Career Distinction: Stand Out By Building Your Brand by William Arruda and Kirsten Dixson.

Visit CareerDistinction.com

I'm in Silicon Valley speaking at the Women in Technology International Conference today. I was delighted to discover in my Personal Branding Google Alert this morning that my co-author William Arruda is featured in this Time Magazine article.

The article leads with the 360Reach personal brand assessment that William developed. We use this powerful tool with each client.

Jason Alba at JibberJobber contacted me last week. He wanted to network with me and asked me if I was "still pursuing this blog." Thanks for the nudge! :-)

See, it really isn't good for your brand to abandon your blog!

Jason and I had a great conversation where I shared that my main reason for the lack of posts is that I've been consumed with other writing. William Arruda and I are co-authoring Career Distinction: Stand Out by Building Your Brand. Wiley is our publisher, and it will be available Spring 2007. I'll be back soon after the manuscript is submitted.

Article by Kirsten Dixson, originally published on TheLadders.com.

Like it or not, emerging technology for social networking and job matching is going to impact your career. Employers are increasingly searching for the exact right fit, and they're using this technology to reach out to talent. Paul Copcutt, a Toronto-based recruiter, tells us, "Two years ago they might have settled for 8 or 9 off a list of 12 must-haves, now they are saying they want 10, 11 or even all 12. They know people are not going to stay with them forever, so if they are going to hire someone for a 'limited' amount of time, they want the best."

The ideal situation for every job seeker is that, instead of applying for jobs, employers find you. So, how do you position yourself to be the hunted rather than the hunter? Become known as an expert.

Wikipedia.org defines expert as "someone widely recognized as a reliable source of knowledge, technique, or skill whose judgment is accorded authority and status by the public or their peers." An expert typically has amassed experience and/or education in a specialized field, and, in some cases, has met established criteria for expert status.

But, there's also a different kind of "expert". Often, people are perceived as experts because they are thought leaders who've gained visibility in a very narrowly focused area of interest. They stand out because they've invested a great deal of time and energy into steadily marketing their expertise to a very specific target audience.

I am the Master of My Domain
I can hear you objecting, "I'm interested in so many things; how can I possibly choose one, narrow area of focus?" It's human nature to keep our options open, but a mild interest in everything often translates into a lack of expertise. When your interests and energies are widely spread, there's a greater chance that you'll be overlooked when there is a need for an expert. And don't worry about limiting yourself! Remember, you can always expand into other areas once you've become widely sought after for your expertise.

To find your area of expertise, survey your colleagues. What subject comes to mind when they think of you? Also, think about the subjects about which you are passionate. What do you talk about at cocktail parties? To what areas of the bookstore do you gravitate? What kind of work would you do even if you weren't paid for it? Who is your ideal target audience and what can you offer them that others cannot?

If you can't eliminate some areas of interest, see how you can creatively combine them to differentiate yourself. What's the umbrella theme that unites the seemingly disparate facets of your career? These intersections and overarching themes are often the basis for your distinctive area of expertise.

Raising Your Profile
Once you identify your area of expertise, you must become visible to those who can use your knowledge and skills. Since recruiters and hiring managers increasingly turn to the Web to find and research candidates, it's necessary to cultivate an on-brand online identity. Start by Googling your name and assessing what your online identity currently looks like. Is your expertise evidenced by the results?

Here are some ways to control and cultivate your online identity:

• Create a Web portfolio and/or blog with your name as the domain name. Check out examples at www.brandego.com/gallery.php
• Create public profiles through LinkedIn and/or Ziggs.
• Update or initiate your profile at ZoomInfo.com
• Write articles for online publications for your niche, including those of relevant professional associations
• Review books at Amazon.com related to your area of expertise
• Post comments on the blogs of like-minded experts

The Payoff
It pays to go to all the trouble of positioning yourself as an expert. According to Winnie Anderson, a brand strategist in New Jersey, "One of the biggest benefits of being an expert is the control it gives you over your time, your income, your life, etc. Surveys of careerists regularly cite a lack of control in their job as a source of dissatisfaction. When you're an expert, you often have the choice of projects that you find most enjoyable and rewarding."

Added Pressure
The biggest caveat of being an expert is the increased pressure to stay on top. A client recently told me that he didn't want to claim that he was an expert because that meant that he wouldn't need to continue to learn. I disagreed. Expertise doesn't necessarily mean mastery. Becoming an expert is easier to handle when you realize that you just need to remain a few steps ahead in your chosen specialty. You can leverage technology to make it easier to monitor information. Subscribe to RSS feeds of industry blogs and set up Google news alerts for your area of expertise.

Of course, you are not going to become an expert overnight. It's a goal you must work toward one step at a time. With a clear vision in mind, you'll be less likely to be sidetracked. As Henry Ford once said, "You can't build a reputation on what you are going to do." Establish yourself as an expert to watch your professional reputation soar.

