Companies may be hiring more now in some sectors as the economy continues to recover but they are still running lean. People inside of organizations, happy to be employed, are working hard...very hard indeed just to keep their situation.

I delivered a webinar today to UCLA entitled Digital You. It was about using three key online tools that combined together would give any executive or professional an edge in the competition to be seen and heard. 

Someone reminded me that five years ago I was passionate about being on Linkedin.com and now I was telling people to move on to other sites and tools. They asked, "Why was that?" I explained using the analogy of the Red Queen in Through the Looking Glass telling Alice as they were running that in order to get anywhere they had to run twice as fast.  

Technology is like that.  What's new today will be used by everybody in 4 years or less. Everybody (reaching for 200M) is on Linkedin.com now and that's a good thing for networking but not for personal branding. Linkedin is a template-based site as is VisualCV and they have you fill in their blanks. You end up looking just like everybody else. I described it as an online MBA resume book. Good people look at it but you can get lost in the shuffle. You are running, so to speak, to stay in the same place.

Using new tools like personal profiles (flavors.me, about.me/pattiwilson ), personal presentations (sliderocket.com) and personal pages using website builders gets you moving twice as fast as others vying with you for visibility, eye-balls, and market share online.  I personally use Weebly but there are others that are great too ( here is Wikipedia's list of top website builders).  

Is this more work? Sure. Do you want your career to continue until you retire? Then run twice as fast to get somewhere and keep doing it. The good of all this is that once it is in place the only maintenance you do is blogging or updating when you change positions, write articles, are interviewed by Wall Street Journal or other notable events worth capturing ongoing. 

There is a downside. One person asked at the end if this required that you have a very clear, defined, well-positioned brand, value proposition and career target. Yes, it does and that's is the most difficult part actually. Once you have clearly defined yourself the content, images, and look all falls into place.  My mentor, Richard Bolles author of What Color is Your Parachute said, in describing this process, "this is the hard part. This is where you have to think, people"... and run faster.

Here is an excerpt from an article about Facebook moving to Menlo Park and the hardship to the city:

"On the other hand, Sun used to generate annual sales taxes of $431,000 to $827,000 for the city. That's because the state levies taxes on physical goods like computers that it doesn't levy on virtual services like online ad sales. Having more employees on the campus means the city is going to have to expand services to accommodate them, such as hiring more police officers or clerks. And while new high-income Facebook employees moving into the area might send property assessments soaring, Proposition 13 will limit the amount of additional property taxes."
Read  Chris O'Brian's story in the San Jose Mercury News

You want Facebook to move to your city right?
Think of all the job creation and tax revenues! The City of Menlo Park has mixed emotions about Facebook bringing its entire workforce into one mega campus formerly occupied by Sun Microsystems. Yes, there will be some upfront fees and revenues collected with the move-in but the long term liability is increased demand on city services with little increase in ongoing sustainable tax revenues.

What is Menlo Park doing? Why asking Facebook for a handout to subsidize low-income housing in one of the most expensive cities in the Bay Area. Facebook is more than obliging. It is truly being a good citizen and why not? It certainly is getting off virtually scott-free compared to actually paying taxes. 

The issue is one of unequal and unfair burdens of taxation on different types of industries and sectors in the California economy. This is an antiquated tax code that does not respond to the realities of a new economy and the Bay Area's economic base moving from computer and semi-conductor products to the Internet.

The State of California is fighting to get Amazon to charge sales tax to residents of the state. But compare that tax income, to the revenues that could be generated by the virtual services of local Internet companies. 

Facebook is a $500,000,000 company (I put all the zeros in to make a visual point). Why are they, and Linkedin, Groupon, Yelp, Zynga, and others  not paying tax on their virtual revenues as Sun did on their computers and Apple does now on its iPhone, iPad and iPod?

The law needs to change and now. How ridiculous that a city is reduced to begging for a handout from a company. Let Facebook hire its own fire department, police force, street maintenance workers.

As the saying goes you either have lunch or be lunch. When Kodak filed for bankruptcy restructuring, I wept over my vintage Brownie and played the Kodachrome lyrics by Paul Simon:

Kodachrome 
You give us those nice bright colors 
You give us the greens of summers 
Makes you think all the world's a sunny day, oh yeah! 
I got a Nikon camera 
I love to take a photograph 
So Mama, don't take my Kodachrome away

What can executives and professionals take-away about from this? Why does a company have talented teams who create bleeding edge products see failure because executive management fails to capitalize on it?

