Category: Uncategorized

Not to be overly dramatic about it, or anything

As some of you may know, I’ve done a fair amount of work for clients in the recruiting industry, and I’ve been talking about the importance of personal branding vis a vis career growth for a long time.

But I want to be clear:  For most people – people who have regular jobs, and aren’t looking to become independent consultants or start a business – personal branding doesn’t mean you have to create your own website and blog every day or amass a legion of Twitter followers.  It’s really just about doing two things:

1. Creating a personal narrative.  This is the ‘story’ about yourself that explains how your education, experience and skills come together to make you a perfect for X role or X career.  It’s what you say when people ask you what you do for a living or what you want to do for a living; it’s what you say when you’re networking with people who may be able to give you your next big opportunity; it’s the narrative that helps you map out a career path and make choices about your next career move. Remember:  People don’t have time to figure out how your teaching certificate, project management experience and passion for great design make you perfect for a job as Director of Training.  You need to be able to explain it to them, confidently and concisely.
2. Making yourself visible and interesting.  Have you ever logged in to LinkedIn, seen a status update or post from one of your connections and thought:  “Gee, Bob always seems to be doing something new. He must be doing well”?  Maybe Bob has an interesting LinkedIn Summary; maybe he’s uploaded a presentation he made at a conference; maybe he just posted a link to an interesting article with a witty comment.  It doesn’t matter which – Bob’s keeping himself top-of-mind, establishing himself as someone who’s engaged with his work and his industry, and making himself look smart and connected.  All of these things are good for his career, because the next time someone has an opportunity in his field, guess who they’re going to think of first?  

(BTW, if you’re in a role where you create a lot of presentations, whitepapers or other materials, you really should be posting them on LinkedIn.  It’s not only a good way to keep track of all the great work you’ve done, it also increases the chances that a recruiter will find you the next time they have an opportunity and search LinkedIn for candidates.)

Still not convinced?  The infographic below does a good job of explaining why branding yourself is good for your career.

Continuing our focus on infographics this month…

Came across this infographic from Leverage New Age Media this morning and thought it was a great overview and comparison of 6 of the top social media networks.

However, I would encourage you not to get too fixated on the total active users numbers as the bottom of each one:  It says that Pinterest has only 20 million active users (which I think is low), but we know that Pinterest users are particularly passionate, and spend hours of time flitting around Pinterest, so the potential to do a deep dive with the target audience is greater than on some other networks.  We also know that while Google+ claims a lot of active monthly users, they’re also including in those numbers anyone who watches a YouTube video via their G+ account or logs into a blog comment field with G+, or even just checks Gmail once in a while.  So it may be a lot harder to reach those users than it seems.

Anyway, another infographic to brighten your Sunday.

Your competitive set may be a lot different than you think.

Years ago, when I was young and stupid and working for a big advertising agency, I was a junior ween on a team pitching a big campaign to a packaged goods company.  We spent weeks on a flashy presentation, packed the room with black turtleneck-wearing hipsters, and did the elaborate agency tapdance.  We had feelers out at the 3 other shops we knew were in the running and were certain we’d totally outperformed them in every way.

We didn’t get the business.  Neither did any of the other agencies.  It went to a couple of guys we’d never heard of who’d done some super-creative spec work and offered the client a whole set of commercials for less than we’d budgeted for a single spot.  The client, sick unto death of high-octane presentations that always promised more than big agencies ever delivered, decided to take a risk with the unknowns.

These days, I’m on the other side of the equation:  Half the time I get a new client, it’s because some marketing/design company pitched them on a website that was going to cost  $30,000 and take 3 months to build, with an incremental $1500 tacked on for connecting their Twitter feed to their Facebook page.  Sooner or later, the client expresses their incredulity to someone else, who says “Why don’t you just call Sarah, because she can at least tell you if that’s realistic.”

99.9% of the time, the other company – my competitor – has never even heard of me, let alone considered me part of their competitive set.

