Professional Diversification Online: Using Facebook to Promote Yourself
Okay, before we really get into this, I want to make one thing very clear. I’ve heard this phrase a number of times throughout my personal branding endeavors and I want to share it with you. Facebook will not help you get a job, but rather will help you lose a job.
What does that mean? When you apply for a job, employers will likely Google your name in search for your Facebook page. Why? Because that’s where people post all kinds of stupid stuff (we all do it, so don’t deny it), like inappropriate photos, misspelled status updates, and profile information that’s completely irrelevant.
It’s time for your Facebook to “grow up,” but it isn’t going to be easy. People are so attached to the way they do Facebook now that they don’t want to change. Trust me, you’ll thank me later!
Since most of us already have a Facebook account, I’m going to help you change it to be more professional. Here’s how:
1. Grab Your Vanity URL
To get your vanity URL, go to Account Settings and change your Username.
2. Choose A Professional Profile Picture
Ideally, you want to make your profile picture the same across all your social networks. Use the one from your LinkedIn or Twitter account.
3. Get Rid Of All The Inappropriate Pictures
This is the biggest reason why people lose jobs on Facebook. They’ve got pictures of themselves double fisting drinks at the club or peeing in the bathroom at a house party. Save them on your hard drive and remove them from your Facebook.
4. Fill In Your Basic About Me Section
When you edit your profile information, you’ll see a number of tabs on the left hand side. Under Basic Information, you’ll see a section for About Me. Here’s where you want to copy your about me statement from your LinkedIn or About.me page and paste it in. You can change it up a little if you want it to be more personal and fun, but make sure it remains appropriate.
5. Fill In Your Education and Work Information
Be sure to fill in your education and work, because that’s probably the most professional piece of information on Facebook.
6. Fill In Your Interests
Next, you should find a section for Interests. Where else do you have a list of interests? Your LinkedIn profile. Go there and copy them over to your Facebook.
7. Fill In Your Contact Information
The last piece of information you want to fill in is where people can get a hold of you and where else people can find you. Make sure you provide your email address, link your Twitter account as an IM Screen Name, and links to your LinkedIn and About.me in the Website section.
8. Continuously Observe “The Mosaic”
As @drbret would say, make sure “The Mosaic” is appropriate. What is “The Mosiac” you ask? Click on your actual profile. Scroll up and down and just browse. Don’t click on anything. This is “The Mosaic.” Do you see anything inappropriate? If so, you need to fix it. Make sure your continuously observe “The Mosaic” because it changes over time.
9. Go Mobile
Finally, just like any other social network, try getting the Facebook mobile app. For the iPhone, the app is terrible, but it gets the job done. It allows you to check your feed, respond to messages, and chat. Unfortunately, it’s really slow and doesn’t always update properly.
Life Events
Today is a big day for me. Later in the afternoon, I will be saying “I do” to a very special woman. Yes, that’s right, I’m getting married.
This past week has really given me an opportunity to think about my life events; the ones that have already occurred and the ones that are yet to come. So what I’d like to do is share with you some of my past life events:
- First day of Kindergarten.
- First kiss.
- First day of Middle School.
- Making the basketball team.
- Winning the 15-Year-Old All Star State Championship.
- First day of high school.
- Making the baseball team.
- First paycheck.
- First car.
- Going undefeated in league play during my senior year baseball season.
- High school graduation.
- Acceptance into the University of Nevada, Reno.
- First internship.
- College graduation.
- First “real job”.
- Acceptance into the MBA program at UNR.
- Buying our first house.
- Getting married.
- First promotion.
- Having children.
- Retirement.
Professional Diversification Online: Using About.me to Promote Yourself
For those of you who don’t know what About.me is, let me tell you a little bit about it. About.me is exactly what it says it is: a webpage all about ME (or in your case, YOU). It’s known as a profile landing page, where people can go to find out more about you and your online presence. The page allows you to talk a little bit about yourself and provide links to the other social networks where people can find you. The nice thing about About.me is that it is supposed to rank high in Google searches. So when someone Googles your name, your About.me profile should be close to the top of the results. When people click on your About.me, they can then follow the links you’ve provided to find out where else they can connect with you. If you don’t already have an About.me or don’t really know what to do with the one you currently have, I encourage you to follow these steps to build a successful About.me profile page:
1. Grab Your Vanity URL.
Just like every other social network, you want to make sure you use your full name when signing up for an account. It makes it easier for you to share the URL with others.
2. Set A Background Image.
The first thing you want to do to get your About.me started is to start editing your profile. At the top of the screen, you should see a bar that says Dashboard, Profile, and People. Click on Profile and then click Edit (right next to Profile). The first thing you get to change is the background image. About.me will give you a list of pre-loaded options you can choose from or you can upload your own. If you upload your own, make sure you try to follow the size requirements, otherwise you image will not look right. When uploading your own background image, make it something you’re interested, but try to make it somewhat professional.
3. Upload A Picture.
Click over to Biography. This is where you get to upload a picture. Make sure you use the same picture you’ve used on all your other social networks.
4. Fill In Your Biography.
By now, you should have a nice biography written about yourself for your LinkedIn profile. Feel free to use this here, or you can write a new one and include different things about yourself. If you want to be a little more personal here, that’s fine too.
