Amy Cohen:
My name is Amy Cohen, and I'm a member of the Class in 1985, and a vice president of the Alumni Board. I am also proud to say, I'm the co-chair of the Brandeis Women's Network, the goal of which is to strengthen the relationships and connections between Brandeis alumni and facilitate women helping women in all aspects of their lives. Before our speakers begin, I want to share a few quick announcements with you. As I'm sure you all know, there's a lot of virtual programming going on right now for Brandeis alumni, family and friends. Coming up, we have a media event entitled Media in the time of the CoronaVirus on June 10th. There are two virtual faculty in the fields on June 11th and June 18th.
Amy Cohen:
The Brandeis Women's Network is pleased to be able to sponsor or host the Pasta Quarantine: Let's make Pici, which will be a fun pasta making event, so please join us for that. I encourage you to check your email, alumni website and social media for more information on what's happening and how to join. We have two polling questions we'd like to put out, so we have some sense as to who's in our audience. They should be coming on screen momentarily. The first is, which social networks do you use the most for personal reasons? Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Snapchat, other, I don't use any. The results are, the overwhelming majority looks like Facebook with 45%, Twitter 5%, LinkedIn 9%, Instagram 30%.
Amy Cohen:
We had no takers for Snapchat, and a few for others and a few for I don't use any. Which social networks do you find the most valuable for professional reasons? Again, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Snapchat, other, I don't use any. LinkedIn was the clear winner by far. Facebook had 12%, Twitter a little under 5%, LinkedIn with a whopping 68%, Instagram under 5% and I don't use any about 12%. Thank you for that. I'd now like to turn the program over to Talee Potter, who will introduce our speaker. Talee is a member of the Alumni Board, my co-chair of the Brandeis Woman's Network and someone I'm really happy to call my friend. Talee.
Talee Potter:
Thank you, Amy. Thank you for joining us tonight, and Marissa thank you for leading tonight's webinar. Marissa Pick is the founder Marissa Pick Consulting LLC, where she provides strategic training focused around digital transformation, content marketing, social media strategy, personal branding and more. Who was the global director of social media and digital marketing at the CFA Institute, where she oversaw efforts to reach journalists, legislators, policymakers and investment professionals, who play essential role in shaping the direction of the financial services industry. She received her BA in American Studies in 2007 from Brandeis, where she was a starter on the Brandeis softball team.
Talee Potter:
Marissa lives in New Jersey with her husband and two sons, and you can visit her blog at marissapick.com. Without further ado, Marissa, thank you.
Marissa Pick:
Thank you so much, guys for the introduction. Hello, everybody. I hope you're all doing well. I'm going to go ahead and share my screen and we can get going here. If you guys have any questions, we're going to take Q&A throughout and okay. I'm thrilled to be here this evening to discuss personal branding within the era of COVID. Obviously, there's a lot going on, and we have a lot to get through tonight, so I'm going to dive right in. This is me. It's lovely to meet you guys. You can visit my blog and you can learn more about me, see some pictures. It's interesting for me to take a look at engage where you guys are within social media, and the responses were actually very surprising to me for the personal use.
Marissa Pick:
I have a lot of good tips for Facebook and Instagram and just personal branding, with the primary of this webinar being focused on LinkedIn. Just some general tips we're going to get through if you guys have a question, my favorite network is Twitter. You can always tweet me @Marissapick. That's my handle. I'm very quick to respond there. I just wanted to give you guys a little bit of background about me and who I am. I went to Brandeis and I graduated in 2007. I met my husband who was a 2008 graduate. You can see me there in the middle with my studied cap at graduation.
Marissa Pick:
We have two little boys, my little one Emmett is his middle name after Brandeis. That's how much Brandeis meant to us that we incorporated into his name. I have been doing a lot of personal branding with clients within my consultancy, so we do a whole training program focused on improvements of overall brand, content strategy, a lot of sales focus and social selling. I started my career within event marketing. I know my father's watching so I'm saying hi and thanking him for giving me my start to get me into social media and digital marketing.
Marissa Pick:
I've been named as a top event industry influencer and a B2B marketer to follow, and I have a lot of excitement around this topic because I think it's very topical for right now. Just so much is going on. The agenda for tonight, we're going to go through quite a bit, hopefully within the next 45 minutes within why personal branding matters and why you guys should all tuning in care about it. Why now is such a great time for this, overall tips and suggestions just for where to start from ground up, just for improving your personal brand, some social media and personal branding tips and where you guys can get started, some basics of do's, some do nots and some really bad horror stories, which hopefully scare you guys into going and taking a look and making improvements.
Marissa Pick:
Then I'm going to go through some Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook tips. I will give you guys my closing thoughts and we'll go through and take Q&A. That's a jam packed agenda. Very excited. Again, if you have any questions after the webinar, send me a tweet if you'd like @Marissapick. If you have questions put into the Q&A box within Zoom and myself or the others on this webinar will just stop me and we'll get through as many as we can. Please visit the Brandeis Women Facebook page tomorrow. We're going to be putting some highlights from tonight, and then I'll be taking questions tomorrow and we can do follow up from there.
Marissa Pick:
Or just send me an email and we can go from there. Without further ado, I want to dive in. Why does personal branding matter? Whether we like it or not, you're a brand, I'm a brand, we're all brands. People don't think of it like this and it's one of the best pieces of advice I ever got early in my career was to approach myself as a brand and to brand myself consistently. I laugh when I'm giving you guys my information to contact me, but it's Marissapick.com, @Marissapick. My LinkedIn is Marissa Pick. My Facebook is Marissa Pick. It's very important to have that consistency and to really differentiate yourself no matter what industry that you're in.