I recently had the opportunity to review a small company that is producing online "bios," and I was struck by the similarities of their description of their offerings to ours. You know what they say about imitation. :-)
What does concern me is that an uneducated consumer, who is shopping for a web portfolio and personal branding service, may choose one without asking some necessary questions first. Here are some things to keep in mind when shopping for a web portfolio service focused on personal branding. Credentials and Expertise
Does the company have a team composed of experienced individuals skilled in personal branding, design, writing, and Web technologies?

Web Technologies
Audio, video, Flash, blogs, podcasts, screencasts, etc. Any service worth its salt should offer these and more. Do they have the ability to create PDF, Word, Excel, PowerPoint downloads? Are the PDFs optimized for search engine indexing? Ask to see examples of sites using each of the technologies you are considering.

Understanding of Web Usability Rules
The field of Web usability is vast, but I'll mention a few important items to keep in mind when evaluating potential Web portfolio companies.

• Mystery navigation, the kind of navigation that is hidden until you roll your mouse over an object on the screen, is not user friendly.
• Moving navigation, where the navigation bar goes from a vertical to a horizontal position from page to page, is not user friendly.
• ALT tags, which show textual information about an image when the mouse hovers over, are friendly and should be used.
• Gratuitous use of Flash that serves only as eye-candy may seem 'hip' but what purpose does it serve? Visitors do not want to wade through a screen of Flash animation of your company logo every time they visit your site (assuming they even return).
• Do you want visitors having to frantically scramble to turn OFF the music that starts playing when your portfolio home page loads? As I stated in my previous Podcast, audio that automatically launches from your home page will repulse just about any prospective employer viewing your portfolio and any service that suggests adding this to your site clearly has no clue about job-search etiquette.

Appropriate Use of Technology
Remember, technology for technology's sake is pointless. When it comes to video, no one wants to watch a talking head welcoming you to their site and/or tell you why they are so wonderful. If you are a marketing expert, show that interview you did for CNN. Leader in finance? Show your MSNBC interview. But it doesn't have to be some highfalutin, big- name TV network. If you claim to be a community activist, show yourself speaking at a local event. If you presented a paper at a conference, show a clip of your presentation or get permission to use the clip of you speaking at the town/city meeting from your local Community Service channel. Details. Details.
When push comes to shove, it's the little things that make a good Web portfolio service. Ask the service if they offer FTP access should you be inclined to make changes to the site yourself. Does the contact form they include on your site write to a database so you have a record of all potential leads? Do they even offer a contact form? Can they provide SEO services to better position you in search engines? (If they guarantee the #1 listing in search engines, turn and run away quickly.) I caution you to ask a lot of questions about the career marketing professionals with whom you are considering working, and remember that if you are going to have an amatueruish web portfolio, it's really better to have none at all.

Jennifer Machiaverna at TheLadders.com sent me the link to Kevin's web portfolio, and asked me what I thought about it.

At first glance, I thought that Monster.com had launched a portfolio service (which caused my stomach to flip). Then I read this disclaimer on Kevin's hilarious About page, and realized that is what he intended:

Just because this site looks a lot like Monster.com and even has some of the same graphics and navigation - it is in no way affiliated with Monster.com. While it may just look like a blatant rip off of Monster, it is supposed to be a parody of the site and therefore will hopefully be ignored by the attorneys at Monster.com. However, should they choose to send me a cease and desist letter and begin threatening legal action, that will help me get additional PR which should boost traffic and ultimately land me a job. Or if they were smart, they would use me as an example of creative ways to find work so I wouldn't need this site.

Kevin's creative approach wouldn't work for all people in all types of positions, but that's the point. I don't know Kevin, but it's clear that he's only going to be satisfied in roles where his unique thinking will be valued. By letting his personality shine through in his web portfolio, he's weeding out the environments that wouldn't be a good match. Since Kevin is targeting marketing, it makes sense that he's showing that he can apply the knowledge that he's acquired from his day job to his own personal campaign.

The one thing that I'm not sure about is his cash prize offer. I haven't seen that one before, and I welcome comments on this.

And, Kevin, if you are reading, please let us know how it all works out!

One of the questions that I'm asked frequently about blogging is, "How often do I need to post?" It's an understandable concern since we are all too busy to have one more thing to feed.

Blogging experts will tell you that three times a week is ideal. I'm finding that this is not practical for most people, however. I think that bloggers should aim to post once a week, and definitely not post less than twice a month.

As you can see, I'm not always heeding my own advice. But I do think that it is very beneficial to have and maintain a blog. I'm writing this in a Starbucks in Manhattan so that I can save face when I talk about blogging tonight at the New York chapter meeting of the Association of Career Professionals International.

