Nowadays, everything is available online, so when it comes to marketing yourself, there are certain little tips and tricks that have to be followed. Your LinkedIn account, for example, would be better for potential interviewers to see than your Facebook account, especially if you have any old photos lurking around. Rennar (2003) states that to uncover new opportunities, you must improve the way your market yourself.
Right back at the dawn of web 2.0, Swift (2003) spoke of the need for ‘engineers to promote themselves professionally, with integrity and honour’. This can be expanded to include all persons. There are several ways in which someone can build their online presence. A digital marketer would expect themselves to have a strong online profile, through LinkedIn, Twitter, Video resume, and others. In this blog we will look at different ways to market yourself digitally, and how to ensure that these land on the first page on any search engine, using search engine optimisation (SEO):
- LinkedIn Account
- Video Resume
- Blogs
- Alternatives
LinkedIn:
LinkedIn has been making strides recently in profile views and rankings (LinkedIn, 2014). It now allows you to see how you rank against your connections and against those in your industry. It is the latter we are focusing on. Using this feature, you can find out what percentile you are in for profile views. If you’re looking to improve your visibility, improving your rank could be a good place to start.
There are a few ways of doing this, even for those who have seemingly followed all the ‘how to’ guides online. The first is to increase the number of keywords you have in your profile. Google and other search engines rank their search results in terms of relevance, view count, time spent on landing page etc. Having more keywords can make you more relevant to more searches and therefore optimise the results.
Quality content is a second factor. Once you have a number of relevant keywords, and many people are drawn to your account, the quality of the landing page is important. If viewers are repeatedly turned off from this, you’ll drop down the results, and someone else could skip above you.
Twitter:
Twitter is almost entirely about visibility. Those who tweet regularly with relevant content will show up on the first page of google. Having many followers will help this but it is possible to do without, plus of you are consistently showing on the first page of google your followers will increase with time. Up to date and relevant content to your industry or industries that interest you are important to keep your account professional (Twitter, 2015).
Video Resume:
YouTube is the most popular video sharing site in the world. The popularity of videos on this website works in a very similar way to google, in that it focuses on the keywords you use, and where you appear in the results is based on popularity (number of subscribers), view count, relevance etc. the best video resumes will appear on both the top results in YouTube and on Google as shown below.
Blogs:
Again, unsurprisingly, to get blogs to the top of google results, relevance and keywords are the priorities. Ensuring the content serves the audience is what allow blogs to be noticed and read often (Forbes, 2013). A strong landing page of course is also required, especially with blogs, where often viewers are able to comment upon what they have read. While many negative comments may be great for SEO, you would top of the pile for popularity, it would not look good as a tool for marketing yourself. Having said that ‘any publicity is good publicity’…
Alternatives:
One particular alternative, which would complement the above options, would be to engage in pay-per-click advertising. By having quality and relevant content on your various online pages you can create a huge amount traffic through by ensuring you appear on the top of the first page on Google. This, of course, could prove to be very expensive, although you can cap the amount you pay for the advertising.
Conclusion:
Overall, a combination of all of the above, or at least a few of the above, can greatly increase the chances of improving your online presence. If you’re hoping to be headhunted, looking for a new job, or just looking to widen your network across industries, these different options can move you from the 500th page of Google results, to the 1st.
References
LinkedIn, 2014. Accessed 09 April 2015. Available at: <https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20140806165448-134997749-linkedin-feature-how-you-rank-for-profile-views-how-to-improve-your-ranking-for-profile-views>
Rennar, H 2003, ‘Marketing Yourself. It May just Be Job One’, Financial Executive, 19, 6, pp. 48-50, Business Source Premier, EBSCOhost, viewed 9 April 2015.
Swift, JL 1999, ‘Integrity: Marketing Yourself for Success’, Journal Of Management In Engineering, 15, 2, p. 24, Business Source Premier, EBSCOhost, viewed 9 April 2015
Taylor, KA 2003, ‘Marketing Yourself in the Competitive Job Market: An Innovative Course Preparing Undergraduates for Marketing Careers’, Journal Of Marketing Education, 25, 2, pp. 97-107, Business Source Premier, EBSCOhost, viewed 9 April 2015.
Twitter, 2015. Accessed 9 April 2015. Available at: <www.business.twitter.com/>
Forbes, 2013. Accessed 9 April 2015. Available at: <http://www.forbes.com/sites/jacquelynsmith/2013/08/06/14-ways-to-make-your-blog-get-real-attention/>