Marissa Pick:
I love this that Tom Peters coined this within a Fast Company article in 1997. If you think about it, regardless of age, regardless of the position that we're in, we all need to understand the importance of branding and personal branding, because we're all technically CEOs of our own company, Me Incorporated. To be in business today, it's really crucial to really focus on that brand, which is you or me. It's that simple and it's also that hard. It sounds much easier than it is. Again, today, within the age of an individual, you really have to be your own brand. As Tom Peter says, Me Inc. Creating that personal brand and knowing where to get started can be daunting.
Marissa Pick:
Definitely, I'm going to give you those tips throughout the next couple slides. But not knowing where to start is probably the hardest part of personal branding. Knowing where to start is very important. If I go through and I give you the actual definition, which is on the screen, personal branding is the process whereby people and their careers are treated as brands. While self help management techniques are about self improvement, personal branding suggests that success comes from self packaging. What does that mean? This is the practice of marketing people and their careers as a brand. It's an ongoing process of development and maintaining reputation, and your impression of an individual or group or organization.
Marissa Pick:
I'm sure people are tuning in tonight about their personal brand. I'm sure some brand marketers are here. I'm sure people are just listening to get started. It's going to depend on where you are within your career. I was reading about some topics tonight, and even Oprah Winfrey began her career by going through different style iterations and going onto small, local show before defining her voice into what is now one of the most influential personal brands across the entire world. The definition and the intersection for many of us is going to be very different, but very important to define know where to start. Developing a personal brand has never been more important.
Marissa Pick:
People don't need to create brand narratives to describe themselves. For example, people are people. They aren't brands. I agree to a certain degree with that statement. But the goal of a personal brand is become more authentic. It's the intersection of how you see yourself, how others see you and then in the middle there is your personal brand. It's also the authenticity of the defined purpose and an urge to shape more responsibly, and we're talking about social media here in the mix. But in the development and the intersection of social media, and many of you guys were on social media, so it's very relevant here.
Marissa Pick:
There has to be a development of, and visibility of your personal brand, and also how others are looking at you online. All of the networks that we listed within the pre-polling questions are all SEO optimized, which means they're search engine optimized. The first thing that you see is going to be likely you're googling yourself, your LinkedIn, your Twitter, whatever you're active on on social media, and that's what's going to pop up first. Again, it's a whole combination of things and it's so important right now. I think Jeff Bezos said this well, “Personal brand is what people say about you when you leave the room.”
Marissa Pick:
The simple fact is that personal branding is linked to your social media, whether we agree with that or not, or whether we want it to or not. Your personal brand is not really based on your perspective alone. I would honestly argue that it's largely based on the perception of others. It's the aggregate of positive and negative and largely, again, seen through the eyes of what others see. Again, it's much bigger than many of us think. Why now? This is such a timely topic. Why are we having this webinar right now? Well, many of us are working from home, many of us are still ... I'm here in New Jersey, still very much locked down and at home a lot with my kids.
Marissa Pick:
We have a lot of time. We're socially distanced and isolated and we have time to step back and really improve our digital assets, our personal brand, whether it's to stand out if you're launching a new product, if it's to improve it, if you're looking for a new job, if you are just exploring or if you're ... Depends on where you are in your career, all of us can take some time to just do a digital checkup and see. I love this and I was reading again, we are all as much of a brand as Nike or Coke or Bed Bath and Beyond even. If you want to start thinking about this from a brand management perspective, ask the same questions that those brand managers at those large brands might ask themselves.
Marissa Pick:
What is it that my product or service does that makes myself or my brand different? You can give yourself what I like to call the 15 word or less challenge. You can take the time and write down your answer and then read it, step away from it, come back to it and read it a bunch of times. That really is the beginning of defining your personal brand. Digital is Uber important right now and I think, and I would argue it's actually going to become much more important over the next couple months as things open back up. This is the time when none of us have time. We always say we're so busy. We are home, many of us are home still and we can make the time to do this now, and carve out hopefully the tips that I give you to get started.
Marissa Pick:
I'm going to give you guys a couple tips, just some personal branding for quick improvements to get going. Tip number one, I mentioned this earlier, Google yourself. Many people I've talked to have not googled yourself. It's really important to see what comes up. Make sure you're doing it in an incognito window. Managing your online presence and you definitely do have one. You'll have something that pops up is really important. It's also very much about professional responsibility. It's not as much vanity anymore. It's about what is popping up. If you have a maiden name, if you have misspellings, if you have a nickname, make sure you're doing all those different searches.
Marissa Pick:
One of the best things to do is to set up a Google Alert, and you can go and Google, Google Alert. It looks just like this. I have one of myself. You can set up how often, what the sources come from, what language, what region, and it will automatically update you anytime something with your name pops up. If you are putting out a big piece and you want to monitor response and you don't have a press agency to do this for you, this will automatically trigger an email and then you can respond quickly. I'd say rule of thumb is within 24 hours to get a response. The first thing that I do any time I've ever hired someone is automatically Google them.
Marissa Pick:
I'd say any friend or any prospective employer is going to say the same thing. Make sure that you like what others are seeing when they look for you online. Take a second and do that after this if you do nothing else after this webinar. Then, I'd say defining your purpose and then start branding, that's where we should start. Too many people are really unfocused, trying to be everything to everybody within their networks. Step one is always setting a goal for me, so understanding how you want to achieve the goal, and then taking a little bit of time just to enjoy what you're doing online and having a voice. When you know the why, you'll find the courage to take the risks that you want to take to stay ahead and you'll know how to take more challenges and go from there.
