The few who even have Twitter accounts put up a few tweets initially, and then let it go. Their Twitter stream stopped dead months or years ago.

This doesn’t look very good, and could be detrimental to them. A Twitter account that’s collecting cobwebs says “I don’t really know much or care to know about social media and the new world of work.”

Understandably, they’re busy people strapped for time, trying to juggle demanding full-time jobs with a full-time job search. They’ve heard too many people say what a time drain Twitter can be.

They’re right. Without a solid Twitter strategy, each visit can easily eat up an hour or more. They just don’t have that kind of extra time.

3 Strategies to Leverage the Value of Twitter . . . Without Devoting Too Much Time

If these clients would tap into the research they’ve done on the companies they’re targeting, they could reap plenty of benefits from Twitter in just 10 to 15 minutes, a few days a week, especially because the majority of job seekers aren’t doing anything with Twitter.

1. Stay Focused on Your Job Search and Your Personal Brand

Don’t start or engage in conversations not related to your job search. No one really needs to know what you had for breakfast or what movie you saw last night.

Keep the majority of your tweets relevant to your personal brand, industry, areas of expertise, and value to your target companies. That doesn’t mean you can’t tweet off-topics and humorous tidbits, when you have extra time.

2. Do a Lot of Retweeting

Simply the act of tweeting again a tweet that someone else has tweeted, retweeting (abbreviated as “RT”) is one of my favorite ways to use Twitter and one of the best ways to save time there.

Even if you do nothing else on Twitter, posting relevant retweets can be a powerful way to build brand evangelism, a quality Twitter following, and get on the radar and stay top-of-mind with people you want to notice you.

First, gather up a long list of the right people to retweet. Who are these people? Colleagues, industry thought leaders and subject matter experts, top-level executives (or hiring decision makers) at your target companies, and executive recruiters in your niche, to name a few.

Search for them on Twitter, follow them, and start retweeting them. It’s as easy as that!

It’s critical to include in your retweet the @username of the person who originated the tweet, because they’ll see the retweet on their “Notifications” page. Chances are you’ll get noticed, if enough of your retweets show up there for each person you’re retweeting. If a good retweet doesn’t mention the original author, take the time to track them down and include their @username.

Retweeting Strategies to Help You Get Noticed

While retweeting is very effective for sharing good information and gaining attention, it needs to be done carefully or it won’t be as effective as it could be:

• Don’t automatically retweet something containing a link without first checking it, to make sure it’s not a bad link and doesn’t lead somewhere you don’t really want to send people.
• Structure your original tweets so that they’re short enough to allow for more than one retweet by others, without alteration.
• Take the time to tweet a thank you to people who RT you, even if you’re not the tweet originator.
• It’s always nice to include your own brief supportive comment with a re-tweet that’s especially good – something like “Great advice!” or “Excellent!”
• Don’t change the wording of the original tweet, except to abbreviate for space. But use abbreviations sparingly. A jumble of single letters and numbers can be confounding and doesn’t give a professional impression.
• If you’re not already following someone you want to retweet, coincide retweeting with following them. They may notice your @username showing up twice on the “Notifications” page in that short span.

Retweet using the retweet button that sits under each tweet and on many websites at the top or bottom of an article or blog post make retweeting easy. But sometimes these retweets don’t include the @username. Take a few moments to add it in if it’s not already there.

Use hashtags in your RTs when you can. The hashtag symbol (“#“) is used before a word or phrase (with no spaces) to mark relevant keywords and topics in tweets. It was created organically by Twitter users as a way to categorize messages. Clicking on a hashtagged word in a tweet shows you all other tweets marked with that keyword.

3. Organize Your Twitter Strategy

Use Hootsuite, Tweetdeck, or another Twitter app to help you organize your time, the people you follow, the people you want to retweet frequently, and to set up retweets in advance.

Do your thank you’s for retweets, #FollowFridays (#FF), and other mentions all in communal tweets, every few days. No need to thank each person in a separate tweet.

Consult the Twitter Help pages for specifics on using re-tweets, hashtags, and other things.

Bottom Line

Chances are, most recruiters and many employees at your target companies are active on Twitter, posting job openings and information related to the jobs you want. Isn’t it worth carving out a little time each week to spread the word on Twitter about your personal brand and value to your target employers?

The post Build Your Personal Brand on Twitter in Minutes a Day appeared first on Job-Hunt.

An effective LinkedIn Summary helps recruiters and hiring decision makers at the companies you’re targeting determine what makes you a good fit hiring choice for them.

Your LinkedIn Summary Offers Substantial Visibility (and Opportunity)

The content in your LinkedIn Summary needs to capture attention and compel recruiters and hiring decision makers to consider you as a viable candidate, and want to reach out to you and learn more about you. It should make them want to read your entire profile.

Once you’ve worked on personal branding and created your targeted, branded resume that includes a strong initial summary with specific relevant contributions, you’ll have a good foundation from which to create your LinkedIn summary section.

Remember that a branded LinkedIn profile does not replace your resume. It serves several purposes in conjunction with your resume, including:

• Your LinkedIn Profile becomes a means of passive job search, to help you get found by recruiters and hiring decision makers through the relevant keywords you’ve strategically placed in the various sections of your profile.
• Your LinkedIn Profile provides “social proof” to publicly back up the claims you’ve made in your resume. Those assessing you through your LinkedIn profile feel that you’re less likely to exaggerate in a public forum such as LinkedIn than you might in your resume document, which is only viewed by the select people you decide to send it to.
• Your LinkedIn Profile presents a somewhat more general career marketing communication than your resume, so it can position you for more options. Resumes need to be customized to position you as the problem-solver for each employer’s specific needs.

Make Your LinkedIn Summary More Persuasive and Compelling

Tips for creating a powerful LinkedIn Summary:

Write Your Summary in First-Person

As with your resume, the LinkedIn summary section is written in first-person voice. Typically resumes don’t include the word “I.” Instead, first-person is implied through the verbs.

But it’s a good idea to speak from the first person in your LinkedIn summary, to personalize the content and better engage readers.

