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Your Online Presence

Lesson 8 from: FAST CLASS: Personal Branding for Creative Professionals

Dorie Clark

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Lesson Info

8. Your Online Presence

Next Lesson: Using Social Media

Lesson Info

Your Online Presence

this is particularly exciting because we're gonna be talking about your online reputation, your online portfolio earlier this morning. We actually we're getting questions about how do I handle my my online reputation, particularly if it doesn't necessarily reflect what I want it to be. And so this this is the place where we're gonna be talking about that today. So I wanted to start out a little bit but just by you know taking a step back and talking about your online reputation why that matters. I actually did a piece about maybe a year ago for Forbes called resume two point oh maybe three point we might be on three point now. But you know it's the basic idea is that your resume, the sort of paper thing you create. It really doesn't have very much value anymore now because if someone receives your resume, you know what's gonna happen the minute they're interested in you they're going to google you anyway and pretty soon I predict resumes themselves, you know where we're sort of craftin...

g you know the in polishing these words on a page that's going to go away because it's far too easy for people to check you out on google. And so google becomes your resume. The problem with that of course is that you don't have control over google the way you have control on your resume, you can't spend 10 hours sort of editing which verb forms you're going to use or whatever it is, what it is and you. But there is at a macro level ways that you can influence what is about you and google. You can't do it by editing or changing fonts the way you can on a resume, but you have to change and control what you put out into the world about yourself. That's a bigger project, but it's also a more meaningful project. So it's kind of powerful. So, you know, the reason why google is so useful from a recruiting perspective or client perspective is that, you know, you can kind of write whatever you want on your resume. I mean, of course you're supposed to tell the truth on it. But as, as we know, a lot of people unfortunately don't, they're not necessarily as scrupulous as we are. And so consequently as a result, many people discredit what is on a resume, google on the other hand, it actually, I mean, certainly there are fabricated things on the internet. I'm not saying there aren't, but if you say that you work for a certain institution and then they go to that institution's website and you're on that website, they're going to say, oh, okay, that is verified by a third party. If you say, well, you know, I'm, I'm knowledgeable about X Y Z, let's say search engine optimization or, you know, whatever your thing is, I'm knowledgeable about wedding photography. Well, if they go to your website and they see a portfolio with tons of wedding photographs that's proof that you really are or if you go to a blog and you've written 100 articles about search engine optimization, that's proof that you actually do have thought about this and know what you're talking about. So that's where it's powerful is that it's the ability to not just claim like you can on a resume, but to prove. So if we can really leverage the full value of that, that can be amazing. So as we're thinking about this, what does a great brand look online, you know, what does that look like? So one of the first things that I really want to drive home is that you control the narrative. This is the baseline that we've been talking about kind of a through line of our conversation over the past day is that for personal branding, we're in trouble if somebody else is dictating from the outside, what our personal brand is, if we let other people control that story for us, we've kind of lost the game because odds are, whatever their story is about us is not going to be as accurate, It's probably not going to be as flattering as our story, we want to be able to tell our story. So when we do, you know an online, you know, what are google searches or the things that people find about us online, it's really important to engage because if we're putting stuff out there, it makes it far more likely that our story is what people are hearing, not these random ingredients that are out there. So something is powerful. If when you look at your google search, the stuff comes up that you want to come up, you look at it and say, yeah, I'm glad that's there, I wanted that to be there. That's that's I think a sign of a really good personal brand online. And also, you know, we hear a lot too about damage control and people may have questions about it. I'm glad to answer that. That's important. If there's bad stuff about you online, of course you want to find ways to mitigate against it, but it's not just about making sure there's not terrible things about you online. It's also is there good stuff about you online because for many people there might not be some awful thing, but there might not be something that sets you apart and what I would wish for all of you, as we think about our online reputation is how do we make sure that we distinguish ourselves, that we find ways to get things out online. So that when people search for us, they say, oh, that's so interesting. You know, I really want to learn more about her services. That's pretty cool. So for me, that's that's what looks great as a great online brand. So the one thing, if you take one thing away from this, it is this the way to effectively take bad stuff down, even if it's still lurking in some corner of the internet is to drive it down in the search rankings, right? Because unless you are applying for a job with the FBI no one is going to go to page 64 of your search results. Okay. Unless they are literally going to marry you or hire you for the FBI. No one's going to look that far, which you want to do your mission. If there's something about you online, you don't want you wanted off page one, you wanted off page two, if you can do that, you have effectively one. So how do you drive things down in google search results? Well, what you can do is create more new content that google thinks is better and more relevant. That is the secret. And so google will prioritize that rather than the bad stuff and we do that. We're gonna be talking a little bit later about content creation. But the basic idea, you take control of your brand by saying things about yourself

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Ratings and Reviews

Sandi K. Terry
 

I never thought I would watch a class on personal branding and end up wishing that I had watched the longer one instead. Wow! I watched this instead of a different one I looked at on another platform that struck me as the antithesis of this class. It gave me that yucky, using-people feeling that Dorie teaches you NOT to do. If you're like me and confused about how to create a personal brand (part of my new career as a UX designer) and you're put off by what you've seen elsewhere, take this class instead. I am so glad to have taken this class and only wish I had watched the longer one instead. Five stars; highly recommended!

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