Archive for category For Job Seekers
Book Outline “Crush It!” part 3, build your personal brand
Posted by eviator in For Job Seekers on December 7, 2009
Sure you can make money on the internet, but it’s infinitely more important to build your brand. Think about it this way, you can have a customer spend $1000 today, or you can have that customer spend $100 today, next week,?the week after, etc, and then tell all their friends about how awesome your company is.?If you have a strong brand that people can believe in, then the money will come eventually. When you are first starting out, you should focus on building excellent content, and most importantly on delivering that content in a way that embraces your personality. In his third chapter, Build your personal brand, Vaynerchuk discusses this in detail using his website, tv.winelibrary.com as an example. He didn’t start the website to sell wine, but instead to build a brand. While he’s excelled at both, it’s important to remember the order in which this took place:
- Build a strong brand
- Monetize the brand
No matter what type of content you create (video, text, pictures, online radio), it should be something that you are passionate about and can communicate in an honest and authentic way. This means you should be yourself. Your website shouldn’t look like mine, it should look like yours. This is what will differentiate your brand from all the others out there doing the same thing. Once you have great content up on your site, you should begin using online social networks to build strong word of mouth and create a community.
How are you currently building your personal brand (both online and off)? Let me know at edwardviator [at] evil-marketer [dot] com
Notable quotes from this chapter:
- Developing you personal brand is key to monetizing your passion online.
- Consumers want you to tell them the truth.
- Leveraging social networking platforms into effective conduits for your personal brand is all about building word of mouth.
Book outline: Crush It! part 2, discovering your passion
Posted by eviator in For Job Seekers on December 3, 2009
Too many people ignore their personal passions in order to conform to things that society or other people think they should do. In his 2nd chapter, Success is in your DNA Vaynerchuk discusses his personal background, his early business exploits selling baseball cards, working in his?father’s liquor store, and eventually using the internet to promote the store and his person brand. The general point of the chapter, and of the book in general is that you must be yourself. It can be difficult sometimes, but the good news is that the internet makes it possible for you to redefine yourself, and most importantly to turn your passion into your personal brand.
I can definitely relate to some of what he says in this chapter. I remember my dad working two jobs so that me and my brother could go to the best schools. I’m sure that he wasn’t passionate about loading goods into eighteen wheelers all day (his true passion has always been baseball), but he endured the back-breaking labor because he valued education, a passion that quickly became my own. You should look to your own past and find out what drives you to success. Do some soul searching and find out what you are passionate about.
Notable quotes from this chapter:
- Storytelling is by far the most underrated skill in business.
What are you passionate about. Let me know at EdwardViator [at] evil-marketer [dot] com
Book outline: Crush It! part 1
Posted by eviator in For Job Seekers on December 2, 2009
As a professional I always strive to be the best at what I do, which is why I am a big fan of sharpening my marketing tools. A big part of this is reading the latest business books and trying to learn as much as I can; only a fool thinks he/she knows everything. I recently read Crush It! Cash In On Your Passion by Gary Vaynerchuk, and have learned some very useful techniques for marketing / branding yourself online, as well as effective ways to use social networking websites to accomplish marketing goals; both of which are essential skills in today’s business world. I’m going to go through this book, chapter by chapter, describing the salient points as well as offering my own commentary. The chapter 1 discussion starts now.
In his first chapter, Passion is everything, Vaynerchuk offers his secret to success.
- Love your family
- Work superhard
- Live your passion
This formula may seem overly basic to some, but if you think about it, you know it’s true. At one of my previous jobs, I found myself dissatisfied even though the pay was good, and the job was challenging. At the time, I had no idea why, but after reading this book, I’ve realized what I was missing. I wasn’t living my passion. I’m betting that this is the point where most people have problems. With food to put on the table and bills to pay, it’s easy to think of success as something to be measured by money. We seldom realize that success should be measured by how happy we are. If you’re not living your passion, you are missing out on one of the most important elements of success.