Inactivity on a blog does two things:

1. It demonstrates that you are not serious about your blog.
2. It makes your blog less search-engine friendly.

Tips for posting more frequently:

• Be attuned to content all the time and have a system for jotting down your ideas so that when you go to post it's easy.
• Remember that blog posts, unlike articles, can be super short as long as they are useful. Sometimes, you can write a sentence and link to something you've found.
• When you have some extra time, you can set up posts to publish on a future date.

Well, since this is turning into an article, I'll close and go prepare for my presentation tonight. Next I need to create another episode of our podcast, so I won't be accused of being a podfader!

This is Episode 2 of B4: Do you want to rent or own your online identity? A discussion of templates vs. custom design. (8:41 minutes)

Click here to download this podcast in mp3 format.

Show Notes

These are the websites to which I referred:

Myriam-Rose Kohn's Branded Website

Qfolio.com - Very well-executed templates for creative professionals.

Check out other custom designs that we created for our clients.

If you'd like to subscribe to this podcast using a RSS feed, download free aggregator software like iPodder and right click on the orange syndication icon on the upper right of this page. Copy the link to the feed into your aggregator. Or, add this podcast to iTunes with one click.

I welcome your comments, questions and show ideas. Email me or call our comments line at (214) 615-6505 ext. 9443. We may feature you in a future show.

Since we build websites and blogs for individuals to help them establish and control their online identities for career management, most often we are thinking about their search engine rankings when someone is looking for them by name.

If you have an uncommon or unusually spelled name, like Kirsten Dixson or Brandego, then you will probably get the results that you want organically — without a lot of effort and investment. If you also have a presence on a very popular site, then you might need to work a little harder to get your own site to rank higher.

If you do have a common name, like our client William Reed, then you will have to optimize for your name and your niche — for example, William Reed Healthcare Finance. Try Googling that. The results just aren't the same if you only type in William Reed. If he also consistently uses William F. Reed, and people know to look for him by that in the search engines, then he will come up near the top of page one in Google.

Here are 10 Search Engine Optimization tips from our fabulous personal branding client and the Search Marketing Insider, Jessica Bowman:

1. Identify what users enter in search engines with Overture's keyword suggestion tool and WordTracker, and include them in your site's page copy. 
2. Create unique meta data for each page, this is a "behind the scenes" change that does not appear to users who visit your site, but often appears as the description in the search engine results.
3. Create unique page titles for each page. This is the content that appears at the top of the browser window (typically a bar). This is also the copy used for the link in search engine results. If the page title is the same throughout your entire site, search engines are unlikely to list other pages within your site.
4. Increase the links pointing to your site. Links pointing to your site are considered votes for your site. In search engine marketing, "all votes are not created equal." A link from a relevant site that has many links pointing to it is significantly more valuable than a link from a site that has very few links or that is on a topic unrelated to your site.
5. Submit to search engine directories, but do your research first. There are many best practices and guidelines to know before your submit to directories, and the rules for each are different. Also, keep a record of the directories to which you submit in case you need to question why your website hasn't been listed.
6. If you aren't in a search engine, submit your site. You must submit your site to each engine separately. Once you are in a search engine, you do not need to resubmit your site. If there are links to your site out on the Internet, most search engines will find your site on its own. A lot of companies offer this as a service, but it can be done for free.
7. Add a site map.
8. Update page copy no less than quarterly for pages you want to appear in search engines. Anecdotally, sites notice an increase in rankings for a few months after updates.
9. Do not use too many hyperlinks on a single page. Think of your page as a ship and the hyperlinks as holes. If your ship has too many holes, it will sink in the search engine results. You need to effectively balance the links with the page copy.
10. Use keywords throughout the entire page. On any given page, weave your keywords throughout the entire page (beginning, middle and end). Search engines prefer to display pages that are all about the user's search, rather than a page that mentions the topic in one section of the page. At least one search engine specifically looks for keywords at the end of the page copy. On a blog, this is really easy to do for your name. Just make sure that the "posted by" information in the footer includes your full name.

Keep in mind that SEO never ends. Search engines change their formula for what makes a #1 site, and you have no control over what your competitors may be doing.

The unexpected thing about SEO is that it gives you a new way of thinking about your website and offerings. When you dive into identifying what people actually type into search engines, you see your site more objectively from the users' point of view.

You really can execute SEO yourself. As Jessica Bowman always says, "Search engine optimization isn't rocket science, It's just different than anything you have done before."

Brandego® just received this certificate from the US Patent and Trademark Office that our mark as been registered - after a very long process. Exciting! Much thanks to Brian Wu, Brandego's Design Director, for making this happen and for coming up with our business name.

To differentiate your personal brand, it's great to own the trademark on something that can only come from you. What might that be?