Building Your Digital Presence

Managing your digital presence (or: “how to make your work work for you – now”) Lisa Harris and Lorraine Warren 10 th November 2009

Who we are
Lisa Harris teaches Digital Marketing and is an e-tutor for the University of Liverpool online MBA. She has a research project called ‘Punch Above Your Weight’ which tracks how small firms promote themselves, network and grow their businesses using Web 2.0 technologies. She is also running various projects to integrate aspects of open learning into the MSc curriculum at Southampton, and developing new work investigating the development of digital presence.
Lorraine Warren teaches Entrepreneurship and Innovation. Her research interests are in the emergence and adoption of new technologies, particularly in the Digital Economy. Recent projects have included the development of new business models in the creative industries (funded by the EPSRC's Digital Economy Initiative) and developments in the photovoltaic industry. She is currently developing projects in the social media domain, including issues of academic identity, entrepreneurial velocity, ethics and trust.

Two research perspectives merge
Lorraine: entrepreneurship literature considers entrepreneurial identity need for entrepreneurs to build a self-identity as an entrepreneur in society/context, establish legitimacy, trust, as part of value creation, cultural, sociological perspective
But how to do it??
Lisa: marketing literature considers personal branding and reputation management as essential part of growing a business/managing a career. There is a strong focus on practice – making it happen.

Objective
This session will demonstrate how you can develop your digital presence in order to make yourselves (and your work) stand out from the crowd, using social media to build your online profile.

How many of these tools are you developing…?

Social media and entrepreneurship
Agility
Foresight
High velocity
Peripheral sensing
Trends
Rapid prototyping of new possibilities
Be active outside of existing sphere of influence

What is personal branding?
According to Olins (2003), a brand is “ a symbolic embodiment of all the information connected to a company, product or service ”.
Chris Brogan ( www.chrisbrogan.com ) notes that a strong personal brand is a mix of reputation, trust, attention, and execution:
“ A personal brand gives you the ability to stand out in a sea of similar products. In essence, you’re marketing yourself as something different than the rest of the pack.”

Rationale
Finding a job and managing career progression increasingly involves understanding how today’s networks work and how to deploy them effectively, both online and offline.
Building and maintaining a personal brand in this way is becoming a critical activity for a prospective employee or entrepreneur
It is essential to make sure that the nature of the information an individual displays online is going to encourage rather than discourage a potential employer.
This work draws upon the results of an ongoing research project which is investigating the use of new technologies by entrepreneurs to build their personal brands.

Change, change, change
The nature and content of many jobs is also fundamentally changing
new cultures, mindsets and skills required
In 2008, Business Week voted the accounting firm Deloitte as the best company in the USA with which to launch a career:
Recognise that the need for change is not just about facilitating social networking.
‘ reverse mentoring‘ uses younger employees to advise and coach their older colleagues in new styles of communication and collaboration
helps to break down the traditional hierarchical barriers between the generations at work.

How can you stand out from the crowd?
The CBI and Universities UK have recently published a report on graduate employability called 'Future Fit' .
The survey of 581 employers identified entrepreneurship and enterprise as being particularly important attributes that they looked for in their prospective employees. The report defines these skills as: "An ability to demonstrate an innovative approach, creativity, collaboration and risk taking. An individual with these attributes can make a huge difference to any business.”
78% of employers responding to the Future Fit survey cited an entrepreneurial mindset as important, and 72% said a "positive attitude" mattered. The University attended was given consideration by just 8% of employers, and a graduate's degree results by just 28%.

Twitter: examples
@courosa
@tuesdaytweetup
@mpntod
@ruskin147
There are also some useful Twitter guides which can be linked from: http://www.twitip.com/personal-brand-how-to-build-yours-in-twitter/

The role of Twitter
Provide feedback . Become known as a reliable and informative source of help to your network
Get Feedback . Ask for advice and you’ll receive ‘collective intelligence’ from your network
Direct traffic . Include links in a tweet to direct traffic to your blog or to the recommended posts of others.
Read News . subscribe to feeds for specific websites/conferences, or from content providers such as the BBC.
Make New Friends . Twitter allows you to befriend and track the messages of other users.
Network for benefits . Interact with other like-minded people, or experts in your field. Develop relationships for future mutual benefits such as testimonials or peer recommendations.
Find Prospects. Twitter can be used as a means to find potential customers or clients online. Do a search for keywords related to your product on Twitter Search and then follow users.
Provide Live coverage . For example to provide real time coverage of conference keynotes
Set Up Meetings . An informal and casual way of arranging adhoc meetings.

‘ Givers gain’
Ask not what the community can do for you, but what you can do for the community…
The best long term way to build brand influence is to be seen as a ‘giver’ of good quality practical information and advice.
An authentic personal brand therefore delivers both a track record and a promise of the ongoing delivery of value.
How exactly will *you* deliver value??

Measuring Success
How can you tell whether your brand building efforts are paying off? Check out these measurement tools:
Google alerts
Twitter alerts
Comment alerts
http://www.davidrisley.com/2009/02/16/3-powerful-tools-for-monitoring-your-brand/

Challenges
Ongoing time and effort is required to develop and maintain online profiles, learn new tools and ascertain when best to integrate them into the mix.
F2F brand building elements should not be forgotten – Harris and Rae (2009) show that it is not a zero sum game, because good online networkers also tend to be effective communicators offline.
As with most things in life, you get out what you put in, and persistence pays off.
It is critical to be authentic. If your online presence is developed at only a superficial level, for example by basing it simply on ego, spin or piggybacking off the work of others, then it will not be enduring.

Action Plan
So what exactly are *you* going to go away and do to develop your digital presence?

References
Schawbel, D. (2009) Me 2.0: Build a Powerful Brand to Achieve Career Success
Vaynerchuk, G. (2009) Crush It!: Why Now is the Time to Cash in on Your Passion
Brogan, C. and Smith. J. (2009)Trust Agents: Using the Web to Build Influence, Improve Reputation, and Earn Trust
Harris, L. and Rae, A. (in review) “Building a personal brand through social networking” Journal of Business Strategy

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Building Your Digital Presence

by lisa harris on Nov 09, 2009

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