Today we welcome to the show Maria Elena Duron from KnowLikeIgnite.com
At KnowLikeIgnite Maria Elena is a connector, trainer, and coach who helps small business owners and individuals bridge their personal brands and their relationships both online and offline.
She is the Editor-in-Chief of the Personal Branding Blog and A columnist for publications such as US News & World Report, Yahoo Small Business Advisor and Small Business Trends.
Both The San Francisco Times and the Women’s Business Journal have named her one of the Top 5 Branding Experts on Twitter for 2015.
Speaking of Twitter, Maria Elena created and moderates one of the longest running and top six twitter chats in the world for business today.
If you want to participate in the twitter chat with the Marketing Gunslinger herself, join her and fellow Brandidios on Twitter at #Brandchat every Wednesday at 11:00 am EST.
Welcome Maria Elena to the show.
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THE IMPORTANCE OF ONLINE REPUTATION MANAGEMENT
“You never get a second chance to make a first impression.” Since starting this podcast, two fundamental tenets continue to come up over and over again; Networking and First Impressions
Even before I started this podcast, the phrase was one of the first mentioned to me during my personal branding coaching sessions.
In Maria’s definition of personal branding she succinctly captures the importance of your first impression;
“It’s what make you unique, it’s your unique strengths, it’s the way you present yourself, the way you act, the way you deliver, it is what makes you uniquely you.”
The way you present yourself. The way you deliver.
In recent times, those two sentences alone would have only applied when meeting someone face to face. But today they apply even while you sleep.
So while we’ve all heard “you never get a second chance to make a first impression” used many times before, probably to the point of ad nauseam for some, the situation you associate with the phrase has changed.
It no longer applies just to face-to-face meetings. It now applies to all of our meetings and interactions, whether we are physically present or not.
It’s been changed by the “always on” digital age we live in and understanding how it has changed is essential to your career.
We must become conscious of the digital impressions we are making every day because It’s these digital impressions that can provide us with or cost us opportunities.
In my interview with Steven and Irene McConnell, we discussed the future of work and how Price Waterhouse Coopers estimates that by 2022, (only seven years from now) two out of five of us will be freelancers. 2 out of 5 – That’s 40%.
If you take the time to look around, you’ll see the vision Tom Peter’s gave us back in 1997, coming true all around us. It’s happening even today and the opportunities we receive or don’t receive, depend on us becoming A Brand New You, a business of one.
Maria hits the nail on the head when she suggests you conduct not only an assessment of your offline self, to understand your unique promise of value but you also need to take the time to conduct an evaluation of your online presence as well.
DIGITAL IMPRESSIONS AND YOUR ONLINE BRAND
Maria challenges each of us to take a look at the information about ourselves online because as I’ve said before, we all have an online profile.
Before you squawk at this statement, answer these questions: Do you have a LinkedIn account? Twitter account? Instagram account? Google+? How about Facebook?
I know you at least have a Facebook account. GenXer’s have flocked to this platform in droves. Many for the wrong reasons.
Accounts in any of these social media platforms leave a digital impression of you for others to find. These digital impressions believe it or not are your digital assets.
What do they communicate about you? Are your digital assets aligned with your offline brand? Do they describe your unique promise of value accurately?
If you’re like most people, you’ve probably joined several different social media platforms. When you signed up Maria asks, did you ensure you were communicating your brand correctly on these platforms or were you just filling them out?
If you were filling them out, whatever information you provided at the time of registration, it’s out there… for anyone to see.
And whether you meant for it to be or not, it’s leaving a first impression about you for someone else.
You never know what the future holds for your career. Take a minute and think about what you want to be doing in seven years?
Maybe you’re one of the three people who hasn’t been downsized or had your role minimized by technology, and you’re still working for a corporation.
Or maybe you’re the freelancer, working with clients of your choosing, on projects you select and selling your services to corporations who need them.
Either way, you need to know your unique promise of value, and you need to make sure your value is communicated correctly in both your offline brand and your online brand.
I think Maria would agree with Richard Kirby; we need to focus on employment security, not job security.
Knowing your brand, your unique promise of value, and aligning it with what others find about you during a Google search is the best way for you to ensure the opportunities you seek find you.
Aligning your personal brand, who you are, with what you do for a living, will help you find the career and job satisfaction you seek.
Aligning and actively managing your online reputation may help you discover opportunities you would have otherwise never known about because you’ll be making a great first impression even while you sleep.
SUMMARY
The Best way for you to get in touch with Maria Elena is via the following links.
Twitter: @mariaduron
Twitter Chat: #BrandChat
Website: Knowlikeignite.com
Other Links mentioned during our podcast:
Managing Twitter Chats: Nurph
Maria left us with these final thoughts and words of advice.
“Spend time discovering what your personal brand is. It is going to take some time and research but it's worth it. Don't settle for what someone else thinks you are or what someone says you should do. Never let someone else define you.”
