Slides for Online Social Networks session #UOSM2012

1. Building your online professional
profile
Lisa Harris
7th February 2014
#UOSM2012
Featuring @FloBroderick via Google Hangout

2. The Plan
• The growth of social media and its relationship with search
• Introduction to digital literacy
• Building your professional profile
– the employer perspective
– the employee perspective
– Further examples and resources
• Scoop.it Resources for “Building Your Online Professional
Profile”
• Video “Social Media and employability” presented by Sue
Beckingham (23 mins)
• “Building your personal brand through social networking” by
Lisa Harris and Alan Rae: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/182817/

3. Growth in personal and business use
of social media
• The Internet is now used by 78% of the British
population, up from 73% in 2011
• Social media use has plateaued at 61% (up from 60%
two years ago) – but new social tools eg WhatsApp not
included (Oxford Internet Surveys 2013)
• 77% of Fortune 500 now have active Twitter accounts
and 70% maintain a Facebook Page, according to a
University of Massachusetts Dartmouth study.
• 90% of small businesses now report using social media.
• Social media revolution 2013 (Eric Qualman, 3 mins)

4. Why should you care?
A standard CV is no longer sufficient to stand out
from the crowd in a global and rapidly evolving job
market:
“We are currently preparing students for
jobs that don’t yet exist, using
technologies that haven’t been invented,
in order to solve problems we don’t even
know are problems yet.”
- Karl Fisch, “Did You Know”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YmwwrGV_aiE

5. What does Google like?
• Social media interaction with digital content is the *biggest
influence* on its search visibility:
1. Facebook shares
2. Facebook comments
3. Facebook likes
4. Tweets
http://www.socialmediastrategist.co.uk/blog/1-news/175-socialmedia-seo
• Google “Hummingbird” for the latest update…a “new engine” for
Google
• https://www.google.com/settings/me to see what information
google makes public about you, and how others see your profile

6. Content, content, content
• People sharing/liking your content has an SEO benefit
• Good content is a top reason why people follow brands
on social media
• Build social capital by giving away good stuff –
endorsements and sales will follow
• Content can educate, inform, entertain or
inspire…resulting in brand advocates
• Facebook’s “Edgerank” score increases with
engagement, decreases with negativity. This influences
how many people get to view a brand’s post in their
newsfeed

8. Did you know…?
Digital marketing principles can also be applied to
ourselves to attract potential employers
For example, creative videos produced by
candidates now play an important role in the job
application process
As do blogging, tweeting and participating in
relevant online communities such as LinkedIn
30 million students and recent graduates are now
on LinkedIn, its fastest-growing demographic.

9. Digital Literacy
• “Digital literacy is the ability to locate, organise,
understand, evaluate, and analyse information using
digital technology. It involves a working knowledge of
current tools and an understanding of how they can
be used”
• “The active management of online activities such as
collaboration, networking , content creation and
curation in order to “stand out from the crowd” in
today’s job market”
• “an ability to respond positively to change”

10. Blogs: pulling it all together
• Use the blog framework as a central point pulling in your other
social media content: Digital Economy Blog or to aggregate a series
of blogs as per Multidisciplinary Research
• Tweets – Flickr – LinkedIn – Vimeo - Slideshare – Pinterest Soundcloud - YouTube
• You can also embed other social media within individual blog posts
• Video is increasingly important, especially authentic user
generated content
• Provide sharing buttons
• These activities provide a regular supply of “googlejuice” to the
blog

11. Dare you Google yourself...?

12. Exercise
• Go to http://reppler.com and check your own social
media profiles. The tool highlights any inappropriate
content, and shows you what aspects of your
information are publically available. Then you can
connect directly to Facebook to edit your privacy
settings and adjust the visibility of your content as
necessary.
• This exercise does require you to allow Reppler access
to your social media accounts as explained in their
privacy policy
• “Every potential candidate for 2040 presidental
election is now unelectable due to Facebook” - satire

13. So what are employers doing?
• According to a recent study by Jobvite
– 92% of recruiters use social media in the hiring process
– 80% had been positively influenced by a candidate’s
professional social network profile
– 78% had been negatively influenced towards a candidate’s
inappropriate use of social media
• The best candidates might not be actively looking for
a new job (up to 90% of the workforce)
• Social media can identify the best talent , encourage
conversation and build relationships with them
• Enables recruiters to promote their company as “a
great place to work”

16. Recruitment 3.0
• The best candidates might not be actively looking
(possibly 90%) so seek them out online
• Recruiters should actively create candidates not
wait for job seekers to find them
• Employer brand: they should promote their
company as a “great place to work”
• Foster a culture of transparency and interaction,
without trying to ‘control the message’
• Embrace social media to encourage conversation
and community building

18. Social media in the workplace:
Hootsuite
• Public and transparent hiring process through dedicated HR
twitter account
• Internal communications via twitter break down workplace
hierarchies
• Employees are encouraged to become “brand
ambassadors” through company and personal networks
• Appropriate business culture is more critical than the
technology – open, non hierarchical
• McKinsey report: internal value created by communication,
collaboration and knowledge sharing improves productivity
by 20/25% (includes podcast, 9 mins)
• Internal social networking (Video, 4 mins)