"Through the 1990s, Kodak splurged $4 billion on developing the photo technology inside most of today's cellphones and digital devices. But a reluctance to ease its heavy reliance on film allowed rivals like Canon Inc. and Sony Corp. to rush largely unhindered into the fast-emerging digital arena. The immensely lucrative analog business Kodak worried about undermining too soon was virtually erased in a decade by the filmless photography it invented." This is from an article by Ben Dobbin for Associated Press. 

The article went on to quote:
"If you're not willing to cannibalize yourself, others will do it for you," said Mark Zupan, dean of the University of Rochester's business school. "Technology is changing ever more rapidly, the world's becoming more globalized, so to stay at the top of your game is getting increasingly harder." Read more here

Like Kodak, Xerox PARC (now just PARC) invented but never capitalized on the Graphical User Interface that made the personal computer a tool for the masses but Apple did with the Macintosh. Sony and Canon capitalized on Kodak's digital camera breakthroughs. Other sector leaders have met with the same fate such as RIM and AOL.  These companies were all market makers yet lost out to the competition by a failure to adapt, transform and innovate. 

Certain people have management styles that tend to be risk averse and impede the growth and expansion of the company with a "let's not get ahead of ourselves" attitude. They need too much proof and they take too long to make the right decision in the face of market movements. They lack a capacity to see beyond their self-imposed company rulebook, and, worst of all, they fearfully protect their next quarter profits by keeping dated products alive too long.

When a sector is moving, like the global economy, at the speed of light agility and flexibility are essential skills.

Keeping up is not sufficient when getting ahead is in order.

The same holds true for individuals. We must continually evolve and respond to organizational, market and economic changes. Knowing when to get out and move on is insufficient if you don't do it. 

Executives that do not embrace the trends of today will have the marketplace pass them by because of risk averse and dated views regarding their own career advancement.

_You are busy being pulled in all directions from pillar to post. The only quiet time you get is on trans Atlantic flights. And, I ask you to write a blog to help build and promote your thought leadership online? You tell me you have no time; that you will get around to it. You never do.

How can you find the time to write when you don't have time to update your resume, add connections to your Linkedin profile or have dinner with your family?  How could you ever keep up with daily or even weekly posts?

You use excuses that your company would has privacy requirements; that the PR department would want to approve all postings. Of course there are the issues of non-disclosure and protection of intellectual property that your company likes you to follow.

Not to mention the issue of coming up with something to write about.  A total brain freeze arises when you try to think of a topic. What really is the point of starting a blog that ends up an embarrassment, when not updated, left floundering in the Socialweb?  Finally, you wonder, exactly what is the point really when nobody will read it anyhow?

Most professionals mistakenly believe that have to actually write something if they post blogs. They also mistakenly believe that all they have to write about their company's products and services. In addition they think that somebody has to actually read their blog posts.

The point of blogging is to establish in advance an ongoing base of credibility and demonstrated expertise. Thus, when you need it, you will have it. For example, if you are down to being one of the final two candidates for a job, your blog may and its content may just be the tipping point for you.

There is a foolproof way to write a highly successful blog that is no hassle, no time, and non-interfering with your daily life. Taking 8 minutes to do this will help to brand, position, and market you. The secret is to not write much as that takes time. It's that simple.

Here are the steps in 8 minutes or less:

1. Do a Google search on a topic, find an article on a publication's website or other kind of news, statistics, data, etc. (it is very helpful if you lay out a homepage on your browser using iGoogle or My Yahoo with RSS links to 10 major business news sites, publications and journals. Then you have it all on one place to look for something interesting.)
   
2. Copy the title and beginning part of the article, press release, news announcement to your blog posting.
3. Put a link back to the full article at the end of the excerpt to enable reading the rest it on the site and providing attribution at the same time.
   
4. Write an acerbic, witty, insightful, pithy comment, or critique of the article in less than 75 words (this does not mean you have to read the whole article, just skim it) 
5. Last tip: you don't have to date your blogs. That way, if you post once a month or more infrequently, it won't look dated.
6. That's it. Wash, rinse, repeat every month or so. 