 

A different economy means different choices

People – clients, customers, employees, stakeholders – are all trying to do more with less, while trying to look like rockstars. So they have to make choices, and they’re rarely as simple as choosing one brand over another.  If an individual has $100 to spend on something personal, for example, they’re not choosing between one brand of jeans or another – they’re choosing between jeans or an evening out.  If an organization has $1 million to spend on growing sales, they’re not just choosing between one marketing partner and another.  They’re choosing between marketing, infrastructure, new CRM software or even a whole new product offering.

And customers may not see your competitive set the same way you do.  In the situation I described above, we naively assumed that the client was only going to consider other ‘big agencies’ – but they were looking at a much broader set of possibilities.

Defining your competitive set

Fully understanding just who and what you’re competing against for your customers’ time and money has a lot to do with your industry, price point, and proposition, but asking these questions will help you get a better handle on what your competitive set looks like:

• Are you selling a commodity where customers can compare apples to apples?  Or a service which has all kinds of different variables?
• What do your customers have to give up in order to purchase your product (i.e. if they spend money on your product/service, what will they have to forego buying)?
• When you lose business, who are you losing it to?  Is it the same couple of companies, or a wide variety?
• Who do your customers see as your competitors?  Are you sure about that?
• What is the end result/benefit of buying your product?  What are the other ways a client could get to that result/benefit?

BONUS TIP:  Try pretending you’re a potential customer and Google some of the search terms you’d use if you were looking for a supplier.  The stuff that comes up that you thought had nothing to do with your product or service is a good way to start thinking laterally about your competition.

Not every channel is good for every brand, product or service.

Usually I have something to say about the infographics I post, but I think this one speaks for itself.  I love the way the colour-coding makes it easy to compare demographics.  And I like the media type matrix, though it does reveal a flaw in the way the information is presented:  Google+ is indicated as the only channel suitable for photos, video, articles and text, which makes it sound great…except we all know that hardly anyone uses Google+.  So you can post all the mixed media you want on G+ – it still won’t deliver dramatic results.

The second installment of work-related comments I just can’t forget

Last month, as you may recall, I posted a list of some of the more egregious comments made to me over the course of my career, in an effort to get them out of my head.  It worked, insofar as it seemed to get rid of those particular earworms.  Unfortunately, it got me thinking – and I ended up with a raft of new earworms.  

So here is Volume II.  Let’s hope there isn’t a Volume III.

1993
My boss, upon being asked by me to stop staring at my chest: 
“It’s not my fault.  If you put them out there, it’s your fault if everyone looks.”
(I was wearing a black turtleneck at the time) 

1996
Gary Prouk:
“You’re a sarcastic little vixen, aren’t you?”

1997
A client in the automotive industry:
“Am I going to have to come up there and bitchslap you?” 

1998
Account Director at the ad agency where I worked; officially my boss:
“They say that when 3 people at an agency don’t like you, it’s time to leave.  David, Suzanne and I are your 3.” 

1998
Art director, when we were alone in a recording studio, while caressing my hand:
“You have beautiful hands.  You should be a hand model.”
(I found out later he said this to almost every other woman in the agency)

1999
Incoming new president at same agency as above:
“I wanted to fire you, but the VP Finance says you make a lot of money for us and your clients tell me they like you a lot, so I won’t.”

2001
A recruiter who called me out of the blue, upon being told that I wasn’t interested in the job she was offering because it was too junior and the salary less than I was making:
“Well, I’ve looked at your resume, and I don’t think you’re worth nearly that much.  You’re pretty lucky you got that job – you haven’t earned it.”

2003
Senior salesperson:
“You know why you’d be good in sales?  Because you’re a 7 [out of 10].  Good-looking enough to sell to men, but not so pretty that they’d think you’re a bimbo.”

2008
Senior leadership team member, in front of both our bosses:
“Ugh – why do you keep calling it ‘social networking’?  It’s not networking.  I hate it when you make up these terms that no one else has heard of.” 

2010
Co-worker, upon reading an article I wrote for an industry journal:
“I mean, it’s written like a real article, by a real writer. I didn’t know you could do that. How did you do that?”