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career management

5 Superbowl Lessons for Your Personal Brand

Companies that ‘invested’ in an ad for this year’s Superbowl were paying $5 million for 30 seconds, that’s over $160,000 per second and then up to an additional 25% was being spent on advertising to promote the advertisement!

This great cartoon from Tom Fishburne at Marketoonist.com sums it all up. Check out his previous Superbowl cartoons too by visiting his website.

The commercials and the half-time show are for many the primary reason they watch the game. Some people even plan whole parties around the ad breaks rather than the game itself.

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3 Positive Aspects of LinkedIn’s Redesign for Your Personal Brand

So it’s official, it’s finally arrived. Well, at least LinkedIn’s blog is announcing it’s imminent arrival to your computer soon – the New Desktop Redesign.  You can watch the promo video here that shows you some of the features;

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If you have been following this news it was back in the fall last year that the desktop redesign was first announced, to great fanfare. After several missteps and, as is common for LinkedIn, a number of glaring glitches and errors picked up by some early users, it seems that finally, the look for your profile on your computer will be changing. If you are one of the 10-20% of users so far, perhaps it has already changed.  Of course, you could be one of the 65% or so of mobile users that maybe never uses the desktop version, in which case “Carry On!”

The hope it to see everyone switched over in the next few weeks.

There has been plenty of criticism of the new design, complaints about disappearing features and threats of departure from the platform. At the end of the day none of us really like change, yet if we embrace it and more importantly look for the positives then there are always upsides and it makes for a much better experience.

Now, if you are like me and use the desktop version to access your LinkedIn account the majority of the time, then you may want to note 3 critical aspects of the new design that will impact how your personal brand can be featured on the platform.

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Rub a Dub Dub Are You in the Salary Tub?

Either as a child or parent, or both, you probably remember the ancient nursery rhyme;

Rub-a-dub-dub,
Three men in a tub.
And who do you think they were?
The butcher, the baker,
The candlestick-maker.
They all sailed out to sea,
That was enough to make a man stare.

Perhaps these three men were the leading professionals of their time, many of the well paid and in demand jobs of that time would have been in the making or products.

The in-demand roles have changed over the years, with the leading ones turning to the accredited professions, Doctor, Lawyer, Engineer, etc. The latest LinkedIn Salary Survey of the highest paid jobs seems to bear that out if you add technology to the mix.

Of the top 20 highest paying jobs twelve were Doctor/Medical roles, three were Law/Tax, and three were Engineering/Software related. The remaining two were Marketing focused.

Whether you are in that top 20 or not, the chances are that given the right circumstances you are open to hearing about new opportunities. In fact, a LinkedIn Talent Survey from last year found that 90% of the 33,000 professionals they surveyed confirmed that and 36% of them were actively looking.

That means there is competition out there. That requires you to be on the MOVE with your career development in the following ways;

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5 Places to be Personal in Profiles to Get Noticed Online

When was the last time you asked a personal question in a business meeting?

Chances are recent. One client meeting I had, just before the holidays, involved at least 25% of the time the two of us covering every subject from politics to parenting to pasta and everything in between. None of which had a direct bearing on the very critical issue about which we were meeting. Before you say,

‘yes, but it was the holidays, so you were bound to be more relaxed’

this was the first time I had spent more than a few minutes with this client, and we only had a limited amount of time.

So, when someone shares something personal on LinkedIn, why do many professionals get bent out of shape? There never seems to be a day go by now without seeing someone on LinkedIn decry the ‘Facebookization’ of the platform. There have even been petitions started.

I am not talking about the functionality of LinkedIn or the look and feel, or even gamification of the platform, which seems to mirror Facebook in several ways. It’s the quizzes, IQ tests, cat photos, and posting something that is tantamount to click bait to which people are objecting.

There has been a highly covered example, generating thousands of comments, of Candice Galek, the owner of a swimsuit company, who posts pictures of models in bikinis.

“One man’s meat is another man’s poison.” Roman poet, Lucretius

If you are not happy with the content shared by a connection in your network, the easiest and most effective response is actually to do nothing. Anything else adds to LinkedIn’s ‘interest factor,’ which is what drives the algorithm, makes that post more attractive and ultimately that person’s place in search results. If it gets unbearable, you can choose to receive their updates no longer or finally disconnect from them.