5. Change Your Fonts And Colors.
The next two areas you want to change are going to be your fonts and colors. You will get carried away trying to get the perfect font and color combination, but don’t spend too much time on it. It’s not all about the way your profile looks. It’s the content that’s important.
6. Connect Your Other Services.
Next, click over to Services. Here you will get to connect your other social networks like LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, WordPress, Flickr, YouTube and whatever else you might have.
7. Add Flat URL’s.
Flat URL’s are links to external websites that aren’t part of About.me’s services. For example, Yelp! and Diigo are two networks that I have added to my About.me, but aren’t part of their connected services.
Semipro Everything
Okay, so I’m getting married in less than a week and I’ll be gaining a new uncle who, I kid you not, is good at just about everything. He will beat you in pool, he will beat you in golf, he will beat you in darts. He can snowboard, ski, wakeboard, and waterski better than you. If you jump off a tall cliff into a lake in the middle of summer, he will dive off a taller cliff into freezing Lake Tahoe in the winter. Let’s put it this way, the guy is GOOD. He’s always the guy to beat no matter what game we’re playing or what adventure we’re embarking on. He is what we call: Semipro Everything. Not quite professional, but good enough to be better than everyone else.
This is the key to Professional Diversification, just viewed in a different light. When it comes to your career, you want to be semipro everything. You want to be good at this and good at that, at least better than everyone else. To be honest, it really doesn’t take much. A little research here and a little practice there, and you’re on your way to being able to add some more skills to your portfolio. Think about it this way, you go home after work and research the stock market. You learn how it works, how to invest your money, where to invest your money, and all the tips and tricks to being successful in the stock market. It takes a couple minutes every night, but you now have an opportunity to earn additional income on top of your normal salary because you know how to properly invest in the stock market. You don’t have to go to school and become a stock broker to make money. All you have to do is know enough to be dangerous. Like I said before, Semipro Everything.
Book Smart vs. Street Smart
Ask yourself this question: am I smart? Did you answer yes? It’s okay if you didn’t. Surprisingly, many people will actually say no. Without something to compare your smartness to, it’s kind of hard to judge right?. If you did say yes, how smart do you think you are? How did you learn to be smart? What kind of smart are you? That last question is what I’m going to be talking about today: book smarts vs. street smarts.
Book Smart
According to the Urban Dictionary, having book smarts is the ability to succeed scholastically, but not necessarily in the real world. Book smart people are usually great at reading a chapter out of a textbook and passing a multiple choice test. Unfortunately, when placed in a real life situation, they forget everything they read and fail.
Street Smart
Again, according to the Urban Dictionary, a street smart person is one who has a lot of common sense and knows what’s going on in the world. The stereotype of a street smart person is someone who is intelligent and knows how to handle important situations in the real world, but is not as well-educated academically.
So for those of you who answered no to the very first question in this post, help yourself decide if you are a book smart kind of person or a street smart kind of person. If you think you’re a book smart person, you may want to consider trying to be more street smart (common sense). See what you can learn from just paying attention to what’s going on in the world. That doesn’t necessarily mean that book smarts are bad though. You want to have a little of both. If you think you’re more street smart, maybe you should consider going back to school. Remember, you want to be well educated, but you also want to be able to translate that education into real world success, because life isn’t full of Scantron tests.
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Writing Skills vs. Presentation Skills
I’ve always been told that I’m a good writer. Throughout high school, my teachers told me I had great writing skills and throughout college, I always got A’s on papers and essays. This whole blogging experience has been great for me, as it’s given me an opportunity to write, a lot. I’ll be honest, for a guy who got his degree in Supply Chain Management, writing 500 words two to three times a week is a LOT of writing.
I’m now embarking on a new adventure, a little thing called video blogging, which I’m sure you’ve already seen. I’ve done two videos so far, neither of which I’m really proud of, and I’ll tell you why. I hate presenting. It’s one of those things that scares the hell out of me and I don’t know why. Every presentation I’ve done in school was actually very good. I always have someone tell me afterward, “You did great! Probably the best in the class.”
Every time I have presentation, the same thing happens. I get nervous, my hands start to shake, my palms get sweaty, I start saying “umm” a lot, my voice sounds shaky, my mouth starts to dry out and I always forgot to stop and take a sip of water, which I have with me every time I present. The funny thing? The same exact thing happened the other night when I recorded my first video blog. Why? I don’t know. It’s not like I was in front of a group of fellow students. I was in my home office talking to a crappy video camera sitting on top of seven books and binders because I couldn’t get the camera to point at my face without them. It took me over an hour to make it through a full run without screwing up and completely botching the entire video. Maybe it was the thought of all the people out there who might actually watch my video on YouTube or my blog. I don’t really know, but I do hope that video blogging will help me overcome my fear of presenting.
The reason for writing this post was to bring up the question: which is more important, writing skills or presentation skills? Personally, I think it all depends on what you do. If you work in sales, I would think presentation skills are more important. If you work for a newspaper or magazine, writing skills are obviously going to be very important. In most professions, though, there is a middle ground between the two. It’s important to be good at both and not limit yourself to one or the other. Besides, why wouldn’t you want to be good at both? It’s one more thing you can add to your list of skills.
Now it’s your turn to answer the question: what’s more important? Share your opinions below!