You’ve written your Personal Brand Statement. You looking for a job and have sent hundreds of resumes, but no one is calling you for an interview.
Brand Promotion
Have you thought of using Twitter and your Status Updates as an advertising platform for your brand? No one will know how good you are if you don’t let them know about it. These days, submitting a resume isn’t enough. You have to also promote yourself for the job you want by advertising yourself well.
So why not have an eye-catching ‘advertisement’ that promotes YOU? Obviously, I don’t mean the ‘glaring neon-sign’ type of advertisement.
Use Twitter, Status Update, and LinkedIn Answers
These platforms are ideal for promoting the fact that you are looking for a job and what value you bring. Present yourself as an expert in the field. Search LinkedIn Answers and post answers to questions in your field to demonstrate your subject matter expertise.
Use Twitter and Status updates to talk about your recent accomplishments – blog posts you’ve made or commented on; links to articles you’ve been reading that would be relevant to the industry you’re interested in, etc.
These venues are perfect because you have to be short and to the point. Your goal is to get someone interested in reading your resume and calling you in for an interview. Think your prospective employer isn’t looking at social media sites? Think again. They’re out there looking for anything they can find on candidates – why not make sure what they find is favorable?
What does a brand manager do, anyway?
A Brand Manger basically applies marketing techniques to a specific product or brand to increase the brand’s perceived value to the customer and increase brand equity.
It is not uncommon for a brand manager to also be responsible for coordinating activities of specialists in production, sales, advertising, promotion, research and development, marketing research, purchasing, distribution, package development, and finance.
Here are some helpful Brand Management tips to writing tweets and status updates to help you get noticed:
- Start with a good lead - Your first few words should make the readers want to know more. This means that your first line should immediately catch reader’s attention
- Package yourself- Brand yourself based on your excellent skills and qualities. Create your own identity and make it evident to your writing.
- End with a great impact - Make sure that you leave a lasting impact to your readers. Your ending words should encourage some type of response to you.
Finally, make sure prospective hiring managers know how to reach you via email. They may not want to Facebook you or they may not even know how to Twitter. So make sure people can find you via email.
Author:
Beverly Macy is the Managing Partner of Y&M Partners and teaches a social media class at the UCLA Extension. She also co-hosts Gravity Summit events and provides personal branding coaching.
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Dear Beverly,
You´ve made a lot of valid points, but I would like to emphasis the importance of the offline meeting and networking as well.
Try to find out (maybe via twitter or social networking sites) what events, networks, etc. that your potential employer might attend, and see if you can meet up with them there, in person. As always in networking, always try to find out what the other person needs and try to help her with that. If you manage it correctly and finds a way to help her, then that will make a unforgettable first impression that might show helpful when applying for a job.
Of course, come prepared with business cards with links to your online presence as well as a good USP if you get the question what you are looking for. It is always good to follow up with a personal “nice to meet you”-note.
I agree, what a great post!
I have been on the look-out for a new job. Using Twitter and updates on Linkedin, Plaxo, Facebook and telling people actively about my position worked really well. Self-marketing I guess
However, unfortunately you cannot tell everyone if you want to sneakily change jobs but if you were made redundant then that is possible. Also, don’t forget to post how great you are “during your job”, even if you don’t want to change. Show off with your expertise, it will benefit both you and your current employer.
Thanks
Volker
Thanks for the great comments! Nothing replaces meeting in person whenever possible. And always be prepared with your business card – have you noticed that people are adding their Twitter address to their cards? I just added @beverlymacy to mine.
I like the idea of personal branding. I’ve done this also by doing a site with my history and some highlights…
but to personal branding you would also need a tool to manage your personal brand. We have been working to develop a Personal CRM for now two years now and we are 99% done.
Almost everyone has some sort of CRM method in use, even if they are not actually aware of it; be it a stack of business cards of people met, list of email addresses and old emails or simply the phone numbers stored in their mobile phone. E8 offers an easy and effective way for people to profile, organize and maintain their expanding network of contacts, while simultaneously saving E8 users precious time by keeping relevant information organized in an effective and accessible manner.
In work life you’re just as valuable as the contacts you know.
//E
[...] Be Your Own Brand Manager You’ve written your Personal Brand Statement. You looking for… [...]
Hi Beverly,
Nice post. Good to see lots of new ideas being put in on online personal brand management. As u said social media is now playing a vital role in managing the personal brand of any company/person. As in every company should have a twitter/facebook page of their own and having wiki is an added advantage. It not only helps recruiters to know more in detail but also gives a high ranking on Google search. But then on the other hand a negative comment/feedback can impact very badly the overall reputation being set in after so much of hard work. How to deal efficiently with this trade-off???
Regards
Ujjawal