Final Presentation - The Jist of It Anyway

Finding "Me" Online

What's the greatest thing about the internet? You can find anything on it. Suddenly limitless information is just a click away and questions asked out loud all receive the same answer, "JFGI" (Just F***ing Google It). So in the midst of all the mess... how does a person establish themselves online? Entering and navigating around in the working world can be a daunting process, one which has some people trying to bury their online profiles and others trying to make theirs more easily found. Social media is rooted in personalizing online experiences and developing relationships, so it would seem that to be successful online, one must establish their online presence.

So what do I mean by this?

One thing will remain constant throughout time, in order to get a job you have to stand out. There has to be something about you in which an employer sees potential. As location seems to become more and more irrelevant, competition for jobs has only increased; now with one less stipulation standing in the way, applicants can apply to a wider range of opportunities which means standing out becomes more important still.

Websites such as LinkedIn offer pools of candidates for the picking. Now there are even further steps a person can take in order to establish his or her integrated presence online and it all starts with finding and organizing "Me" within the vastness.

So, who is Joanna Clark? Well... JFGI. To make a long search short... None of the links on the first page even come close to being me. Actually it isn't until page 6 that one little hint of my online presence pops up from clarku.edu. With a name like "Joanna Clark" I wasn't holding my breath for originality. Just for some reference I plugged in my friend's name next; and now that I know there is only one "Darcey Kurashige-Elliott" in the world, it's back to the unlucky rest of us whose surnames rank in the top 25 most common in the US (at least as of 2000).

Now if I did want to hide my online presence, I would have a leg up on the Kurashige-Elliotts of the world especially in this mess...

but no... I want to stand out. So how do I start finding myself in it all?

A Facebook search yields 306 matches. MySpace? 111. I don't know if I would enjoy being professionally confused with some of the other Joanna Clarks in the world, especially if I started getting requests to sing in interviews or express why I think I'm qualified through interpretive dance. Now, I only have myself to blame for this, but refining the search to "Joanna Clark Massachusetts" seems to just add anyone named Joanna who has attended Clark University in Massachusetts to the results. College application fail.

So here's where I try to make it easy for all those companies out there chomping at the bit to find and hire me. First step... use JFGI's powers for good, not evil. A Google Profile is a great place to start organizing all my information in one place. By simply Googling "Me", the first link asks if I would like to setup my very own Google Profile. Within five minutes I had created "Me" and in the first .23 seconds of my next Google search, there I was... little old me on the first page of results. My mom would be proud.

Finding "Me" didn't end there however. As with any social media marketing campaign, everything should be integrated. Just like a user subscribes to RSS Feeds in order to avoid going out and finding each individual piece of news, an employer should have all the necessary links to your professional campaign right at his or her fingertips. So let's go to the Profile Checklist

• Twitter
• Facebook
• LinkedIn
• Personal Blog
• SlideShare
• YouTube Channel
• Personal Website
• Flickr

Now not all of these social media outlets may be utilized by you, or perhaps you aren't participating in all of them professionally. If this is the case then first consider if you would benefit from joining any of them. If the answer is yes begin to expand your presence, but if not focus on adding more value to your current outreach. Clearly everyone in the class for which I write this blog is proactive about individual learning and developing new skill sets, otherwise we wouldn't be here. These new proficiencies will be useless if we hide under a rock though. It's now just as important to learn how to organize and market our own selves online as it is to market the companies for which we do (or hopefully will one day) work.

Here I am, crawling out from under the rock as an integrated online presence. No longer will I have my lousy surname doing all the work. The biggest challenge for myself and the likes of my generation will be maintaining a line between my professional online presence and my personal online presence. Social media has taught us that transparency is important from a company or professional, but now in a time were privacy is no longer sacred, we must all work to personally market our professional talents rather than have our personal presence interfere with our professional goals.

Powerpoint Presentation

MarketingMe_JoannaClark.ppt

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