Focus on Your Best Keywords

Make sure you include the relevant keywords you found when you did company and industry research to develop content for your branded resume. Weave these keywords into your value and metrics driven statements. The more relevant keywords you include, the more potential traffic you’ll draw to your profile.

[See Job-Hunt’s Guide to the Best Keywords for Your Job Search.]

Add a Strong Brand Statement

Include a stand-alone personal brand statement to make the content come alive, generate chemistry, and give a feel for your personality. Here’s an example of one for a Senior Project/Program Management Consultant:

Known as a decisive, intuitive leader with “get it done” smarts, I turn chaos into harmony by leveraging technology and data to improve functionality. You can presume a short ramp up time from me, clear and concise status updates, and execution beyond your expectations . . . even under less than ideal circumstances.

Don’t Waste Space or Opportunity

You’re allowed 2,000 characters in this section. Use as many as possible.

Start with a Word Document

Create the content in a Word document, or run it through a Word document before posting it to your profile, so you can use Word’s Spell Check and character-count features.

Be Readable

Keep the content in short paragraphs (no more than 3-4 lines) to make it easier to read. Tightly-packed content can be dizzying to readers and can keep them from absorbing all of it. Keep in mind that people may be viewing your LinkedIn profile on very small, hand-held screens.

Be Bold

One strategy is to start the Summary with a call to action, such as this example for the same Senior Project/Program Management Consultant as above:

Are you looking for a Six Sigma Black Belt business transformation expert who brings greater value to high-growth organizations through broad-based expertise in Process Design, Financial Analysis, IT/Data Systems, and Risk Exposure?

Be Scannable

Use short bullet points to distinguish – and draw attention to – specific contributions with metrics, such as:

• Increased efficiencies 425% managing delinquent loan tracking system with Agile methodology.

Be Very Careful

Don’t rely entirely on Word’s Spell Check. Proofread the content very carefully before posting it.

Poor grammar and misspellings can quickly sabotage your chances.

Bottom Line

Although having a branded resume to work from gives you a good head start, you’ll need to spend some time re-tooling it for your LinkedIn Summary. They both service different purposes in your job search.

About the author…

Meg Guiseppi, Job-Hunt’s Personal Branding Expert and 20+ year careers industry veteran, has earned 10 certifications, including Reach Certified Personal Branding Strategist, Reach Social Branding Analyst – LinkedIn Profile Strategist, and Certified Executive Resume Master. Meg is the author of “23 Ways You Sabotage Your Executive Job Search and How Your Brand Will Help You Land.” Connect with Meg at ExecutiveCareerBrand.com for c-suite personal branding and executive job search help and on Twitter (@MegGuiseppi). And, you may also download Meg’s free ebook – Job-Hunt Guide to Smart Personal Branding with LinkedIn.
More about this author…

The post Power-Up Your Personal Brand with Your LinkedIn Profile’s Summary appeared first on Job-Hunt.

Get busy on LinkedIn.

Recruiters and hiring decision makers at your target companies rely heavily on LinkedIn when they’re sourcing and assessing job candidates.

A clearly presented personal brand visible on LinkedIn will be easily found by employers and recruiters looking for someone like you.

Why LinkedIn Is Important for Your Personal Brand

You already have a brand. Your personal brand is your personal DNA — the combination of personal attributes, values, strengths, and passions that people know you for and that represent the value you offer.

Today, LinkedIn is the most important social network for making that brand clear:

• If they don’t find you on LinkedIn, you may be virtually invisible to them.
• If you have a minimal, mediocre presence on LinkedIn, they’re going to wonder whether you know how to navigate the new world of work, which includes being social media savvy.
• If you have a strong and active presence on LinkedIn, and your personal brand is evident, you’ve probably upped your chances of being a candidate of interest.

How to Make LinkedIn Work for Your Job Search

LinkedIn is a robust site offering many ways to get your personal brand and job search in sync.

  1. Choose Your Target  

Step one in job search is targeting and researching specific employers that are a good fit for you. Targeting and research are also critical for defining and communicating your personal brand.

You’ll need to know who you’ll be writing your personal marketing communications for and how to speak about the value you offer specific companies or organizations.

LinkedIn is a good place to start doing research on your target employers:

• Identify companies for your target list by doing a LinkedIn search of keywords related to the kind of job you want and seeing which companies that leads you to.
• Look at the LinkedIn company profiles for each company on your target list.
• Then, take a look at the LinkedIn profiles of employees of each company. See if you know them or have something in common. Connect with them.
• Employees you don’t know may also be ones to invite to connect with you.
• Check LinkedIn Jobs to see if your target companies are looking for people like you. Make note of the qualifications needed and the terminology used to describe those qualifications (keywords).

Leverage all that LinkedIn has to offer – both passively and proactively – to promote the unique value you offer your target employers.

  2. Build the Foundation of Your LinkedIn Personal Brand  

To get a handle on how to best use LinkedIn for personal branding, download and read my free ebook, Smart Personal Branding with LinkedIn.

Then, build a robust LinkedIn profile that will lead people to you:

• Create an SEO-friendly Professional Headline.
• Add a professional photo. Profiles with photos get many more views.
• Write a dazzling About/Summary section. Tell your personal brand story. Generate chemistry!
• Focus on including the right keywords for your personal brand.
• Add the maximum 50 skills in the Skills & Endorsements section.
• Beyond the About/Summary, Experience and Education sections, fully populate every other applicable profile section, including the little-used sections – Languages, Volunteering Experience, Organizations, Honors & Awards, Courses, Patents, Publications, Projects, Certifications.

A robust, fully-fleshed out Profile containing content that supports your personal brand, with each applicable section completed, will build your personal brand visibility and boost traffic to your LinkedIn Profile.

Why is plenty of LinkedIn Profile content so important?

You need to be highly visible and findable on LinkedIn. Recruiters and employers search LinkedIn to identify and assess candidates using relevant keywords and phrases. These keywords usually represent your “hard” skills or areas of expertise.