While the platform is a business network and your profile is your own that you take with you throughout your career there are opportunities to reflect your personal brand in appropriate and impactful ways.

LinkedIn’s research has found that 87% of recruiters want to see personality reflected in a profile. Now, they are a picky lot (I know I used to be one!), and not wanting anything superfluous, so you can be fairly confident that others will have a similar viewpoint.

Here are five ways to stand-out in a personal way on LinkedIn;

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Don’t Forget to Say Hello on LinkedIn

You would likely not ignore an email from a new business connection and certainly, would not shun them face to face. So why are you always doing it on LinkedIn? You, or they, have gone to the trouble of wanting to connect it only makes sense to start to build the relationship. With the platforms enhanced messaging system there really is no excuse. Whenever you accept a new connection or… Read More »Don’t Forget to Say Hello on LinkedIn

7 Ways to Boost Your Career in 2017

I was enjoying a beer over the holidays with a friend and sharing our recollections of the past year and what we had to look forward to in the coming year. Dan had his best year ever, he hit his sales numbers about two-thirds of the way through the year, earned a huge bonus and enjoyed promotion to a senior account manager role.

His boss was expecting to see him take a higher profile role in the team with added responsibility, he was going to be traveling more, and his new sales target appeared atmospheric. He didn’t know how he was going to fit it all in. He was dreading 2017.

If the end of 2016 for you was anything like it is for Dan, you found yourself having to try and wrap up some key projects, drive in some final numbers, perhaps even complete performance reviews and other year-end tasks.

Then, before you can catch your breath or even start to worry about work, you were straight into planning, preparing and, hopefully, enjoying the holidays with family and friends and not getting despondent from all the negativity that many people felt this past year, in particular, brought them.

You must be exhausted already! Kicking off another year can be a daunting proposition. A new year brings a fresh set of challenges and almost a feeling of starting all over again. It doesn’t have to be that way. First things first, bid a final farewell to the last year, you can even use the 15 questions from the Review Your Year With No Fear Workbook to feel entirely complete, get your copy by clicking here.

Now for 2017. How do you find the energy to kick off another year, build your personal brand, maintain momentum and ensure you don’t get bogged down or distracted to still achieve what you want to in your career?

Here are seven ways to boost your personal brand and get things done without feeling overwhelmed.

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Time for a LinkedIn Check-Up

  LinkedIn’s change to the user interface now seem to be slowly rolling out, but it is taking time, so if you have changes that need to be made to your profile go ahead and do them. Then set yourself a weekly reminder to double check if the look of your profile on desktop has changed over to the new design. According to some of the LinkedIn experts that already… Read More »Time for a LinkedIn Check-Up

Who Is in Charge of Your Day? – Here’s a clue – not you!

Question: Who sets your daily agenda? Answer: Everyone else!!! The challenge you have is all the other demands that you let flood into your day and hijack it! E-mails – Research says on average, per user, you receive around 100 plus e-mails per day – 15% of which are spam, or useless, but the rest have some level of expectation for you, even if it is just reading and deleting.… Read More »Who Is in Charge of Your Day? – Here’s a clue – not you!

Why Have My LinkedIn Recommendations Disappeared?

This week’s LinkedIn tip is a result of a question coming from Dean. “I have clients that have posted recommendations for me on my Linkedin profile. I have noticed one is missing. Do you know why this would be?” There are a couple of possibilities; Whenever LinkedIn are tweaking the platform (which is often) random glitches seem to occur. With the impending user interface changes, this might be the reason. I… Read More »Why Have My LinkedIn Recommendations Disappeared?

Why I Hate My Job

Tomorrow will be my last presentation this year. In total, I will have delivered over 20 keynotes, workshops, and online webinars on personal branding in 2016. Often the core message is the same, and then I adapt the content to the particular client and event. I am often asked, “Don’t you get bored?” I remember discussing this with a colleague some years ago and he told me that he always… Read More »Why I Hate My Job