Alison Doyle

Creating a Consistent Personal Brand

Dan Schawbel, the person everyone should be paying attention to when it comes to personal branding, has an excellent blog post on the importance of creating a consistent brand image on all social networks.

As an example of consistency, here's what I've done:

• My VisualCV
• Facebook
• LinkedIn
• Twitter

As you can see, I've used the same photo and basic information on all my profiles. When you Google "Alison Doyle" all of these profiles rank well, helping me with my personal and professional branding.

It's also important, Dan also notes, to make sure that you claim your name. The last thing you need, especially if you're job seeking is to have someone else showing up as you.

One of the Best Job Search Book in a Long Time

I was thrilled to read the review of my book Internet Your Way to a New Job - How to Really Find a Job Online on The Daily Machete. Here's a brief excerpt:

"When a great job seeking book comes out, The Daily Machete likes to review it for our readership.  That's why it's such a pleasure to showcase one of the best job search books in a long time - Internet Your Way to a New Job, by Alison Doyle…  Doyle also covers some extremely important aspects of modern job hunting, such as writing a blog, optimizing yourself and incorporating SEO (Search Engine Optimization)... Be sure to get your hands on a copy of Internet Your Way to a New Job.  It's one of those books that all job seekers should read and absorb so they can compete in the job market."
Read the entire review: The Daily Machete

More Reviews and Endorsements:

Read what top career experts and leading job search sites have to say about Internet Your Way to a New Job.

Order Your Paperback or eBook copy:

• Internet Your Way to a New Job from the publisher (save 15%)
• Internet Your Way to a New Job from Amazon

Building My Professional Brand

I've been having fun working on building my professional brand this week.  I've updated my LinkedIn and Facebook profiles.  I've polished up my VisualCV and I've signed up for Twitter.

In addition, I've been having some interesting discussion with colleagues on how their work, their career, and their online presence has benefited from spending time on all this stuff.  It is time consuming, but the bottom line is that there wasn't one of us who said they hadn't benefited from the time they spent creating profiles, networking online, getting the RSS for their blogs out there, and communicating with contacts.  It works and once you get your profiles set, it really isn't that much work to utilize all these online networking sites effectively.

Here's a look at where I am with building my brand:

• My LinkedIn Profile
• My Facebook Profile
• My VisualCV
• Twitter
• My About.com Job Search Bio

And, if you Google "Alison Doyle" you'll see how these have helped enhance my presence in the search engines - providing good information to anyone looking me.   Nine out of the top 10 search results are my links.

Building Your Professional Brand

If you're job hunting or career building, it's important to strategically work on creating (and tweaking on a regular basis) your professional brand.  Why?  Well the chances are that if you apply for a job, or talk to a recruiter or a potential client, you're going to get Googled to see what they can find out about you.

The more "good" links you have on Google (instead of "what I did on my vacation" type of links...) the more professional an image you will portray to the world.  That's important for anyone who is in career mode.  Even better, those good links - your LinkedIn profile, your Facebook profile (if you're using Facebook for more than social networking), your blog, and your personal web site can outrank the not-so-good links and push them down further on the search results page.

Users are more likely to click on the top search results, so getting your professional information up there is definitely useful.  Take a look and see what I've accomplished for Alison Doyle.

SEO Professonal Branding Success

I've written quite a bit about building a professional brand and how your brand is important to building your career.  I've spent some time building my own brand lately, and I realized that it wasn't quite as easy as I thought it was, when you're starting from scratch.

I've always ranked highly for Alison Doyle on Google, but when I bought the alisondoyle.com domain (which is a another story) and started this blog, I set out to try to get those sites (actually the domain redirects to the blog) to rank highly, too.

It took almost three months of promotion and tweaking, but, as of now, Alison Doyle's Blog is now #3 when you search Google for my name. Why is it important? It's more exposure for me and what I do, it's a way to promote my book, a way to share my expertise, and it helps build my online presence. It was definitely worth the effort it took.

If you're  interested in building your brand, here's more on how to do it and here's some advice from expert Dan Schawbel on personal branding.

New Job Sites

It's only February and there are a bunch of new job sites already this year.  My head, to be honest, is spinning a little at what's new and different in the job searching arena.   There was quite a while when nothing new came along that was noteworthy.  That's changing fast.

So, if you're job searching or working on growing your career, take a look at these brand new sites that will help you enhance your candidacy, expedite your job search, and secure interviews.

VisualCV
Create a really nice looking online resume with the look and feel of a traditional resume, plus add-ons, including video, images, and links.  It's free and job seekers will get a unique URL to share with employers and networking contacts.

Razumé
Need a resume review?  Upload your resume (it will need to be a PDF file) to Razume.com and you can get feedback on your resume.

NotchUp
There are employers willing to pay strong candidates for interviews.  NotchUp gives accepted candidates the opportunity to be paid for their interview time.

RiseSmart
To be honest, I'm never quite sure about job search sites that charge job seekers. It's hard to evaluate the value in what you're receiving for your money. However, for high end job seekers (over 100K jobs) the monthly fee ($43.95 or discounts for longer terms) for having a concierge screen jobs for you may be worthwhile.   

What Do You Think?
I'm always interested in feedback on new sites, so if you've used these sites or any other new ones, please let me know what you think.

Help Build JibberJobber's Brand (and Win a Prize)

Do you think you have the expertise to help build JibberJobber's brand?  JibberJobber is looking to improve its brand and there's a contest, along with prizes (money, books, videos) for the best  "...concise, properly-worded, compelling value propositions".  Here's more on JibberJobber's branding contest, along with information on how to enter.  If you want a head start, review how JibberJobber can help manage your job search.

If you're working on building your own brand, and we all, if we are even remotely interested in growing our career should be working on branding, read about how to create a professional brand.

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