Marissa Pick:
Again, we are all brands, and strong brands have a very clearly defined purpose. Understand what kind of personality type you have and establish what kind of leader you are or what you want to be. What are your talents? What are your passions? Are you skilled at something really interesting? That should come through in your personal brand and your networks. Definitely take time and have a voice and go from there. Next is being authentic. It's very, very important with this intersection of having authenticity on social media, you have to highlight both the positive and the negative.
Marissa Pick:
I think with recent events, this is even more crucial to be cognizant of what you have from your past life or what you're putting out with any response. When you are framing a negative moment always talks about a lesson. This is a really great topic for LinkedIn or Facebook, just to give some kind of, if you've done something in the past that comes up, own it, and you talk about how it's helped you. Those authentic moments, whether good or bad, really humanize and show that we're all humans and people should learn from success and failure. Be the person that you're most proud of.
Marissa Pick:
At times, if you're not always authentic, which I'm sure most of us have moments where we're not, it's a really good opportunity for us to just show up and have our own brand, our original brand and that obviously should aim to be authentic as well as genuine on social media. Then defining your value proposition is another really important thing. Very important to differentiate yourself. I come from about 10 years within financial services, where I ran a B2B marketing team, a social media team, a global digital marketing team. I very rarely actually talked about topics that were relevant to the work that my business was doing, because it wasn't my area of expertise.
Marissa Pick:
I decided earlier that I would segregate the two areas and then only intersect as needed. Today is hyper competitive online, whether that's applying for a job, whether it's blogging, make a case of what you want and do it differently. It's really done through storytelling, case studies, content. This is what differentiates personal brands, and helps you stand out from others. I was named as one of the top five content marketing influencers on social media by B2B Marketing. I'll read you what they wrote. They said, “Refreshingly Marissa's Twitter feed isn't one with self promotion. She's a supporter of sharing pieces of content across the B2B landscape, tagging authors and engaging with her followers and thriving,” and having that separated me within this space.
Marissa Pick:
I wanted to separate my own brand online and really be responsive and engaging. I try to go through and respond to my followers as often as I can. That's my value proposition. I'm really into engagement, because I think that's what the basis of all social media really starts from. I challenge you all to think about what your value proposition is. While you're doing that, make sure you're refraining from a constant you commercial.
Marissa Pick:
No one wants to be that person that talks to the person online that is only talking about themselves or is posting updates about themselves. None of us want to work with that self interested, self absorbed, self promoter. None of us, nobody, I'm sure and neither would you. This is LinkedIn 101. It drives me nuts when people just send me messages without any context. I'd really like to get the information before I dive into a straight sales pitch. If you are approaching this within your personal brand, this is the quickest way to lose followers I'd say. If you are trying to build up followers, you need to promote others.
Marissa Pick:
Focus on engagement, interact with others and become that curator of content that speaks to your purpose or value. For your personal brand, the focus should be on adding value for others. On that, again, we can all add value to others by small deeds, like recommendations on LinkedIn, referrals, whether it's on social media or off with emails. Someone recently on the Facebook group for Brandeis Woman just posted that she's new to the workforce and looking for any leads, and I was really blown away by the community that we're a part of, and how many people just said they would love to take it offline, give advice and it's really ...
Marissa Pick:
Something that simple is so valuable. When you're helping others, you really are helping yourself. In Adam Grant's Give and Take: A Revolutionary Approach to Success, he wrote that you should be willing to do something that will take you five minutes or less for anybody. I am not a social ... I'm not a personal branding expert, but I love discussing my expertise, I'd say on social media and personal branding and the intersection there. If there's anybody after this webinar that would like an introduction to anybody that is within my LinkedIn feed or an endorsement or any help, please follow up and take me up on this offer.
Marissa Pick:
I'd be very happy to do so. On that, be ready to fail. The best brands come from repeated trial and error. It's not always instant perfection. Failure is tough. Many of us obviously want to avoid failure. That's just human nature. But to be a brand that rises above the rest, you really do need to go through a failure. You can see the Mickey Mouse, Walt Disney picture and he talked about this a lot when he was creating animation. He said, “I think it's important to have a good hard failure when you're young. I learned a lot of that because it makes you aware of what can happen to you. What can happen is never as frightening as not happening or trying at all.”
Marissa Pick:
Again, if you're going to fail, fail fast, move on. But having that plan, understanding what differentiates you and going from there is definitely the right path to getting to this point. Personal branding again, we've talked about it, it's based on authenticity. You need to understand who you are and what makes you different and compelling to your target audience, and those people that are making the decisions about you because again, there is that intersection. Think about it here. Here are some questions you can start on top of the 15 question challenge I gave you, what are your values?
Marissa Pick:
What do you do best? What do people say about you? You can even do this while getting referrals and getting it, improving your social networks. How do you do what you do? What energizes you? What are your true passions? Again, I think having personal life come to your professional life and having an intersection is really important in adding value. I think that helps you stand out and truly define your personal brand best. Think of your own headline as an ad for branding yourself, what would you say about yourself as you brand? These are some questions I hope that give you some ideas on where to start. Getting into social media, this is personal for personal branding.
Marissa Pick:
I told you guys earlier that it's all SEO optimized, so likely if you Google yourself, you're going to see your own LinkedIn, that will pop up first. Sharing online, it's going to allow you to craft an online persona that reflects your personal values as well as your professional skills. Even if you only use social media occasionally, the content that you share is going to be out there and visible. Reacting to something, liking something on Facebook sometimes can be visible, and it all comes into that brand that comes into the narrative about what people are saying. Again, how you're conducting yourself online is equally as important to your behavior offline.
