Seven tools to brand yourself on the professional web

Seven Tools to Brand Yourself on the Professional Web Swiss army knife: AJ Cann

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The Professional Web Implicit traces Explicit profiles Earned media = The Professional: Gaumont

Why does the Professional Web Matter?
It’s about you, the individual.
First impressions matter! People search for you on Google, LinkedIn, Facebook before they meet or talk to you.
It hits our personal bottom lines. Many of us in the knowledge economy make our living either directly or indirectly through the Web.

Instead of this…

… show this

Do: Integrate Twitter and SlideShare into LinkedIn profile.
Do: Use LinkedIn to find and contact people who have just left the company you're interested in.
Do: Create a group for the area you are most interested in - use this to post relevant content and drive deeper conversations with industry contacts.
Don't: Accept connections with people you've never met.

Do: Create lists where you track people in different segments that you're interested in. The added benefit here is that you can offload people from your main Twitter feed.
Do: Time-shift your posts (using a tool such as Hootsuite) so that they get posted during regular business hours, preferably early afternoon. This will ensure the biggest audience.
Do: Track conversations at conferences using their # hashtags to get an idea of the back-chatter.
Don't: Connect with others just because you want to increase your follower count.

Do: Follow 50+ people by starting on the Slideshare profiles of perhaps some of the people above and clicking through to who they follow.
Do: Follow your real-time newsfeed on Slideshare, once you've started following 50+ people. Incredibly rich content from your favorite experts. Very different from Twitter streams.
Do: Upload a few pieces of your own content - drives great SEO back to you.
Do: Embed a Slideshare widget on your blog - deep content gives your blog audience insight into what you are interested in.

Do: Put up all your professional/public engagements so that other people know where to connect with you.
Do: Use the Google Calendar or Outlook integration feature to suck these events into your personal calendar.
Don't: Give out addresses for private events.

Do: Reserve your own URL, rather than relying on a Typepad or Wordpress extension. Benefit is that you can move to other blogging platforms in the future and can drive more personal branding through the URL you choose.
Do: Put widgets from your other Professional Web services here, such as your Twitter feed or favorite slideshows from Slideshare
Don't: Leave your blog unattended for long periods of time (i.e. several weeks or months).

The Jury is Out

Tell me one unconventional way that you use the Professional Web for your own benefit.
Post your thoughts on my blog:
http://www.nextwala.com/nextwala/2010/09/branding.html
Or find me on Twitter @dkhare
Thanks,
Dev Khare

http://www.nextwala.com	261
http://www.thegoodguide.com	7
http://www.linkedin.com	4
http://translate.googleusercontent.com	2
http://www.typepad.com	1
http://wpslide.com	1
http://www.nextwala.com.	1

Seven tools to brand yourself on the professional web

by Dev Khare

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