When I first started blogging, I Googled myself just to see what type of information about me was floating around the internet. My name is extremely generic. There are probably over a million William White’s in the United States. This country has always had a lot of Bill White’s. There was a William White among the original settlers at Jamestown (1607) and there were probably over a dozen in Virginia within 20 years. A William White came over on the Mayflower and signed the Mayflower Compact. He died soon after arriving in the Americas. There were hundreds of William White’s that served in the Revolutionary War (1775—1783) and probably thousands that served in the Civil War and World Wars.
There are also a lot of William White’s that are archaeologists (I’ve personally worked with three William White archaeologists). A famous British osteoarchaeologist named William White worked at several important sites and did much to further bioarchaeology in the United Kingdom.
Also, I started blogging with little social media presence. I had a LinkedIn profile, but didn’t have a Facebook, Twitter, or any other account. I’d never published anything online. Needless to say, there wasn’t much about me on the interwebs. For the last two years, I’ve worked hard to change that.
Just today I Googled “Bill White” and “William White” and my name didn’t come up in the top 100. I guess there are too many politicians, sports stars, and musicians named William White for me to even get noticed by Google. But, my name is in the top 10 if you search for Bill White archaeologist. My LinkedIn profile is second in Google’s search results.
How did I do that? How’d I get noticed by google for my professional career and not something silly like my Facebook page? I did it by managing my personal brand using social media.
I just finished listening to an excellent webinar titled “How to Build Your Personal Brand Online”. The webinar was sponsored by the University of Arizona’s Human Resources Division and was led by two amazingly experienced social media advisers: Christine Hoekenga and Jaynelle Ramon. Hoekenga is a freelance writer and the Social Media Coordinator for the University of Arizona’s Office of the Senior Vice President for Health Sciences. She’s been published in High Country News and Technology Review and is an online content strategist (Learn more on her personal website http://christinehoekenga.blogspot.com/). Ramon is the Web Content and Social Media manager for the UA Alumni Association. She is also the writer and copy editor for Arizona Alumni Magazine. I’ve discussed the reasons why archaeologists should manage their online personas in previous posts. Persona management is also a centerpiece in the free eBook “3 Essential Elements to a Successful Job Search” (subscribe to the SR newsletter and get this eBook for free). This webinar was a great introduction to online persona management for folks that may not realize how important this is for career development and promotion.
Personal Branding in a Nutshell
I call this online personal management primarily because most archaeologists think branding or creating a brand is just another type of corporate Newspeak. Regardless of what you call it, personal branding is simply taking control of the image you project to the rest of the world. This is difficult to do in real life, but it’s relatively simple to do online because of the nature of online interactions. Programs (Google, LinkedIn, Facebook, ect.) thrive on new tidbits of information. All day and night, online programs are searching for new bits of data, categorizing, and archiving it. Personal branding or online persona maintenance is simply the act of feeding these programs the types of information you want them to digest (stuff that showcases your expertise and skills) and starving the internet of things that make you look unprofessional.
Hoekenga and Ramon said your personal brand is:
— Who you are and what you are or want to be known for
— What makes you stand out from the crowd
— A public demonstration of your experience, skill, and career motivations
Why does personal branding matter?
Archaeologists, generally, are like young-old people (unless, of course, you’re already old, which would just make you an old person). We tend to shy away from “technology” and “change” in order to embrace what already exists. I know many younger archaeos (Gen-Yers) have already embraced social media and are fairly savvy with this stuff. But, a huge number of archaeologists over 35 years old do not see the ways social media can augment and further their careers. Hoekenga and Ramon had some alarming statistics from research conducted by the Pew Research Center that may demonstrate the importance of online personal branding:
— 39% of companies use social network sites to research job candidates (the presenters say this is probably a conservative estimate)
— 43% of hiring managers who researched candidates via social media saw something that caused them not to hire a candidate (hard-core politics Facebook posts, anyone?)
— Surprisingly, only 19% saw something that caused them to hire a candidate; however,
— 56% of hiring managers are more impressed by candidates that have personal websites, while only 7% of job seekers have their own site.
Whether you’re ready or not, hiring managers are looking you up on the internet when you apply for a job. I’ve even heard that universities are checking Klout scores and considering them when hiring professors. Luckily that’s probably not happening in cultural resource management archaeology, which appears to be averse to their employees having any voice online. It is important to actively develop and promote your personal brand, especially for people working in the ‘feast or famine’ world of CRM archaeology.
Where should you start?
First, I want you to know that it doesn’t take much time each week to move the internet in your favor and let the world know what you can do. Second, it does take some time but it’s time well spent. What would happen if you went into a job interview and the employers already knew the topics of your last couple CRM reports, already had a PDF of that conference poster you made 5 years ago, and had seen photos of you working on your last public archaeology project on Pinterest? What if they had a good idea who you were BEFORE you walked in the room, but they had no idea what the other candidates had done aside from what was written on their resume? Do you think they’d rather go with a candidate they felt like they knew or choose a wild card with a good resume? Exactly.
Hoekenga and Ramon suggest four different avenues for online personal branding: LinkedIn, Twitter, a personal website, and a blog. I agree with these suggestions and will cover the benefits and drawbacks of each of these in the next few days. I will also show you how I personally grow my online presence with a few strategic hours of work. It’s how I moved my name and professional persona into the top 10 of Google searches even though there are millions of people in the English-speaking world with the same name.
Do you feel like personal branding online is important? What are you currently doing to manage your career via the internet? Write a comment below or send me an email.
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