Marissa Pick:
Social media is free, it's accessible. It's 24/7. I always loved it that people were able to come when I was doing event marketing and meet each other online, offline and really get that excitement of meeting someone that they've been maybe tweeting with over and over, and they can get instant access. They can get information, you can remain hyper networked after you walk away from a conference and you want to stay in touch with somebody. It's really special. It definitely takes work but it can land, you never know maybe it lands your next job. Maybe it lands you a guest spot on a piece of content or a video and absolutely it helps you foster really valuable connections.
Marissa Pick:
If you are on social media, absolutely stay consistent in posting. If you have networks that you set up 10 years ago and you've never once looked at, take a look through and shut that down because that can be not always great to be there and not have answers. Social media personal branding do's. I talked a lot about differentiating yourself, focus on what you really want to excel at, where you want to be, so one, two, three areas of expertise to set you aside from others, what do you want to be known for? For me, I talk a lot about social media. I talk a lot about content marketing event. Then keeping that name, the profile, the imagery and the look consistent across your network.
Marissa Pick:
I have the same headshot across all my professional networks, vanity URLs, if you're googling yourself, LinkedIn/blank. Same should be for Facebook as well. Staying consistent, staying active within your feed, your activity is super important. Again, you don't have to be on all of them, and that's fine. But definitely if you have an account, make sure you're active. Then focus on once you define where you want to be in expertise, join the communities in which you can add value. Make connections with people. Get excited, add conversations, like different conversations and just get yourself out there. If there's any questionable content that comes from the years that doesn't help your professional image, get rid of it.
Marissa Pick:
That's why googling yourself is so ever important. A couple of basic no no's. Don't complain about your job. Don't complain about your coworkers, your boss, don't take a day off. Don't post the picture at Yankee Stadium if you're out sick. Don't share too much information. Try as hard as you can to separate your digital and your personal life. Just be cognizant of what you put on and know that anything that says it disappears, like a lot of you are on Snapchat, things do not always stay hidden on social life as social media, as many of us know. If you do have a network profile, make sure it's consistent, make sure it has all the information.
Marissa Pick:
Make sure that your logo is professional, it shouldn't be blurry, it shouldn't have a logo. If you're on LinkedIn, it should be a nice professional headshot. Don't reference any illegal activities, so rule of thumb is anything that you wouldn't say or do in front of a police officer should not go on social media. Again, just don't be too self serving or phony. Your personal brand is going to come through and it's really easy, I think to tell when people are not being authentic. Take a moment, think about that and just step back and make sure you're doing what you should be doing and not doing any of these things. I like thinking of it as what do you want to be known for?
Marissa Pick:
Your digital reputation stays for life. Again, I'm sure all of us could name some things that have happened in the past couple years of what things come up. Treat your reputation as if it's permanent. I have had, when I managed social media accounts in the past, I have had Bloomberg is the most recent one that I can think of, that they took a tweet from a brand I worked on and they put it as a holding statement. Our brand had to step back and really have very strict guidelines about what people could say in the case of emergency, because that is always there. You can delete a tweet. But if somebody has a screenshot of that deleted tweet, it is there forever and it is permanent.
Marissa Pick:
Again, be very cognizant of what you want to be known for before you put anything online. I'm going to give you two case studies of no nos. I don't know if you guys know Laremy Tunsil. He was a University of Mississippi offensive tackle. He was predicted a couple of years ago to be the number one pick within the draft. This video of him came out the day of the draft and it's him smoking. You can see the picture there and then he claims that his Instagram, his social media all got hacked. If you think about where he was supposed to be, whether it's number one as the top or number three, which is where 43% of mock drafts had him, this tweet and this picture cost him $13 million.
Marissa Pick:
It came down immediately. Every single news source had it, posted it in the middle of the draft, this guy's life just turned upside down. Again, what you do offline and what people post online again, very, very touchy intersection there. My other very bad no, no is this case study. This is from 2013. I still think this is so fascinating. This girl, Justine Sacco, who was ironically, she's 30 years old. She was a Senior Director of Corporate Communications. This girl you would think would know a little bit better. She started tweeting on her way over to Africa, she had an intersection. She had a layover in London. She started tweeting, chili cucumber sandwiches, bad teeth, I'm back in London.
Marissa Pick:
Then on the last leg of her trip, she posted the infamous tweet you see there without thinking about it. In the middle of her flight, this started happening all over the news. You can see there, people started tracking her flight. She was trending everywhere. It was just going absolutely insane. By the time that she got to Cape Town, people actually were protesting at the airport. She was the number one trend within the entire world that day. There's a fascinating story, she immediately got fired obviously. She landed, she had all these people talking and she actually turned her life around, and did a whole career now on crisis management.
Marissa Pick:
There's a really fascinating New York Times article. But again, just be cognizant of what you put out on social media, what you tweet, rule of thumb is do not drink and tweet if you're a brand marketer and you run a handle for your company. Think very carefully before you post something because again, things can blow up within minutes nowadays. Again, you eventually are who you are on social media. You can only fake it for so long. If you are a pain in real life, you are likely going to be a pain on social media. Just a reminder, again, be authentic. It really helps as you're defining your personal brand and making improvements. Just be yourself and it goes a long way.
Marissa Pick:
One of the best ways to get started is becoming a thought leader. That's producing content regularly, staying on topic, gaining trust. Again, you'll have proof of your expertise. Everyone is an expert on something, whether it's content marketing, whether it's raising hamsters, who knows what you like to do? But again, maybe you can play around with that a little bit more. Maybe you're the number one fan of some show, could that be something that you define yourself and create content around?
