Jennifer McClure`

Helping Leaders Leverage Influence & Create Maximum Impact.

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10 Steps to Get the Most Out of LinkedIn [Beyond the Basics]

LinkedIn is a great tool for growing your professional network, communicating your personal brand and connecting to opportunities to help you grow your career and your business. But are you going beyond the basics in how you utilize LinkedIn?

Beyond creating a Profile, connecting with your co-workers and joining a few Groups, here are 10 solid steps you should take to get the most out of the opportunities that being a part of the LinkedIn network presents:

1. Post relevant and helpful information in the “Share an Update” box on a regular basis.

Want to build your personal brand and professional reputation? Then become known as a resource or “go to” person in your field or industry. Read a great article? Share it with a comment. Aware of an interesting networking or professional development event? Share it and let your network know you’re going.

I share a ton of links and resources with my network via Twitter, Facebook, and Linked In, and in my experience the engagement is often higher and of better quality (i.e. informative threaded discussions, new connections made, etc.) when shared via my status update on LinkedIn.

Action Step: Share a LinkedIn Status Update with your network at least 3 times per week. Add this activity to your calendar or To Do list to ensure it gets done.

[Read more…]

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Personal Branding For Career Growth & Success [Presentation]

Last week, I once again had the privilege of speaking to a group of over 50 women who have been selected for the Cincinnati USA Regional Chamber’s WE Lead Program. This was the 3rd year in a row that I’ve had the opportunity to share with the participants in this 10 month leadership development program about the importance of Personal Branding in today’s competitive employment environment.

It’s always a pleasure to spend time with highly talented women with such high potential and I really enjoy the conversation and feedback that happens as a result!

In my “Personal Branding for Career Success” session, the participants are initially asked to write a few words or statements describing what they believe their Personal Brand is today, as well as what they’d like for it to be (assuming that is different). Then, we work as a group to get that message into a a succinct Personal Brand Statement for each individual that they can utilize as a base for building a strong online presence, focusing their career activities and even prioritizing and identifying ways to get noticed within and outside of work.

I’ve included the presentation deck from last week’s presentation below.

Personal Branding for Career Growth – Feb 2012
Personally, I’m a bit over the term “personal branding”, but I do still see tremendous value in the concepts of understanding who you are and being able to communicate your value, as well as to articulate what differentiates you from others in your field. Clearly, many of the participants did as well, as evidenced by some of their comments:
“This was a fascinating topic. Hadn’t thought a lot about doing personal branding, but see how it fits with career and work. She was very organized with presentation, handouts, small group activity and content was great.”
“Excellent, but I left feeling somewhat inadequate. Time to get to work!”
“Helped to spend some time reworking my personal brand statement. She knows her stuff.”
“So helpful! Lots of steps to take to claim my brand.”
“People do have a perception of me. I need to take control of that.”
“Branding session impressed on me the importance of keeping social media tools updated.”
“Thanks so much for sharing your expertise with our WE Lead class yesterday! Your presentation is always one of the best-received of the entire program and that was true again this year. Clearly the information you share resonates with the group and it motivates them to take action. Please know how much we appreciate your contribution to WE Lead and hope you take pride in the lasting impact you are making for these women. – Diana Long, Program Manager Women Excel
What’s your take on the topic of Personal Branding? Love it? Hate it? Think it’s more important than ever to have one?

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If Google Says I’m the Best Recruiter in the World… It Must Be True

You may have heard this phrase before:

“It’s not who you know… but who knows you – and what they say about you.”

I believe that statement is very true, but since we live in an increasingly online world, maybe it should be modified to:

“It’s not who you know, or what they say about you… it’s what Google says about you.”

Case in point – a short email I received last week:

Email shot

Wondering if Curt was on to something, I Googled the phrase “best recruiter in the world” and here’s what I found:

Google shot

The first two unpaid hits out of over 2,200 results came from a tongue-in-cheek post on this blog from July 2009:

Best Recruiter shot

I’m no SEO expert, but I did choose the title intentionally back then, assuming that it’s possible people (ideally client companies) sometimes go to Google and start with that phrase when looking for a Recruiter. A long shot I know. But nothing ventured, nothing gained right? As someone responsible for developing my own business, I try to use every option available to me.