More content = More relevant keywords = Better personal SEO (Search Engine Optimization) or visibility

Most people know enough to put at least some information in the About (formerly the Summary), Experience and Education sections. But take a look at all the other sections available to you, and use each one you can. Many people don’t know about, or neglect these sections:

[For more, read The 25 Best Keywords for You in Your Job Search and Grab Recruiter Attention with LinkedIn Projects.]

To make it easier to add the right amount of content, first create it in a Word document, then do a count and spell check, before copying and pasting into your Profile:

Each Profile section has a maximum number of characters and spaces. Do your best to use all the allowed space for content. At this writing, here are the maximum character counts for the most-used sections:

• Professional headline = 120
• Name field, last name = 40 (allows you to add suffixes, certifications, former names, maiden names, nicknames)
• About = 2,000
• Company names = 100
• Job titles = 100
• Job descriptions = 2,000

For more information about achieving the right mix of personal branding and relevant keywords, see my post To Succeed Today, Balance Personal Branding With Personal SEO.

As time passes and your job changes, be sure to update your LinkedIn Profile to reflect your new accomplishments and to keep your terminology (keywords) up-to-date and relevant to your career. Update your Profile on a quarterly basis, at a minimum. Then, carefully include contact information on your Profile so that people can contact you while you retain your privacy.

  3. Keep Your Personal Brand Visible and Relevant on LinkedIn  

Log into your account frequently to promote your personal brand, demonstrate your subject matter expertise, and express your thought leadership.

Build and engage your LinkedIn network:

• Build your connections to at least 500, to boost your LinkedIn search ranking.
• Develop a strategy and emails to connect with people you don’t know, who will be important to network with.
• Connect with executive recruiters in your field and hiring decision makers at your target companies.
• Use LinkedIn’s “Find Alumni” feature to find and connect with school alumni.
• Connect with former co-workers by typing a former employer’s name (like “IBM” or “McDonald’s”) in a People search and selecting the “Past Companies” search filter.
• Include a link to your LinkedIn profile on your resume, in your email signature, and website (if you have one).

Take it further. Log into LinkedIn regularly to proactively build your personal brand, express your opinions, influence people, and stay top-of-mind with your network and other people on LinkedIn:

• Prioritize Skills & Endorsements regularly, as people give you endorsements and your list shifts. Endorse others as you see them demonstrate their expertise in the skills.
• Share branded updates at least once a week.
• Refresh the content in your profile regularly to align with your current job search/career focus, and to upgrade with current relevant keywords.
• Join and participate regularly in LinkedIn Groups.
• Write articles for LinkedIn’s blog, a long-form publishing platform, this allows you to reap many of the benefits of blogging . . . without the hassles of maintaining one of your own.
• Write LinkedIn recommendations for colleagues, co-workers, team members, etc. and ask for recommendations for yourself.
• Reach out to your network regularly to see how they’re doing, offer support and pass along something of interest to them.

Avoid off-brand or unprofessional content. Keep your brand clean and clear..

Make LinkedIn Work for Your Career

If you’re still employed and job-hunting undercover, as so many job-seekers are, LinkedIn is still for you.

Write the content in your profile so that it supports your good-fit qualities for your target companies while supporting your current company, without saying outright that you are looking for a job.

LinkedIn is also an accepted overall career management tool when you are not job hunting. New members of your network as well as potential clients or customers, suppliers, even people who might consider dating you will check out your LinkedIn Profile and activities.

Many employers want their employees to be active on LinkedIn, promoting the products and services and the “employer brand” as a good place to work.

When you’re employed and not looking for a new job, stay busy on LinkedIn:

• Keep yourself top-of-mind with your business network.
• Expand your business network with new faces.
• Build your profile content around the value both you and your company offer.
• Support your current company with your LinkedIn activities – updates, Groups, publishing articles on Pulse, etc.

Whether you are job hunting or not, proactively promote yourself as an employee of your current company, while promoting your personal brand, subject matter expertise, and thought leadership.

More About Leveraging LinkedIn

• 5 Essential Elements of Effective Personal Branding for Your LinkedIn Profile
• 5 Reasons LinkedIn Is Indispensable for Personal Branding
• Branding with Your LinkedIn Profile
• How Your LinkedIn Activities Impact Your Personal Brand
• The Absolute Best Practices for Building Your Personal Brand with LinkedIn

About the author…

Meg Guiseppi, Job-Hunt’s Personal Branding Expert and 20+ year careers industry veteran, has earned 10 certifications, including Reach Certified Personal Branding Strategist, Reach Social Branding Analyst – LinkedIn Profile Strategist, and Certified Executive Resume Master. Meg is the author of “23 Ways You Sabotage Your Executive Job Search and How Your Brand Will Help You Land.” Connect with Meg at ExecutiveCareerBrand.com for c-suite personal branding and executive job search help and on Twitter (@MegGuiseppi). And, you may also download Meg’s free ebook – Job-Hunt Guide to Smart Personal Branding with LinkedIn.
More about this author…

The post Guide to Personal Branding with LinkedIn appeared first on Job-Hunt.

I’ve not only learned how to help my clients leverage LinkedIn for job search, but also…

I’ve learned how to use LinkedIn to build my personal brand and business.

In fact, most of my clients find me through LinkedIn.

Running a successful job search is very similar to running a successful business, and LinkedIn is just as important to you (the job seeker) as it is to me (the business owner).

Success Requirements

In both job search and business management, you need to:

• Determine who your target audience is – for job search, that means target employers and target field (marketing, accounting, law, etc.).
• Define your personal brand – what makes you unique, valuable and a good-fit for your target audience, or employers.
• Be findable online by your target audience, or employers.
• Communicate and market those good-fit qualities across various channels.
• Connect and network with your target audience, or people at your target companies.

Unfortunately, many job-hunting LinkedIn members have a “build it and forget it” mentality. They put up a bare-bones Profile, maybe years ago, and rarely complete it, update it, or take full advantage of all the networking and personal brand-reinforcing features LinkedIn offers.

Ignoring LinkedIn today not only wastes opportunity, it demonstratels lack of understanding of the importance of solid, personal online visibility.

3 LinkedIn Insider Personal Branding Tips

Here are a few strategies that I rely on to build my personal brand and promote my business.