Living your passion sounds great, but in the meantime you have bills to pay and so you won’t (and shouldn’t) quit your day job just yet. The good news is that with all of the opportunities available using free social networking websites (such as blogs like the one you are reading now), you can still live your passion, and may even be able to make some money off of it in the future. Vaynerchuk discusses these social networking websites as well as money making opportunities later in the book, which we will get to in a future post.
Notable quotes from this chapter:
- Money goes where people go.
- It’s never a bad time to start a business unless you’re starting a mediocre business.
- The person who can dominate in rough times is the person who can dominate, period.
- Social media = business, period.
Have you noticed something missing in your life? Are you living your passion? Email me EdwardViator [at] evil-marketer [dot] com
Short, quick, to the point ideas
Posted by Steve in For Job Seekers, Pitch on November 6, 2009
I like ideas presented short and simple. I want ideas presented to me on one sheet of paper, maybe up to four pages if it’s a process. That’s like an executive summary. Maybe we need a format for it?
New product idea: the standard format for short ideas
Problems addressed (or are they solved): people do not have a lot of time and need to determine quickly if it’s a worthy idea to pursue, need to understand the basic solution and how to implement it without a lot of fluff.
Examples already out there: Harvard Business Review Breakthrough Ideas for 2009 (Harvard Business Review Lists). The book is really short with each idea taking up a couple of pages (one or two pages in Word).
So, what should this format look like? I’ll leave that up to you to think about.
Take it to the next step, how about a web site that has ideas and then ways you can send these ideas to people with the following?
1) Please develop this
2) Hire me to develop this.
Get the idea? Create short ideas, present them in a concise manner, and then create an opportunity for yourself or someone else.
Social Media Engineer
Posted by Steve in Execution, For Job Seekers on November 5, 2009
I think this job is already out here but I am proposing it here. Twitter, Facebook, Dig. If you go to Namechk.com there are 132 social web sites you can use to reach people. I am sure there are a lot more, but these are the top ones. They range from eBay to Twitter, from 12seconds.tv to Zooomr (never heard of either). The problem is that there are too many social sites and methodologies out there. Then, even on those sites there are too many things to do.
If you are following 1000 people on Twitter, how do you make sense of the conversation. Its like standing on an street corner in rush hour in New York City. You can get attention by dropping your pants, but it’s the wrong kind of attention.
Sure, there are books out there. Thousands.
The answer is experts. They are already out there, called Social Media experts or gurus. I think it is time for something called a social media engineer. The job of this person is to properly place, grow and utilize the various social media websites for a specific purpose.
I googled it. Already some one is calling themselves that. Not a lot though.
I monstered it. The closets thing is a Social Media Manager for HP.
I whois’ed it. Someone has the site socialmediaengineer.com (Bill Deys), and they are doing nothing with it. It’s a wordpress site (same theme as mine!!!). He just got it June 8, posted something on Aug 18. Maybe he is trying to figure it out.
I googled for social media expert and number two is gallucci.net. Giovanni Gallucci is a local guy (Dallas, TX) and a great speaker. He gets it! Check out his site.
The bottom line here is that there is an opportunity out there. Some people are already jumping on it. Why not you? If you have a company hire someone like Giovanni to help you. Matter of fact, hire Giovanni, because, quite frankly, he is the only one doing it.
And then, you can help your business grow.
Build Your Own Brand
Posted by Steve in Customers, For Job Seekers on November 3, 2009
On Monday, an article appeared on CNN, Me 2.0: Branding yourself online. Great article on personal branding as it defines branding and then goes into discussing social branding online.
Definition: Personal branding is promoting yourself like a brand . You have have skills, values, expertise that you can deliver to someone that needs it.
They only touch on a few things but essentially you use the internet, blogs, social websites, and manage your personal brand like you would any other brand. Problem is that you may not know how to do that. Two things you can do. Buy the book they talk about, Me 2.0 (visit the website, www.personalbrandingbook.com) or click on Job Seekers on the right and read the articles. Furthermore, we are going to go into further depth on how you can build your brand.