You will look like a knowledge leader by basking in the glory of the writing of others when you simply add a small but observant comment, opinion or viewpoint preceding the article.

I have a client who started with great zeal to write, long tomes for blogs. With every promotion and new position his blogs grew shorter and shorter. I suggested he try the article approach and he did. Now he is a Senior Vice President and his blog posts says "here read this great article".  That is the extent of his blogging but they are all great articles that he posts.

What's the ROI you may ask?

• Well if you set up all your links correctly, you blog posts will be viewed by your Linkedin connections, twitter followers and other social media sites.
  
• You can continue to have a high profile and remain highly visible with little effort.
• You will look current and even at the leading edge in your field.
  
• You may end up on the radar of search consultants without even trying through their keyword searches.
• In addition, telling about your accomplishments on a resume or Linkedin doesn't make nearly the impression as demonstrating your knowledge.
  

In the near term none of this may matter to you, but there could come a day when it will. Picture yourself in the final round of interviews for a position you dearly want and the only difference between you and the other candidate is all the blog posting you have done. That could be the tipping point in your favor.

For examples of what I am talking about, read my previous 3-4 blog posts prior to this one.

_I just found a new cool bright shiny thing to play with! And I may even turn out better presentations as a bonus. Take a look at this.

Prezi - The Zooming Presentation EditorPrezi is a cloud-based presentation software that opens up a new world between whiteboards and slides. The zoomable canvas makes it fun to explore ideas and the connections between them. 

__A professional website's purpose is to raise your name search to the top of Google, provide a controlled, managed platform to deliver well branded information about you compared to Linkedin's cookie-cutter template.  It utilizes great photography, graphic imagery and well-done content to paint the most flattering portrait of you, your talents, your background, and your value proposition.

It is interesting how actual web development for individuals and small businesses is now a commodity and many template driven sites offer a both a platform and hosting to build to build a professional website not just a blog.

I use the term professional website instead of the cutsy word online portfolio because that is what it is. I believe every professional needs one now to control their brand, Google ranking, and the message and image they project. A website will do that for you. Unless you are a big ecommerce site or online data repository, having a custom built website long-term costly as keep on paying with charges for every update and change. Use the free template-based sites provided by Google, Yahoo, GoDaddy, Yola, Wix and Wenode.

What really matters now is content: both visual and written. And that makes photographers, web/graphic designers and expert content writers the key value contributors for websites.  The ability to write great marketing and branding copy for beautifully photographed and illustrated products, services, and people is now king.  

What are the key things to consider when building a professional website and blog?

• The blog is just a part of the total marketing messaging of your website. In fact several of my client’s websites do not have blogs.  A professional website doesn’t need an audience, or a following, or high rankings.
• However a blog is like an editorial column where expert advice, opinion and viewpoints are expressed. There is no point in interviewing others for your blog posts unless you add your own opinions and views. Do not become a journalist blogger on your professional website unless the names you drop will get you hired.
• A well done blog is the bonus or frosting on the cake to capture attention and interest from the first posting. We want to give hiring entities a taste of your thoughts on the new sector and industry with blog posts of around 250 words or less.  Put all the wood behind one arrow and focus the blog content towards your career transition and/or job search goals.  You can add white papers or longer articles on other website pages.
• The other important pages on the site speak to your core services, your portfolio of companies and customers, and overviews about you that brand or rebrand and reposition you. Launch the site when you have all the other pages in place and have a blog then at least 10 backdated blog posts.
  
• Begin with  branding your resume as a foundational positioning piece, then enhance it in your Linkedin profile which is itself a branding brochure not a resume template. The content of both then leverages and expands into your website. If you blog, try to be conversational and engaging in your own voice that let's your personality come through. 

Most people think that Linkedin is enough. It's not anymore because you are your brand and your brand is most easily visible and promoted online. You differentiate yourself by your brand that distinguishes you to be chosen over another seeking the same opportunity. To use all the latest, leading tools and techniques to do that is in your best interests.

It's never too late to make a great first impression online with your own professional website!

If you want to learn more about putting together a well-branded website, contact me for a free consult on my website http://www.pattiwilson.com