Marissa Pick:
As you start posting content, you're going to see what your audience likes, and you're going to be able to really narrow it down and define your brand. The more engaging, the more your followers are going to think of you as a leader. Again, that one to three areas of expertise really are key. Post often and really think about becoming the leader within your chosen field. Another thing I like to think of is becoming, think of becoming an influencer, like becoming an intern. Everybody has to prove themselves. We all have to start small and do things that we might not like to do. Again, engagement is the really big thing here on social media.
Marissa Pick:
Assume everybody can help you. Always respond, conversation, content, engagement, always over promotion without a doubt. It's okay to have an opinion, as long as you're cognizant of what you're putting out. Remember, it's permanent so be smart before you post. Ask questions. If you're looking for a way to get started on social media, posing something as a question and just engaging with your feed from there. Crowdsourcing content is always a nice easy way. Following people on social media, it's okay. People are really scared to but if you get an unusual follower, definitely reach out after and engage with them and go from there.
Marissa Pick:
Social media again, just like personal branding has very little say with what we say about ourselves and much to do with what people say about us. Stay consistent, post and be very helpful. A lot of people I think get stumped with the content part, and this is what I love so much about the various networks now, especially since so many of you are on Instagram and Facebook. If you have a thought process and methodology with creating content, you can do video content now. You can turn it on and go live. Instead of sitting here and writing a long form piece of content, you can do something really visual, really short and just talk about something.
Marissa Pick:
Invite a guest or a friend to just do a quick five minute Q&A and go from there and there's your content on your topic, and that can help you. Now, I'm going to dive a little bit into Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook tips. I'm going to go through and see a couple of the questions that have come in. Just looking through now, the beginning a question came in about 15 minutes or less in terms of response to the question, so what makes me different? I would say, as you're thinking about what makes you different, put down different areas of expertise, put down, just step away from it and come back and really understand what you are an expert at.
Marissa Pick:
I'd say 15 minutes or less is really, it shouldn't be that hard to think about what you're really good at or what you thrive out or what you're interested in. That's really where you should go afterwards and step back. Then there's a question about what social media should a law firm be on and that's a big question. Now, I've started answering questions, a lot of questions are coming in. I'm going to go through this and come back towards the end, so I want to make sure I get through this content. In terms of where you should be, that's an answer that you have to think about.
Marissa Pick:
If I tell you to be on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, if you're doing it all yourself and you don't have the time to invest in doing it, which you want to be active on the networks that you decide to be active on. I think for a law firm, LinkedIn definitely is number one but look at the analytics of your website. All of these networks actually have analytics. I'm going to talk through that in the next couple of slides. But be cognizant of where you spend your time if it's possible to find out where people are coming into you from. When I do consultations for my clients, I always look at analytics and that is the number one driver of developing brands or improving on brands as a brand.
Marissa Pick:
I want to make sure that we're spending time on the right channels where people are. Going back to the presentation, I'm going to close these questions now. Just a professional photo. Make sure that you have something that is really clean, really neat, that is your face. That is not a whole background. It's not your family. It's not a dog kissing you, it's not a selfie, it's not the duck face, the peace signs. Social media has just taken an important role within our world. It helps us promote our professional abilities, so maybe having that impact headshot is really, really important. A lot of events and I know a lot of Brandeis events, especially do headshots.
Marissa Pick:
That good headshot gives you an idea of your personality before we meet you. Smile has approachability. A very serious look might show determination. Think about what your professional shot is and what your headshots are. Again, if you're googling yourself, these are probably what's going to show up first, so make sure that your photos are consistent and professional. Starting with Facebook, one of the most important things to do is preview your public search. It's actually really easy, if you go to Facebook and you just type in privacy now, this will take you right to this privacy checkup and it's going to show you exactly how to see what others see or to take things off that you might not want on.
Marissa Pick:
It'll show you who can see what you're sharing, how you can keep your account secure, how to lock down any phones and emails, how people can find you, your data settings. You can either do it through privacy in the search bar. You can go to privacy settings, apps and websites. Then you can turn off the ability for others to tag you in photos, and you can think about what you might want to post to close friends or private. If you're just getting started on Facebook for example, you can actually post things only to yourself, and no one will ever see that you've done it. Then once you're comfortable, if you want to start promoting content, you can put it out to your friends in the public.
Marissa Pick:
A couple tips for personal branding on Facebook, turn off the tagging options, so that nothing that's popping up can surprise you or be unpleasant. Set up your vanity URL. That's what I was talking about earlier, that consistency facebook.com/what. For me, it's Marissa Pick, for you guys hopefully it's your first and last name or whatever you want integration of your name, but you don't want it to be the numbers that it automatically assigned you when you set up your account. Take a moment and fill in your professional details. One of the really nice things about Facebook is it actually lets you talk about what you do, not just who you are and that's very rare.
Marissa Pick:
Use that space. It's a golden space and that's what comes up as you're searching yourself or if someone's looking for you as an expert. Definitely do networking properly, increase your friends, adding people. You can actually import your contacts from Gmail, from Yahoo, from Outlook and you can do this on all the networks now. You can actually, with one click just import anybody that you're talking to into your network. You're making sure that the people that you want are on. Then just posting updates, letting people know if you have an opinion, be cognizant, again about what you're posting, if you want to be clever. I just did the 15 days in the mom life challenge and I had a lot of fun doing that.