Looks like my title strategery worked a little better than I expected – or at least it worked well enough to give me a laugh. And Curt got a nice response for being a little more creative than the too often used – “I see you’re a Recruiter. Can you help me find a job?”

This cheeky little example was a good reminder for me of how important it is to be mindful of what I put out there on the interwebs. Like it or not, your credibility (and mine) is being judged every day by people searching Google (and other search engines) who are finding your blog posts, tweets, LinkedIn profile, etc.

Thankfully, Google got it right this time.

Let’s be careful out there…

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Personal Branding and Women Leaders

Today, I had the privilege of speaking about Personal Branding to the 50+ participants in the 2009/2010 class of the Cincinnati USA Regional Chamber's Leadership Development Program for Women – – WE Lead. It was an honor to be able to spend some time with some of Cincinnati's leading women and to talk with them about the importance of having a "personal brand" to better manage their careers and attract business opportunities. 

During the presentation, I shared how my own personal brand has evolved over the last few years and is currently "under construction" (see my last post) as I prepare to take this itty bitty world by storm in 2010. Stay tuned…

An embed of the presentation is included below (email subscribers click through to view):

Your Personal Brand

Resources shared with participants:

10 Steps to Uncovering and Building Your Authentic Personal Brand by Meg Guiseppi

Books:

* Career Distinction: Stand Out by Building Your Brand by William Arruda & Kirsten Dixon

    – Free downloadable workbook

    – 360°Reach™ – Personal Brand Assessment (with book purchase)

* Now, Discover Your Strengths by Marcus Buckingham & Donald O. Clifton

    – Take Gallup’s StrengthsFinder.com profile online (with code from book purchase)

e-Book:

* Free e-book on Personal Branding by Chris Brogan

Assessments:

* What’s The Value of your Personal Brand Quiz

* Online Identity Calculator

Recommended Blogs:

* Personal Branding Blog

* Executive Career Brand

Google Alerts:

* http://www.google.com/alerts

******

Personal Branding was all the rage a couple of years ago, but the
hoopla seems to have faded a bit recently.

While it may be called something different in the future, I think it will always be important to define who you are, what you do, who you do it for and the
value you offer. Doing so helps you to focus your efforts and target opportunities and also allows you to engage your network to assist you in getting what you want.

What do you think about having a Personal Brand? Is it still necessary? Or is the concept so 2000 and late?

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Can Your Awesomeness Be Contained To 7 Words?

Recently, I came across a discussion in a LinkedIn Group that I manage, where a member posted an interesting Discussion topic that sparked over 175 comments. It was a simple request:

Can Your Awesomeness Be Contained To 7 Words?

Describe what you do in exactly 7 words.

It was interesting to see all of the responses to the question over a few weeks, and through them I learned about/became interested in several people that I wasn’t familiar with who conveyed their personal or business brand in a concise and meaningful way.

Others paid no attention to the 7-word limit, and rambled on as they likely would in person (rule-breakers). A few used less that 7 words (show-offs/also rule-breakers), and at least one person answered the question several times with a different 7-word response each time (confused).

Whether you’re a seasoned professional, a business owner, a person in career transition, or a recent college grad, it’s important to have a descriptive and succinct response to the inevitable question you’ll encounter when meeting someone for the first time – “What do you do?”.

And while it’s not typically required to limit yourself to 7 words, I think this is a good exercise, and worth your time to figure out a concise way to describe who you are, and what you do

Can you describe your awesomeness in exactly 7 words?

Give it a shot in the comments!

And if you’re wondering what the perfect 7 word description is for myself…

World’s only human who doesn’t drink coffee.

Okay, I got to get to work on that. 🙂


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