As a pat on my own back I will state that I have been writing about this for some time. As a job seeker and entrepreneur, build your own brand!
Why? Read yesterday’s post. Building your brand is as useful and as critical as building the brand for your company. People will tie the two together and for startups, which has more history? You! Use it.
Note: This is not an endorsement for Me 2.0. I have not read the book. However, it got mentioned on CNN and it may be worth checking out in the bookstore.
Use your personal brand when you start a business
Posted by Steve in Customers, For Job Seekers on November 2, 2009
In the past I have talked about the multiple focus of the job seeker, that the goal is to advertise yourself on the web. This also applies to the entrepreneur because your personal brand is as important as your business brand when you start.
Why? When your business starts which has a longer track record, your business or you? It is you! Leverage that track record into a brand, tie it to your business, and people will start to believe that your business has that positive brand as well.
Volunteer to be a Speaker will get you Noticed
Posted by Steve in For Job Seekers on October 6, 2009
Someone needs to get their name and face out there. Maybe they are looking for a job?
Groups need speakers because they want to make the meetings more interesting. Maybe they need more members? Unfortunately, many people who attend these groups do not want to speak; and the groups do not have money for a speaker.
There is an opportunity here. If you are looking to generate more business, more contacts, more likelihood of people knowing who you are when they need you, then you need to get in front of more people.
Come up with three different topics to talk about for five minutes, 15 minutes, and 45 minutes. Maybe not that excessive, but you get the idea that you need to have more than one topic and be flexible on the time. Offer your services for free (maybe they give you a free meal) at different events.
Go to these events. Hand out your business cards. Be memorable. Connect to people on Linked-In and Facebook. Follow up with them and keep them involved.
Volunteering to be a speaker and entertaining people will do more for your networking and contacts than many one on one meetings. You not only met them but gave them an interesting presentation. You are stronger their memories. Your name is more likely to come up when they need someone with your skills (or business).
Now, is that not what you want? More business?
Avoid Boilerplate Phrases
Posted by Steve in For Job Seekers, Pitch, Plan on July 9, 2009
Quick aside from writing the executive summary, but still related.
Are you familiar with boilerplate phrases? Check out Liz Ryan’s article on Yahoo Hotjobs titled, “10 Boilerplate Phrases That Kill Resumes“ The point of her article is that these phrases have been so commonly used that they no longer indicate a strong resume. Instead she says they indicate the writer is vocabulary challenged and non-compelling. Worse, I think they hurt your credibility.
This ties into John Lucht (who I have a link in the sidebar to his website) writes in his book, “Rites of Passage at $100, 000 Plus: the Insider’s Guide to Absolutely Everything About Executive Job-Changing” about resumes: avoid catch phrases but use examples showing how you demonstrate the intention of that catch phrase.
The same thing applies in the executive summary and the business plan. People put in catch phrases and instead of making themselves stand out, they lose impact.
Ryan suggests 10 catch phrases to avoid (I am using these without permission, but linking to her article). I am reprinting them below, but please check out her article!
Check your executive summary and business plan for these phrases. Without specific examples they stand out as meaningless today. Especially check the resumes that are typically put in an Appendix in the business plan.
FYI, I did check my resume, and can safely say I have none of these phrases.
Two Prerequisites to Creating your Marketing Website
Posted by Steve in For Job Seekers, Miscellaneous, Plan, Strategy on May 27, 2009
Yesterday, I wrote about Kenrick Chatman and his web site: www.kenrickchatman.com and that it is a great way to market yourself.There are two pre-requisites to market like this. First, figure out a subject area you really like. Second, write out a long outline of subjects or speaking/writing topics that can be further expanded. To keep up an interesting site, you need to provide material. If you cannot do this with your subject area, then either choose a broader subject or find another subject.
Provide variety, but stay on topic. Keep people interested in you.