Marissa Pick:
It was really fun to share pictures of our kids and get different comments or parents or grandparents commenting and their friends commenting. It's okay to again, have personal stuff, but just be very aware of what your opinion is on Facebook as a very personal network. Moving on to LinkedIn, it's no surprise, I think it was 68% of you said that. Yeah, 68% of you said that this is your number one pick. This is really where I spend a lot of my time with my clients focusing on LinkedIn. Just some fun facts for you guys. There's over 610 million members and 303 million of those are active users. 40% of those people are visiting the site daily.
Marissa Pick:
90 million senior level influencers and decision makers are using LinkedIn, and a lot of the Fortune 500 companies, 92% to be factual are using LinkedIn. This is the most professional network without a doubt. It connects industry professionals with others, and it helps those that are actively whether you're seeking a job or you're sharing a job, it's just a really great channel for defining thought leadership within a professional environment. It definitely gives you the long form content, the high quality content and I'd say it's seen as a social platform where businesses, professionals can network freely, without having to travel anywhere.
Marissa Pick:
Hopefully a lot of you can link in with each other and connect after this and join the LinkedIn page for Brandeis Women as well as the Facebook page, and you guys can share conversations to connect after this webinar. LinkedIn makes it really easy to have a complete profile. These are all the different things that they measure your profile strength with, it's a zero to 100% and they change this a lot. The more complete that your profile is, the higher that you're going to come up in search as people are looking for you. What does it take? It takes into your location, your position, your past positions, education, skills, what volunteer experience or work samples that you might have, you put them in, a really strong summary with keywords.
Marissa Pick:
Having 50 Connections is really important. Then again, just having that public profile, making sure that you're visible and open for others to find you really, really important and you'd be amazed how many people don't have their settings right. A couple of tips to think about your summary. This is the first thing that you land on your LinkedIn page, who is your audience? What do you want them to be finding? What are your accomplishments, your values, your passion? If you think about personal branding, this is who you are and what you want to be known for. These keywords become searchable to marketers like me who are setting up advertisements to find people like you, to find out about products.
Marissa Pick:
The more complete the more you put in, the higher you'll come up and search for the areas that you want to be searched for and found. Connections are really important. Again, you want to have connections and you want to have a personal message with a connection. Not just sending a connection, someone that you don't know with no information. Maybe we met at a conference, so really great meeting you today at the event. Look forward to staying connected with you. That personalized message really helps you stand out. Take a moment as you're on LinkedIn and connecting with people to add that in. Then LinkedIn gives you 50 skills.
Marissa Pick:
You can definitely want to spend time; this is what you want to be known for. For me, I want social media. I don't want things that are not relevant. I don't need sales on my LinkedIn, it's not what I'm doing. I want things that are on brand for my personal brand, and that you can actually change on your end. You're able to move them around. People can endorse you. You can list the skills and then you can change and edit very easily if you go into that section on LinkedIn, what you want to highlight and make sure that that reflects your personal brand well. A couple of personal branding tips for LinkedIn. Again, having a profile image that is professional, not two beer cans shoved down your face at the beach.
Marissa Pick:
Completing that summary, it's really important. It's really one of the few places that you're able to talk long form about yourself and have a complete profile. Absolutely connect with people. Connect within the Brandeis Alumni Network. There's lots and lots and lots of groups and lots of great people to connect with, so make sure you take advantage of that. I like this, that people should approach LinkedIn as a living resume. If you change your job, or if you have past information, put in what you do and what differentiates you, any highlights in your career to brand yourself and stand out. You can have cover photos now on LinkedIn, so make sure you take that real estate.
Marissa Pick:
It's the first thing that you see on a profile. It's the thing on top of your profile image. Then for those of you that are creating content, you can actually link in any presentations. I could put this whole PowerPoint into my LinkedIn through a SlideShare, or any projects that you're working on that you're really proud of any events or awards that you win. It's added exposure, and it's another thing that's more visual content that helps you stand out. Take some time and do those things. I talked a lot about the vanity URL. Claim the vanity URL and here's how you do it. If you go to LinkedIn, you can customize your URL.
Marissa Pick:
If you go to the me icon on LinkedIn, and there's little how to, you can click your profile and then edit profile on the top right, there's something that says edit and customize your URL. This is how you can change your name. Mine is linkedin.com/marissapick. Make sure that you do this. Many people don't. If you have a signature, make sure if you want your Facebook profile there, you put your Facebook. You can put your LinkedIn. Make sure you're cross promoting yourself to enhance your personal brand, whether it's through a signature or on Facebook, if you're trying to grow followers to your LinkedIn, just take advantage of that real estate and it's okay to promote yourself in that sense.
Marissa Pick:
A couple more tips just for LinkedIn, keeping your profile current. If you left your job two years ago and you haven't updated it, make sure you go back and you update your LinkedIn. Put in your past information. Turn off the auto sync if you have that. If you're posting to LinkedIn and it goes to Twitter, it's different profiles that are formatted differently. Publishing content in live form is better than just pushing updates without thinking about it. Publishing content, whether it's video content, if you want to take five minutes to do that, or a blog post or sharing an update, that really helps you pick up followers or become that thought leader and enhance your personal brand.
Marissa Pick:
Then make those connections with the people that you want to connect with, that will help you professionally or personally and again, add that personal note. It takes 10 seconds and it makes a world of difference. I think of LinkedIn as my Rolodex now. I frequently export my contacts, so you can go to connections, export LinkedIn connections and you can have it in an Excel document and just see if there's someone that you want to look up and find their email and it's public. It's all there. You can export it out and just have all those handy. But again, you can import your connections within LinkedIn similarly to Facebook, from LinkedIn or from Outlook or from other networks.