19. Flipping the Funnel
• A well defined online presence allows employers
to specify exactly what type of candidates they
are looking for
• candidates can check out company ‘fit’ through
posted video, tweets, blogs, personal interactions
on LinkedIn
• The CV becomes the final stage in the process
rather than the first
• Video drops
• Check out the Hootsuite example

20. So what should job seekers do?
• Recognise that building an online personal brand is
now a critical aspect of career development
• It boosts our reputation and gives us new skills in
communication, creativity and reflective thinking.
• The information we display on social networks
should actively encourage rather than discourage
potential employers
• Don’t “opt out” - finding NOTHING about a person
on a Google search creates a negative impression too

21. Digital Footprints: the practicalities
• It requires a long term strategy to develop a digital
“footprint” which demonstrates our skills, and build
an appropriate network of contacts.
• The successful author and speaker Chris Brogan talks
about “paying it forward” – meaning we should give
before we receive.
• For a more negative view of “digital tattoos”, see this
TED video presented by Juan Enriquez of Harvard

23. www.employadam.com
• The original video
• Why it works
• The follow up video

25. Advice from the Guardian
• Why online CVs are essential in your job
search
– LinkedIn
– Google profile
– Twitter CV
– Visual CV
– Video CV

26. Using social media to get a job
• Connect (LinkedIn, FB, Twitter)
• Collaborate (Skype, Dropbox, Google Drive)
• Create (Wordpress, Soundcloud, Pinterest,
YouTube/Vimeo)
• Curate (ScoopIt, Delicious, Slideshare)

28. Build & maintain your LinkedIn profile
• Ivan’s presentation highlights the increasingly
central role of LinkedIn for job hunters
• “How to” guides for building your LinkedIn profile
are available here
• Key points for getting started:
– Send a personal message to people you wish to
connect with
– Make sure your profile is 100% complete
– Collect and give recommendations
– Connect your Slideshare and Wordpress accounts into
LinkedIn

29. The Future of You
“Welcome to a new era of work, where your
future depends on being a signal in the noisy
universe of human capital. In order to achieve
this, you will need to master three things: selfbranding, entrepreneurship, and
hyperconnectivity.”
By Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, in the HBR blog

30. What does this mean?
• Self-branding is about standing out from the
crowd
• Entrepreneurship is about adding value to
society by disrupting it and creating a better
future.
• Hyperconnectivity is about drawing upon the
power of the network to make and shape
knowledge.

31. The Future of You: on the surface
• Today's war for talent is the war for identifying, developing,
and retaining true change-agents.
• Change-agents are hard to find, hard to manage, and hard to
retain.
• Entrepreneurship is about being a change-agent; changeagents are signals, everyone else is noise.
• Hyperconnectivity is not about being online 24/7; it's about
optimizing the online experience for others.
• Anybody can upload a video on YouTube or tweet, but only a
few can direct us to the videos or tweets we want to see.
• in the age of information overload, where everybody creates
online content, effectively curating content is what really
matters.

32. The Future of You: beneath the surface
• So far the article has attracted 77
comments
–Some say it is spot on…?
–Others think it is satire…?
–What do you think?

33. My takeaways
• Self branding is not about “look at me”, but
about “doing great stuff” which others
benefit from and then amplify on your
behalf
• Authenticity is harder to achieve than buzz,
but it is the only differentiator in the longer
term
• Hyperconnectivity is the only really new
factor

34. Linchpin
@lisaharris #CIMbrandyou

35. “Linchpin” by Seth Godin
• It's now more essential than ever to become
indispensable - to become a linchpin.
• Linchpins are essential building blocks: they invent, lead
(regardless of title), connect others, make things happen,
and create order out of chaos.
• If you have you ever found a shortcut that others missed,
seen a new way to resolve a conflict, or made a
connection with someone others couldn't reach, then
you have what it takes to become indispensable.
• It's time to stop complying with the system and draw
your own map (from Amazon review)
• Seth Godin Interview (9 minutes)
@lisaharris #CIMbrandyou

36. @lisaharris #CIMbrandyou

37. A few notes of caution...
• Ongoing time and effort is required to develop and
maintain online profiles, learn new tools and
ascertain when best to integrate them into the mix.
• F2F brand building elements should not be forgotten
– our research shows that it is not a zero sum game,
good online networkers also tend to be effective
communicators offline.
• As with most things in life, you get out what you put
in, and persistence pays off.
• It is critical to be authentic. An *enduring* personal
brand is not developed by basing it simply on ego,
spin or piggybacking off the work of others...
• Boundaries between ‘business’ and ‘personal’ are
blurring
@lisaharris #CIMbrandyou

38. Be creative 
• See Ed Hamilton’s CV on Google Maps
• Jay Foreman’s video history of London’s tube
stations
• The video CV (4mins)

39. Finding me online
https://www.vizify.com/lisa-harris
http://digitaleconomy.soton.ac.uk/people/lisaharris/
www.about.me/lisa.harris
www.twitter.com/lisaharris
www.linkedin.com/in/lisajaneharris
http://www.slideshare.net/lisaharris
http://lisaharrismarketing.com