These same strategies will help you increase your LinkedIn Profile traffic, build your personal brand, position yourself as a good-fit candidate and help you land a job.

1. Build Personal SEO by Fully Populating Your LinkedIn Profile

A robust, fully-fleshed out Profile containing content that supports your personal brand, with each applicable section completed, will build your personal brand visibility and boost traffic to your LinkedIn Profile.

Why is plenty of LinkedIn Profile content so important?

You need to be highly visible and findable on LinkedIn. Recruiters and employers search LinkedIn to identify and assess candidates using relevant keywords and phrases. These keywords usually represent your “hard” skills or areas of expertise.

More content = More relevant keywords = Better personal SEO (Search Engine Optimization) or visibility

Most people know enough to put at least some information in the Summary, Experience and Education sections. But take a look at all the other sections available to you, and use each one you can. Many people don’t know about, or neglect these sections:

• Professional Headline
• Languages
• Volunteering Experience
• Organizations
• Honors & Awards
• Courses
• Patents
• Causes you care about
• Projects
• Personal Details

[For more, read The 25 Best Keywords for You in Your Job Search and Grab Recruiter Attention with LinkedIn Projects.]

To make it easier to add the right amount of content, first create it in a Word document, then do a count and spell check, before copying and pasting into your Profile:

Each Profile section has a maximum number of characters and spaces. Do your best to use all the allowed space for content. At this writing, here are the maximum character counts for the most-used sections:

• Professional headline = 120
• Name field, last name = 40 (allows you to add suffixes, certifications, former names, maiden names, nicknames)
• Summary = 2,000
• Company names = 100
• Job titles = 100
• Job descriptions = 2,000

For more information about achieving the right mix of personal branding and relevant keywords, see my post To Succeed Today, Balance Personal Branding With Personal SEO.

2. Keep Your Personal Brand Top-of-Mind with LinkedIn’s Pulse Platform

Posting articles on LinkedIn’s Pulse allows you to reap many of the benefits of blogging . . . without the hassles of maintaining one of your own.

LinkedIn offers this powerful platform to demonstrate your subject matter expertise, express your opinions, influence people, build your personal brand online, and stay top of mind with your network.

Get all the details on leveraging this powerful LinkedIn feature in my post, Build Your Personal Brand by Blogging on LinkedIn.

3. Build Personal Brand Equity by Surprising Someone with a LinkedIn Recommendation

LinkedIn recommendations are important. Think about it, when you are reviewing someone’s qualifications, for whatever reason, reading a glowing recommendation from a peer, or manager, or business associate will probably reflect well on that person.

Want to get more people to write LinkedIn recommendations for you? Write one for them first.

Reaching out to someone whose work you know and for whom you can write a paragraph or two that will resonate with their target audience — whether they’re in job search or doing business with you — is a thoughtful way to support them. It’s also just about the best way to prompt them to reciprocate with a strong recommendation for you.

And, there are selfish benefits to writing LinkedIn recommendations:

• Each one that’s approved and posted includes a link to your Profile, which you can bet plenty of people will click on to view and assess you.
• Your LinkedIn network gets an update about it, helping to keep you top of mind with them.

This thoughtful gesture — doing something nice for someone you admire without being asked — strengthens your network, and builds supporters for your personal brand and candidacy.

Bottom Line

LinkedIn offers so many ways to help you land a great-fit new job. Go beyond the basics. Set aside time to explore all your options, and take advantage of each one you can. Make that a weekly or, better, a daily habit.

More About LinkedIn for Personal Branding and Personal SEO:

• Linkedin SEO: How to Be Found by Recruiters on LinkedIn
• How to Double (or Triple) Your LinkedIn Visitor Traffic with Keywords
• Personal Branding: SEO for Your LinkedIn Headline

About the author…

Meg Guiseppi, Job-Hunt’s Personal Branding Expert and 20+ year careers industry veteran, has earned 10 certifications, including Reach Certified Personal Branding Strategist, Reach Social Branding Analyst – LinkedIn Profile Strategist, and Certified Executive Resume Master. Meg is the author of “23 Ways You Sabotage Your Executive Job Search and How Your Brand Will Help You Land.” Connect with Meg at ExecutiveCareerBrand.com for c-suite personal branding and executive job search help and on Twitter (@MegGuiseppi). And, you may also download Meg’s free ebook – Job-Hunt Guide to Smart Personal Branding with LinkedIn.
More about this author…

The post 3 LinkedIn Insider Personal Branding Success Secrets appeared first on Job-Hunt.

“Updating your LinkedIn Profile” means editing or changing the content in the various sections of your LinkedIn Profile – Headline, Summary, Experience, Education, etc.

Currently (winter, 2020), you update (or change) the content in your LinkedIn Profile by clicking on “Me” in the menu along the very top of your Profile, and then clicking on “View Profile.” You can then access the various Profile sections to make edits and/or changes.

“Posting an update” means sharing something of interest about you, your field, or others in your LinkedIn updates feed.

Your update feed is visible in the center column of the “Home” page of your Profile, each time you log into your LinkedIn account.

As of this writing, you post an update by typing in the block that appears at the very top of the center column (shown below).

This activity may also be called “sharing an update,” “an activity update,” and “updating your status,” among other things.

Click on “Start a post” to begin typing news or other information to share with your LinkedIn network. LinkedIn also offers you the ability to share a photo (or other image), share a video, or upload a document to LinkedIn, depending on which of the left 3 icons in the image above.

If you click on the “Write an article on LinkedIn” link, a LinkedIn blog form page will open, allowing you to add an article to your Profile.

[Please note that LinkedIn continuously changes and rearranges functionality and features to improve the user experience, and they don’t roll out those changes to everyone at once. You may need to look around a bit to accomplish the tips I’m offering here.]

How Posting Updates to Your LinkedIn Activity Feed Amplifies Your Personal Brand

In a LinkedIn Pulse article, Hannah Morgan, Job-Hunt’s Social Media Job Search Expert, suggests that job seekers who post an update build engagement exponentially and are much more likely to be contacted by recruiters.