Marissa Pick:
Very easy to grow connections and grow followers. The most important thing on LinkedIn is, just fixing your group digests and your questions. If you're on your profile, you go in here you can see all of your different settings. One of the things that used to drive me nuts was the group emails from LinkedIn. I would set it to no emails. I just, if I was in a group, I would go into a group and be in the group instead of getting more emails. That's me, that's how I like to digest content. But you can see if you're in a sales role, I encourage you to shut off for people that can see your connections. You can actually turn it off, so you can't see my connections on LinkedIn.
Marissa Pick:
Make sure you're aware of how others see you, and LinkedIn does a really nice job of letting you just pop it out and take a look at how others see you. Definitely do this and make sure you are locked down as you'd like to be. Becoming a publisher on LinkedIn, so this is the one thing for thought leadership and building a personal brand. I published quite a bit on my LinkedIn. I don't always go personal on LinkedIn, but this was, I do cycle for survival and this is my ninth year participating. I posted a big thing and I posted past images and my friends and my family.
Marissa Pick:
I like to talk about, again, the intersection of my personal brand and what I'm interested in and humanizing myself, not just social media and content, but professionals. It's really easy to build content and become a publisher. You can do an image. You can do a headline. It is like content 101, it is very straightforward as you can see and it helps you along the way. Explore that on LinkedIn, if you guys have content, and you've not taken this chance to do this. A question, Twitter is helpful for personal branding? Actually, surprisingly, a lot of you are on Twitter for personal and professional, so I would go ahead and assume that many of you if I asked you to raise your hand would say true, which is correct.
Marissa Pick:
It is very helpful for personal branding, so engaging with your followers on Twitter again, offer personal encouragement. Twitter is live, it's instant. People we know desire human connections and really, it's helpful for motivational and for helping people reach their potential. Definitely natural for all of us who want to be validated, so sharing content, whether it's liking, whether it's retweeting it, let people know that what they're saying and posting really does matter. Twitter, I love they're able to instantly respond. If you want to share an article, you can go ahead and share an article. If you want to grab someone's attention, provide content that will help you and improve their life.
Marissa Pick:
Then welcome new followers, and if you have nothing to say on Twitter, you can just surely welcome new followers. They're always listed under their followers as the new ones are on the top. You can do a tweet that says, “Welcome. Thank you so much for following me.” Just having again, that engagement for your personal brand is very important. Twitter analytics is a really great place to start. If you go to analytics.twitter.com, it's going to show your top tweets. This is my May, my top tweet, my top follower, top media tweet. It'll give you a benchmark of how many followers you have, how many mentions you have, how many impressions that you have.
Marissa Pick:
I lose followers, sometimes that's okay. Sometimes Twitter cleans up, so don't get too crazy. But if you want to know where to start or your top tweet, this is a really nice way to have those free analytics and take a look. The personal profile, do not be an egghead. When you sign up for Twitter, you become an egg. Make sure you take time again to put in that professional photo. Have a short summary. Twitter recently changed the amount of characters you're able to have in a tweet. Have as many keywords as you can have within your profile. Have a really good summary. Have a header image on Twitter as well. Use hashtags and handles.
Marissa Pick:
If you work at a company you want to share content, use that company as a handle which is the outside as a handle, and then if you want reply to engagements, again, social media and personal branding and the intersection is all about engagement and becoming the thought leader. Use hashtags for your niche subjects, share information, share responses and join conversations. Motivation Monday, what motivates you? Throw up a quote. Visual content is really important. Follower Friday, welcome those new followers. Again, just some simple tips, but really important if you want to get started. These are some good tips.
Marissa Pick:
Social media is a very powerful way to amplify your message. Whatever that message might be, whatever the audience is, stay consistent, post frequently. I can't say that again enough. It's so important to be authentic. It is so important to focus on engagement. I'm not saying that any of this comes easy. Social media and building a personal brand, you set up your goal, you think about what areas you want to be an expert on. It definitely takes time. It definitely takes effort. It absolutely takes patience and occasionally it requires a thick skin. That's fine.
Marissa Pick:
You fail, you fail fast you move on. But truly as I sit here in 2020, and again, we talked about why this is the time to go through, we're home. Digital is really important, as many of us are home and there is no world in which social media is less prevalent than it is today. Now is a really good time to carve out time, have coffee in the morning and look at your social media, posts an update, become frequent. Check out your personal brand, make followers, make connections. It's not going anywhere. As we wind down the PowerPoint portion of this webinar, I want to leave you my personal thoughts and I like to include this a lot with any speech I do, be interesting. It's not going to work.
Marissa Pick:
It doesn't work. It really doesn't. On social media, you have to be authentic. You need to have fun. A lot of times I post pictures of my kids or I'll post pictures of things that I like. I'm a huge Peloton fan. It's gotten me through a lot of this time at home with young kids. That I've talked a lot about if you follow me on Instagram, you'll see updates all the time as I push myself and I hop on the bike. It just keeps me sane, but that's one area that I've talked about a lot. Be interested. As you go out, maybe you're going out hiking, are you seeing birds? Are you seeing beautiful rocks? Or you seeing something that's really interesting, share that online.
Marissa Pick:
See if there's others that are sharing things that you like and then you again, become hyper networked. If it's something you're interested in, it can be the area of expertise. Once you follow those people, once you share the content, interact with them, engage with them, build those connections and help each other. Then again, just be experimental. Have fun, try things. My favorite parts of my job, I've done a social media vending machine in the middle of a financial services event, where you could tweet and you get a prize. I've done crazy things. We've done Twitter feeds.
