Importance of BRANDING yourself as an authority online

FACT: The vast majority of people in senior positions right now are in an age demographic that will be retiring within 5 years. This group tends to hold “traditional” bricks and mortar beliefs with some exceptions (although not many) when it comes to hiring. They will mainly look at your resume, experience and education when considering you for a job.

As the new, online, social media generation demographic fills their spots I feel there will be significant changes in beliefs and hiring practices. Our generation of hiring managers will search for a job applicants authority level & reputation online. They’ll be asking such questions as:

• who are their online networks?
• what to their connections say about them?
• do they blog?
• do they have a podcast?
• are they in touch with new trends in the industry?
• do they frequently speak an unconferences?
• do they have a website?
• are they on SecondLife?

I can think of a great deal of “old-school” professionals in the field of marketing whose reputation and authority is undisputed, however, only with their generation and like-minded peers. While I must admit, they do share privileges of established old-boys networks, their authority is nowhere to be found online. In contrast, there is a whole breed of young self-branded industry experts (Mitch Joel,. Joe Jaffe, CC Chapman) that are quickly becoming much more powerful and connected simply because they get it.

They are engaged/connected with their audiences and constantly “out-there” walking the talk of all Web 2.0 has to offer. In the eyes of many, this can be much more valuable than investing all your efforts in traditional career advancing routes (e.g. relying solely on an MBA). Just “Google” any of the names I mentioned and see for yourself. Who would you hire?

In my opinion online personal branding and identity creation will be a booming business in the coming years. Imagine getting a universal online identity score as easily as you can get an Equifax credit score online. This score could be based on a multitude of factors such as ratio of positive to negative blog entries written about you , trackbacks to your blog, subscribers, rank of your name in Google search results, amount of people tagging you, # of offensive photos of you, density of your name online…etc…All nicely packaged to provide a final score and recommendations for improvement (if anyone is interested in pursuing an application of this nature give me a call!). The biggest problem right now of course is the fact that many of these social media tools and networks are operating in silos.

What do I mean? Just ask yourself this question: How many different user names and passwords do you have? 5, 10, 20? Would it not be easier to have a single access point to everything? Perhaps we should have one private identity and one business identity, (see my last blog entry) what do you think?

If you want to get a good grasp of the identity concept, take a look at this great presentation by Dick Hardt on the newly coined term Identity 2.0 .

US launches ‘MySpace for spies’

“Spies and teenagers normally have little in common but that is about to change as America’s intelligence agencies prepare to launch “A-Space”, an internal communications tool modelled on the popular social networking sites, Facebook and MySpace.

The Director of National Intelligence will open the site to the entire intelligence community in December. The move is the latest part of an ongoing effort to transform the analytical business following the failure to detect the 9/11 terrorist attacks or find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.”

Incredible! Kudos to the CIA for realizing the powerful potential of social media networks. Now if only the Canadian government could learn from our neighbours down south and follow suite to reduce the bureaucracy and lack of communication within and amongst departments. What are we doing instead? Banning Facebook. Go figure.

Read the full article here:FT.com / World – US launches ‘MySpace for spies’

Facebook –> Personal or Business Network?

I just read the recent Marketing Profs article on Facebook and its implications for marketers: What the Web Marketer Should Know About Facebook. It’s a great summary of Facebook features and some interesting new facts (i.e. the fastest growing Facebook segment is 35+). A question I’ve been pondering on lately is whether or not it is a good thing that my business contacts and clients are trying to get on there. I’ve been using Facebook since its infancy (I was one of the many originators sending all those annoying Facebook invites hoping other friends would join). Soon all my friends (actual friends) were on board and it became a great MSN Messenger compliment for staying in touch with my friends (for those unaware, MSN Messenger / ICQ were the real-time chat platforms of choice amongst the 18-25 demographic at the time).

Where am I going with this? Well, as an individual, I have my private conversations and photos on there, which are meant to be shared and seen by my close friends (from my private social life).

As a marketing professional , I am reluctant to be adding business contacts and potential clients as “friends” (unless they really are). There seems to be a serious blurring of the lines between private and work life. Personally, I have nothing to hide, however, I do still feel that there should exist a certain level of separation between the two. Perhaps I should create a second business identity on Facebook? This would likely be a pointless effort. No matter what privacy settings we have, everything that we post online will someday be easily accessible to someone looking for it.

My advice: be smart with what you do online, regardless of where it is. Start thinking of yourself as a BRAND. Be consistent, and always be aware that a future employer might be looking at your blog post/youtube video/facebook photo/ etc…

For now, as my business social media network I use LinkedIn.

What are your thoughts?