This makes sense because each update you post helps keep you top of mind with all kinds of people, including recruiters.

In her article, Hannah provides some excellent suggestions for posting an update, including:

1. Share Industry Insights
2. Share News About Target Companies
3. Post Job-Related Tips/Hacks
4. Ask Questions
5. Share Quotes, Infographics, Images, and Videos
6. Share Humorous Business/Work-Appropriate Cartoons
7. Share the Status Updates from Your Network

[More suggestions for updates to post in my article, Keep Your Personal Brand Top-of-Mind with LinkedIn Updates.]

4 Things You Should Do to Make Your Updates More Impactful

To make these suggestions work even better, pump them up by doing the following:

  1. Tag other LinkedIn members.  

Mention and tag influencers and/or people in your network in the update information you post. Tag people by typing the “@” symbol and then their name. A drop-down menu will automatically appear from which you can select that person. Their name will then be hyperlinked within the update, so people can click on and view their Profiles.

The benefit here is that these people will be notified that you’ve mentioned them. They are very likely to “like,” “comment,” or “share” your update, which builds personal brand evangelism and visibility for you. Additionally, you’ll be building brand evangelism for them. Everybody wins.

  2. Add relevant hashtags.  

People search LinkedIn using relevant keywords and phrases to find people like you. When these hashtags appear in your updates feed, people who can help you with your career goals are more likely to find those updates and take a look at your LinkedIn Profile. More views of your Profile will boost your chances of being contacted by recruiters and hiring managers at your target companies.

[More in my article, Promote Your Personal Brand on LinkedIn with Hashtags.]

  3. Control who sees your updates.  

You’ll probably want the greatest number of people to see your updates, so you should open the distribution as wide as LinkedIn allows.

Once you start typing in an update box, a drop-down menu next to “Post Settings” will appear at the bottom of the box. Options include “Public,” “Public + Twitter,” and “Connections.”

Selecting “Public” gives your update the most exposure because, as LinkedIn Help says, your post may appear on:

• The homepages of your 1st-degree connections.
• The homepages of your 2nd- or 3rd-degree connections if re-shared, commented upon, or liked by your 1st-degree connections.
• Content search results for topics you’ve posted.
• Search results for hashtags you’ve used in posts.
• Your own Recent Activity page.
• Your public Profile, which is also visible to people who are not signed in to LinkedIn.
• Other sites off LinkedIn. This means that even people who are not signed in to LinkedIn can see your post.
• Your followers’ feeds, who may not be connected to you.

In most cases, the Public option is the best choice.

  4. Optimize Your LinkedIn Profile Headline  

When you hit “View Profile” under “Me” in the menu at the top of your Profile, you’ll see your headline directly below your photo and name, at the top of your LinkedIn Profile.

This headline follows you everywhere on LinkedIn in a thumbprint (along with your photo and name). This means that people will notice your headline whenever you post an update.

They’ll get an immediate indication of your personal brand and value proposition… if you have optimized your headline.

If you do nothing to your headline, LinkedIn will put your most recent job title there. You can improve upon that by editing the default title to contain the relevant keywords and phrases that best represent the value you offer, and that will be most searched by recruiters and hiring managers at your target companies.

[More in my article, Personal Branding: SEO for Your LinkedIn Headline.]

How Updating Your Linkedin Profile Content Builds And Supports Your Personal Brand

First, take a look at what is in each section of your LinkedIn Profile right now.

• Does the content accurately reflect who you are, what you have to offer, and why your target employers need you?
• Is your personal brand and unique value proposition abundantly evident?

If you answered “No” to either or both of these questions, and you are in a job search, take time to work on building out your LinkedIn Profile with content that will support your brand and attract your target employers.

Remember this:

More content in your Profile = more relevant keywords = better visibility and credibility for you as a candidate.

Beyond populating each applicable LinkedIn Profile section with as much relevant content as possible, it’s a good idea to get into the habit of revisiting your LinkedIn Profile content once a year to edit, change and update.

Update your Profile content when:

• You land a new job.
• You get a promotion.
• You gain new skills or areas of expertise.
• You become proactive in job search.
• Your job title and/or responsibilities change.
• You complete a training or certification program.
• Your career focus shifts.
• You receive some reccognition from your employer or a professional organization, like “employee of the month” or “top salesperson.”

Even if none of the above is happening, and everything is status quo with your career, you may find that you can improve your Personal Search Engine Optimization by adding different relevant keywords to the content in your Profile.

[More in The Top 25 Keywords for Your Job Search.]

An Important Precaution About Updating Your LinkedIn Profile Content

LinkedIn says it may take up to 12 hours for the change(s) you make to land in your feed and, thus, be shared with your network.

  Updating Your LinkedIn Profile When Employed…  

Sometimes LinkedIn is too helpful, particularly if you don’t want your boss to ask you why you added new content to your LinkedIn Profile. If you’re in a “stealth job search,” the last thing you want to do is alert your current employer to the fact that you’re looking. So, take precautions to keep people from noticing that you’re working on your Profile content, a telltale sign that you may be looking for a new job.

Even so, you can put some safeguards in place by making some changes to your Profile privacy settings, BEFORE you make any changes to the content in your Profile.

• Click on “Me” in the menu at the very top of your LinkedIn Profile.
• Click on “Settings & Privacy.”
• Click on “Privacy.”
• Scroll down and click on “Sharing Profile edits.” When you are asked “Do you want to share your Profile changes with your network,” choose “No.”

No matter what you do, some people may notice that things have changed on your Profile, especially if you suddenly have plenty of content there from one day to the next. So, make those changes slowly, starting with the bottom of your Profile. [More in 3 Ways to Update Your LinkedIn Profile Unobtrusively and Managing Your LinkedIn Settings for a Stealth Job Search.]

  Updating Your LinkedIn Profile When Un-employed…  

If, on the other hand, you are actively job-hunting and you want your network to know about the changes you’re making to your Profile, move the Yes/No toggle noted above to “Yes.”

