100%, making sure you include your personal brand and pitch in your subtitle and summary sections
  • Create a Google account and profile for improved search engine optimization
  • Include your personal brand on your resume, cover letter, business cards, email signature, voicemail message and across your other social networks, such as Twitter and Facebook
  • Consider creating a personal website or blog site where you can house all of your information, including experience, education, skills, honors, entrepreneurial efforts and more
  • Join associations or networking groups within your industry and try attending their events to meet new contacts and build your target network.  Be sure to share your personal brand with those new contacts you meet
  • Conduct informational interviews with target network contacts (whether or not you’re seeking a job) and share your personal brand with them in your introductions

Contribute consistent value: Make sure that everything you contribute is valuable to those with whom you share it and also relevant to and supportive of your personal brand.  Consistency is critical, for the more consistent all of your own marketing efforts are both online and offline, the more powerful and memorable your personal brand impression will be on all current and prospective stakeholders in your career.  Here are some ways you start contributing value:

  • Book or product reviews
  • Tweets
  • Comments on other blog posts
  • Blog articles or articles for print publications
  • Discussions in LinkedIn Groups or in other forums
  • Advice via LinkedIn Answers and other forums

Become a thought leader: As you grow the quantity, quality and uniqueness of your contributions, you may be increasingly considered as an industry thought leader.  Here are some ways to support and even expedite your rise to thought leadership:

  • Start your own blog with a unique POV on your industry/area of interest
  • Found a company with relevant and valuable products/services/resources for the industry
  • Publish and offer print and/or electronic publications
  • Get quoted in the media by joining HARO and contributing advice, experiences and insights to writers and journalists seeking expert sources
  • Find ways to bring fellow industry thought leaders together on a project or at an event
  • Find ways to contribute to the projects or events of fellow industry experts
  • Get recommended on LinkedIn and any other networks where you or your offerings are available and/or collect and display testimonials from customers, clients and partners

Chris Perry, MBA is a Gen Y brand and marketing generator, a career search and personal branding expert and the founder of Career Rocketeer, Launchpad, Blogaristo and more.