One of the dream situations for many PR clients (even today!) is the fact that their message is quoted as-is, in mainstream media. Without getting into the details of how it usually happens, the fun is supposedly in seeing in print, a sentence cooked by the communications/PR team.
In essence, it is nothing but a brand getting to talk about itself, in it’s own words.
Now, can this happen to you, at a personal level?
Consider this scenario. Someone needs to know more about you (for what? May be a job referral, perhaps?). What will they do? They’d ask people around hoping someone may know someone else who knows you. And they’d get others’ opinion about you. You may perhaps want something specific communicated about you, but it may not happen since other people are involved and the information about you may happen only through their opinion about you.
Years ago, when I was a rookie corporate communications executive with just about 18 months work experience, I managed to convince a hotshot internet entrepreneur to meet me. His online start-up was the toast of India back then and I was maha-impressed with his vision and ideas. I was working in Delhi back then and he was on a day trip from Bangalore and agreed to meet me at Delhi airport. We met and the first thing he told me is that I was in his radar already! I had no idea how he knew about me, but it was a good feeling to know that he had done some homework about me and that someone actually said good things about me!
That was the pre-internet days…or at least, early internet days!
The reason for this intro? I wanted to know about a person recently. Like I always do, I did a search, on Google – in this person’s case, the name was bloody unique too! And all I got was the person’s Facebook page with a couple of photos. And a PDF file from the school where this person studied…it listed the names of alumni students – that’s it! Nothing else – no blog, no twitter, no anything else and gasp…no LinkedIn Profile either!
This is an extreme case, frankly. Most people seem to have a skeletal LinkedIn profile that reads like an online resume listing various jobs they have been in.
My point is, it need not read like that at all since you have a choice.
We all do name searches on Google and land up in assorted social profiles of a person. A LinkedIn profile showcases the professional standing of the person to a large extent and it could read the way you want it to read – like that PR client dream situation I mentioned earlier in this post.
If you have a blog that comes up on top of a Google search for your name, you’re lucky – you could use that to talk about yourself, your expertise and so on. But very few people have such luck – for everybody else, there is LinkedIn and a profile on LinkedIn usually ranks quite high in a name search in Google.
So, if you haven’t bothered planning how you should present yourself to the world through your blog, at least do it in your LinkedIn Profile. It is far more powerful and useful that you could imagine!
Think about it – it literally introduces you to the world. And it need not read like a laundry list of jobs you were in if only you bother to present your best face forward through it using some creativity. The key is to let your profile answer 2 things – ‘Who are you?’ and ‘What do you do?’. Think about how you’d answer these 2 questions in an interview. Would you answer them with your name and your employer’s name? That’s the dummies version of responding to those questions. If you want to stand out amongst your peers, you’ve got to do far better than that.
Simple lesson #1: If you don’t have an online presence that Google can trace against your name, get yourself one – LinkedIn seems to be easiest option, to start with.
Simple lesson #2: Your LinkedIn profile appearing in a Google name search is your calling card to the world. Work on it so that it presents the best ‘you’!
Pic courtesy Artist Mariapham via Flickr.