The Bottom Line

Stay informed about how to do both LinkedIn updates and Profile updates, because things change in an instant on LinkedIn. Post updates regularly to stay top of mind with people and promote your personal brand. Update the content in your Profile at least once a year, to keep it on brand.

About the author…

Meg Guiseppi, Job-Hunt’s Personal Branding Expert and 20+ year careers industry veteran, has earned 10 certifications, including Reach Certified Personal Branding Strategist, Reach Social Branding Analyst – LinkedIn Profile Strategist, and Certified Executive Resume Master. Meg is the author of “23 Ways You Sabotage Your Executive Job Search and How Your Brand Will Help You Land.” Connect with Meg at ExecutiveCareerBrand.com for c-suite personal branding and executive job search help and on Twitter (@MegGuiseppi). And, you may also download Meg’s free ebook – Job-Hunt Guide to Smart Personal Branding with LinkedIn.
More about this author…

The post Strengthen Your Personal Brand: Update Your LinkedIn Profile & Smartly Post Updates appeared first on Job-Hunt.

If you answered no to any of these questions, you’re probably not aware of (or you’re ignoring) what an important factor your online reputation is in job search and overall career management. Having no online presence or the wrong kind of presence can make or break your job search efforts.

Are People Googling Your Name?

Since Google is by far the most widely used search engine (over Bing, Yahoo!, Ask, etc.), “Googling” has become the representative term for searching the Web to learn about someone or something.

You are very likely being Googled by prospective employers and clients, business associates, recruiters, and various people determining whether to connect or do business with you. Surveys find that most recruiters and hiring managers routinely run searches to pre-screen, weed out, and eliminate candidates based on what they find.

[Read Defensive Googling for more information.]

Job Search 2.0 Has Arrived.

Savvy job seekers pay close attention to personal branding in social media and their online integrity, investing efforts to increase their Web presence and cultivate the right online impression of themselves. If you’re not doing so, you can’t compete with those who take advantage of these latest job search trends.

As powerful as a great resume, a strong online presence is a potent approach to networking and tapping into the hidden job market. Your stellar online footprint will not only boost your credibility, it can accelerate job search and land you where you want to be . . . faster.

How Does Your Online Identity Stack Up?

Personal branding guru and co-author of the book “Career Distinction: Stand Out By Building Your Brand,” William Arruda provides an online identity calculator and offers these 5 profiles to help evaluate your online identity when you type and enter “your name” in quotes (example, “john smith”) into your browser or a Google search:

• Digitally disguised:
  You have no online identity. It doesn’t mean you don’t exist, but that you remain hidden from those who may be researching you.
• Digitally dissed:
  There is little on the Web about you, and what is there is either negative or inconsistent with how you want to be known.
• Digitally disastrous:
  You have plenty of search results, but they have little relevance to what you want to express about yourself. There may also be results for someone else who shares your name.
• Digitally dabbling:
  There are some on-brand results for you. Although the volume is not high, the information about you is relevant to your personal brand. It’s an easy fix to move from here to the next level.
• Digitally distinct: There are lots of results about you and most, if not all, reinforce your unique promise of value. This is nirvana in the world of online identity. But even if you’ve reached these heights, there is always room for improvement.

As a basic guideline, Arruda suggests that a professional with 5-10 years’ experience should have 50-500 accurate search results; a director-level people manager should have 500-5,000 results; and a corporate-level executive at a major company should have 50,000+ results.

[Read “Top 10 Best-Practices to Build Your Online Brand and Your Online Identity” for more information.]

About the author…

Meg Guiseppi, Job-Hunt’s Personal Branding Expert and 20+ year careers industry veteran, has earned 10 certifications, including Reach Certified Personal Branding Strategist, Reach Social Branding Analyst – LinkedIn Profile Strategist, and Certified Executive Resume Master. Meg is the author of “23 Ways You Sabotage Your Executive Job Search and How Your Brand Will Help You Land.” Connect with Meg at ExecutiveCareerBrand.com for c-suite personal branding and executive job search help and on Twitter (@MegGuiseppi). And, you may also download Meg’s free ebook – Job-Hunt Guide to Smart Personal Branding with LinkedIn.
More about this author…

The post Measuring Your Online Brand appeared first on Job-Hunt.

Everyone has a reputation they’ve developed over time.

Over your work life and personal life, you’ve become known for being a certain kind of person, being driven by certain values and passions, and offering certain skill sets and strengths.

More than ever these days, in job search you need to stand out from your competition.

That means differentiating your own unique combination of top personal attributes, qualifications, motivating skills (those you excel at AND love doing the most), strengths, values, and passions.

This set of traits represents your promise of value to your target employers. That’s your brand.

It’s not so hard for seasoned professionals to identify these distinguishing characteristics in themselves. They’ve probably had to think about these things, and have most likely received performance reviews from employer(s), confirming what they already knew were their best assets.

But what if you’re a recent grad or someone seeking your very first job, do you even have a brand yet? You bet you do!

I received the following blog comment when I cross-posted my Job-Hunt article, Personal Branding Hype and Myth vs. Reality on my Executive Resume Branding blogsite:

“I wonder, is a personal branding statement at all useful to people who don’t have previous work experience? Forgive me if my question sounds a little naive…I am looking for my first job, and it’s been tough going to present an appealing ‘point of difference’ based on my very general skill set.”

My response:

“No matter what your professional level, even without work experience, you have a personal brand.

People know you, and rely on you, for certain things. This is why getting feedback from the people who know you best is so important.

Ask them what they feel your top strengths and personal attributes are. Look at the feedback for cross-over. Which points stand out? These can help you differentiate your value in the market place over others with similar backgrounds.”

Define Your Personal Brand

So, the process of defining your brand is the same for you as a new grad or entry-level job seeker as it is for a senior level executive with 30+ years experience.

• Begin to determine your unique promise of value by asking people around you, who have seen you in action, for feedback. This means tapping your classmates, teachers, professors, mentors, supervisors of internships, people you’ve known for some time, people you’ve worked on projects with, etc.
• Pay attention to what they say when they introduce you to someone new. Ask them what they think your best qualities are, and what things they know they can always rely on you for.
• Meantime, sit down and work on identifying your differentiating factors yourself, along with all the components that go into defining your personal brand. My 10-Step Personal Branding Worksheet will guide you through.
• And remember, as with job seekers at any professional level, building your brand requires first identifying your target career and the target companies you want to pursue, researching their needs right now (through job descriptions, company websites and Google search), and determining how you’ll be a good fit for them.

Your brand and all your job search communications (resume, cover letters, online profiles, personal web pages, etc.) will resonate with your target employers, if you align their needs with your qualifications.

Also, make sure that your brand and good-fit traits carry over to your online brand communications – your professional social networking and social media activities. Pay particular attention to LinkedIn, the most important social network for professionals.

Bottom Line on Personal Branding for Students and New Grads

Professional level, years of experience, and age don’t determine whether you have a brand. We all already have a personal brand. Chances are, others know what your brand is all about. It’s up to you to do some work, uncover what makes you unique, and use that information to market yourself to your target employers.

Using LinkedIn for Personal Branding

• Branding with Your LinkedIn Profile
• Make Your LinkedIn Summary Dazzle with Personal Branding
• Keep Your Personal Brand Top-of-Mind with LinkedIn Updates
• How to Use Your New Degree to Make a Career Change

About the author…

Meg Guiseppi, Job-Hunt’s Personal Branding Expert and 20+ year careers industry veteran, has earned 10 certifications, including Reach Certified Personal Branding Strategist, Reach Social Branding Analyst – LinkedIn Profile Strategist, and Certified Executive Resume Master. Meg is the author of “23 Ways You Sabotage Your Executive Job Search and How Your Brand Will Help You Land.” Connect with Meg at ExecutiveCareerBrand.com for c-suite personal branding and executive job search help and on Twitter (@MegGuiseppi). And, you may also download Meg’s free ebook – Job-Hunt Guide to Smart Personal Branding with LinkedIn.
More about this author…

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Your resume plus your career bio are the foundation for your career brand marketing and online presence, positioning your unique promise of value over your competition.

Today’s career biography is not the stodgy, boring document you may have seen or used in the past. Energized with personal branding, your bio can be an interesting, vibrant journey through career highlights.

Because your bio brings out your “softer” skills, it helps generate chemistry for who you are, what you’re like to work with, and whether you’ll be a good fit for a company’s culture.

For executives, when your candidacy is making the rounds among decision makers or within your network, your career bio may be requested before your resume. Sometimes your resume won’t come into play until later in the interviewing/hiring cycle.

Questions to develop your career biography.

Here are some of the questions I have my clients answer when we’re working on their bios:

1. What are 3 or 4 defining moments for you as your career progressed?
2. In what ways has your life been admirable?
3. How have adversity and challenges made you stronger and a more valuable employee?
4. What are the two or three most important lessons you learned along the way that others could benefit from?
5. Have you been a hero or mentor to others at work? How did your mentoring positively impact the company?

Tactics to move your career bio from bland to brand-solid:

• Capture attention in the first paragraph.You can lead with your personal or leadership brand statement or a snippet of a recommendation from someone who recently worked with you. What others say about your work is the true measure of your brand. Another idea that can have great impact is to start with a relevant quote from an industry subject matter expert or respected leader.
• Leverage storytelling to support your brand and make your bio interesting to read.Build stories around a few major career accomplishments and incorporate your relevant keyword phrases. Flesh out some of your top contributions to employers, marking your career progression. Storytelling conjures up the benefits you’ll bring to an organization and helps readers envision you in the position they’re trying to fill.
• Include a sneak peek into your personal life.Definitely include volunteer work and serving on Committees and Boards of Directors. Volunteerism is a brand touch point. Your commitment and the way you give back to your community says a lot about you.Wrap it up with a brief nod to those in your immediate family – their jobs and hobbies. Write a little about your hobbies, a relevant humorous incident, and/or special activities. It’s okay to show your lighter side – the things that would be inappropriate in your resume. And your favorite pastimes can spark interest from those who share them.
• Format the document for visual appeal and ease in reading.Break up long paragraphs into 2 or 3 smaller ones to add more white space, drawing readers’ eyes down the page and compelling them to read the entire document. One innovative technique is to include several sub-headings throughout, which is also an opportunity to build in more relevant keywords.

Your career biography offers value in job search and beyond.

• Transform your bio into the “About” page on your blog and/or website.
• Parts of your bio, along with your resume, can be incorporated into your LinkedIn and other online profiles.
• Bios are essential introductions for speaking engagements. When making a presentation or giving a speech, give your bio to the introducer ahead of time.
• You can also encapsulate your full bio into a tidy one or two paragraph mini-bio to include when you guest blog, write articles or white papers, or publish anything online or offline.
• Follow up networking events by sending your bio to people you’ve connected with. It’s less formal than your resume.

Bring all the pieces together in a career brand biography that backs up your personal brand and complements your resume. Here’s an example of a career brand biography for a fictional person.

About the author…

Meg Guiseppi, Job-Hunt’s Personal Branding Expert and 20+ year careers industry veteran, has earned 10 certifications, including Reach Certified Personal Branding Strategist, Reach Social Branding Analyst – LinkedIn Profile Strategist, and Certified Executive Resume Master. Meg is the author of “23 Ways You Sabotage Your Executive Job Search and How Your Brand Will Help You Land.” Connect with Meg at ExecutiveCareerBrand.com for c-suite personal branding and executive job search help and on Twitter (@MegGuiseppi). And, you may also download Meg’s free ebook – Job-Hunt Guide to Smart Personal Branding with LinkedIn.
More about this author…

The post Building Your Career Brand Biography appeared first on Job-Hunt.

If you need help developing your brand, read my article, 10-Step Personal Branding Worksheet.

Now that you know what your brand is, does it pass the 3 Cs test? Does it exhibit the characteristics that all strong brands need, to keep it strong and working for you?

William Arruda and Kirsten Dixson, who innovated the strategy in their pioneering book, “Career Distinction: Stand Out by Building Your Brand,” say the 3 C’s are the cornerstone of personal branding:

1. Clarity

Get crystal clear on who you are, who you are not, who your competitors are, and who your target audience is.

Know what differentiates the value you offer over and above others so that you can express it with vitality and confidence.

Identify your competitors (in job search or business) so that you can distinguish your brand messaging from theirs.

Determine how to attract a wide range of people who can aid you in reaching your career goals.

Know who your target audience is and where you can connect with them (online and offline) so that you can strategically position yourself and your value proposition in front of them.

Design your personal brand communications to resonate with your target audience. Determine their needs and create your messaging around your good fit to meet their needs and solve their problems.

For example, don’t make the common mistake of creating a generic resume and career biography, trying to cover too many bases and be all things to all people. Your messaging won’t help employers, recruiters, and hiring professionals envision you excelling in the job(s) they’re trying to fill. You’ll be communicating a murky message that won’t hit home with anyone.

2. Consistency

Consistently express the same personal brand messaging across all communications channels – online and offline.

Put yourself in the place of people assessing you through your communications and deciding whether to hire you or do business with you. If your brand messaging varies from one real-life setting to the next or from one social network to the next or from one website to the next, you will confuse them.

Design all of your personal marketing communications to steadfastly convey your good fit for your target companies or organizations. Adjust your messaging if your target audience changes.

3. Constancy

Strong brands are always visible to their target audience.

Stay top of mind with them through social media, real-life networking, and all other personal marketing efforts.

Social networking (LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, etc.) and social media (especially blogging) allow you to constantly update your network and target audience in real-time, with brand-reinforcing messages and content that amplify your visibility and credibility.

Bottom Line

Practicing the 3 Cs is like having health insurance for your personal brand and helps you design a far-reaching personal brand communications plan. Include routine monitoring of your online identity by Googling “your name” to assess the ongoing efficacy and viability of your plan. If you find digital dirt, take care of it quickly, if it’s something you can control, or work to sweep it under the carpet by building up more positive search results.

About the author…

Meg Guiseppi, Job-Hunt’s Personal Branding Expert and 20+ year careers industry veteran, has earned 10 certifications, including Reach Certified Personal Branding Strategist, Reach Social Branding Analyst – LinkedIn Profile Strategist, and Certified Executive Resume Master. Meg is the author of “23 Ways You Sabotage Your Executive Job Search and How Your Brand Will Help You Land.” Connect with Meg at ExecutiveCareerBrand.com for c-suite personal branding and executive job search help and on Twitter (@MegGuiseppi). And, you may also download Meg’s free ebook – Job-Hunt Guide to Smart Personal Branding with LinkedIn.
More about this author…

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The message should showcase your promise of value and position you as a good fit to meet those employers’ current needs.

In my experience, job seekers may have no problem with the first part – zeroing in on their hard skills and functional areas of expertise.

They can readily identify this part of the value they offer their target employers.

But that is often the ONLY part of their brand they focus on in their brand statement.

What happened to the “personal” part of their personal brand?

Without the personal, their brand statement is not much more than an anemic job description, stringing together functional areas of expertise.

Without the personal, their brand statement probably reads about the same as their job seeking competitors’, and doesn’t help people see what makes them stand out above the rest.

Personal branding is not about sameness. It’s all about differentiation.

That kind of so-called brand statement does little to generate chemistry for them as a candidate. After all, if they’re running an effective job search campaign, most of their efforts will be spent networking. This means that their career documents (resume, biography, etc.), LinkedIn profile, and whatever contains their brand statement, have to be reader-friendly.

In this case, human eyeballs will be assessing them through their documents and profiles, so they need to be an interesting, compelling read.

Of course, recruiters and hiring decision makers want to see relevant keywords, so those need to be well represented in career documents and online profiles. But these people also want to know more about candidates than what they do. They want to know who they are and how they make things happen. A brand positioning statement gives them the opportunity to provide that information.

Find your personal brand.

Sometimes the problem job seekers have, when creating a brand statement, is not giving themselves permission to include their personality and be authentically “them.”

To get to the “personal,” see my 10-Step Personal Branding Worksheet. The following questions I ask my clients in consultation should also help:

• What are you known as the go-to person for?
• What drives you? What things are you most passionate about at work?
• What words do people use when they introduce you?
• How do you describe your leadership style? How do you get the best out of your teams?
• What differentiates you from others who do the same work – your competition in the job market? What combination of things do you offer that no one else does?

Here’s an example of an executive brand positioning statement that links hard skills with softer skills to generate chemistry:

Take charge, game-changing Project Portfolio Management expert who over-delivers on aggressive goals for highly-matrixed organizations, while minimizing risk, reducing complexity, and decreasing expense. A trusted partner, I thrive on designing and leading multi-million dollar programs and influencing globally across functions and lines to deliver on my mantra: OTOBOS – on time, on budget, on schedule.

You can see that it positions the way this candidate’s pivotal strengths and areas of expertise will impact bottom line, while also highlighting her personality, vibrancy and passions.

Bottom Line

Take the time to do the branding work and bring out the “personal.” Don’t be afraid to “be you,” generate chemistry, and differentiate yourself in your resume, LinkedIn profile, and other career marketing communications. Differentiation captures attention and resonates much better than sameness ever will.

More About Finding Your Personal Brand

• Define Your Brand: 10-Step Personal Branding Worksheet
• How to Create Your Personal Brand Statement

About the author…

Meg Guiseppi, Job-Hunt’s Personal Branding Expert and 20+ year careers industry veteran, has earned 10 certifications, including Reach Certified Personal Branding Strategist, Reach Social Branding Analyst – LinkedIn Profile Strategist, and Certified Executive Resume Master. Meg is the author of “23 Ways You Sabotage Your Executive Job Search and How Your Brand Will Help You Land.” Connect with Meg at ExecutiveCareerBrand.com for c-suite personal branding and executive job search help and on Twitter (@MegGuiseppi). And, you may also download Meg’s free ebook – Job-Hunt Guide to Smart Personal Branding with LinkedIn.
More about this author…

The post Get Personal with Your Personal Branding Statement appeared first on Job-Hunt.