Marissa Pick:
We've done a lot of really crazy things that are at the intersection of social media and personal branding, and helping those online/offline connections foster. Be mindful again think of what you're doing. Again, your digital reputation is permanent. But have fun, try things and have a voice. But again, keep calm and follow the rules without doubt. But engagement is the number one most important thing. I think I've said that word 1,000 times during this webinar, but that engagement is really important. I'm going to go through the Q&A now. But if you have questions, or if I can't get to all the answers within the next seven minutes, visit me online, send me an email and I will go through and get to as many as I can.
Marissa Pick:
I am done presenting and talking now. I'm excited to see what you guys have. Someone put in, is LinkedIn premium worth it? LinkedIn premium is always really great about doing a one month freebie. Now is a really great time. I have had LinkedIn premium as long as LinkedIn premium has been around. I think it's worth it, especially if you are doing something like launching a job search. It's really helpful for many different reasons. And then if you're in the sales function, you can have that enhanced search ability or the ability to write people emails. I personally think it's worth it. But check out a free month and let me know what you think after.
Marissa Pick:
Someone just wrote, I'm changing into a very different area than I'm in right now, what's the best way to communicate that to my LinkedIn network, so something like a press release? That's a really great question. I think press releases, yes. I think why you're doing that and sharing that with your network would be really helpful. What made you change what you're doing so drastically? Do a short video. Put that out on your network. Or tease it out and say, “I'm making a big change, what do you think?” Or ask people to comment, so you get a lot of engagement before you post it.
Marissa Pick:
But again, just teasing out that content for your brand will get people excited and anytime someone comments or likes it, they'll get a notification after. Have fun and hopefully congratulations on your big career change. Let's see here. How do I look for a group of people and profession on LinkedIn? What I love the most about all of these social networks is that, you can actually go in and just type in any of the search bars, any kind of niche comment or groups of people that you might want. It's one of the most exciting ways of using LinkedIn. Let's say you want to find somebody that's I don't know in, I don't know, a dog breeder.
Marissa Pick:
You can go onto LinkedIn and type that in, all the keywords will come up. It'll show you all the different pages, all the different people and the groups that have that information. Definitely just use the search bar on the top and get started and then you can save searches from there on the top. How can I target specific people in one profession? Hashtags to me are a really great way of targeting people, if you're trying to track the success or to find the right people to target. You can use that and you can build a campaign around that. I talked a little bit with Twitter about Motivational Monday. A lot of the brands I've worked with spend time on visual content.
Marissa Pick:
Just cuts through the noise. Human brain processes images 60,000 times quicker than text. If you're trying to target people in a specific profession, figure out what the hashtags or the conversations are or if there's twitter chats, or if there are LinkedIn lives with thought leaders and approach the thought leaders first, share the content, then secondly around it and curate it with the hashtag, so you're able to get some really nice metrics there. Someone says, “Since you are CEOs of your social media, or I'm assuming your own brand, why do you think it's important what others say about us?” That's just the intersection of personal branding is when you walk out of a room people say things, and that's just the God's honest truth.
Marissa Pick:
Your personal brand, you have to carve out your niche and it does matter what people say. Because if you are, let's say ... You don't want that to come up and hurt your professional network. You want to make sure you are aware of what's out there and if someone's saying something, it's okay to go and rebut it and have a comment and reframe something. Maybe you posted something seven years ago before you decided to do what you're doing, so absolutely, very important about what others are saying about you, even if you are just passing it, setting up a Google mention, super important. Someone asked, how would you address someone who is hesitant about posting online?
Marissa Pick:
I rarely post personal information, photos and thoughts. I'd say a lot of you probably are listening in see exactly the same question. If you are very timid about posting on social media or posting online, Google yourself and see what's coming up. Think about if there's one network that you had to be on for your professional brand, and you're enhancing your personal brand overall, what is that network and how can you start by dipping your toes in? It's okay to be passive. A lot of people I've come in contact with or worked with in the past are merely liking a post, never commenting, never sharing. But if you are going to do anything, make sure you have a headshot.
Marissa Pick:
Make sure that your brand is branded, you have nothing that you wouldn't want to see, you have information on LinkedIn. If you're on Facebook that you have it updated. I would say, if you're not going to post just make sure you are updated and don't be on every network. Let's go through ... I'll do one or two more questions. What recommendations you have for somebody in their 30s or 40s who's doing a complete career change? Good for you. I think that's fantastic. I think this is a really great time to do that. Think about how to brand yourself. Think about what networks you want to be on. You can go back, and I'm sure we'll send these slides around.
Marissa Pick:
But some of those questions, how do you want to be known? What kind of content are creating? How are you going to differentiate yourself and start again with a career change? Are you going to become a thought leader? Are you going to post the content? What networks are going to use? Absolutely, think about that and then just focus on where to start and come up with that plan, set the goal, come up with the content and become a thought leader. I think it's fantastic for you that you're doing a career change and kudos to you. There's a lot of answers here. Oh, an example of a great personal brand. That's a really great question.
Marissa Pick:
I always ask that for someone that's coming in for a social media role about what brands I think are doing it well. I'll tell you, I think that in my network, there's someone called Michael Brenner and he is so fantastic on being authentic and sharing pictures of his kids. He was at News Cred. He now has his own business, and he posts consistently across all of his networks, a mix of professional content, engaging content and his family. I think for me in this industry I'm in, I think he's a true thought leader. I think from a brand brand, I think Wendy's absolutely kills it. They have a fun, playful voice. Sometimes they go after Burger King and McDonald's. They're really smart about how they respond.
Marissa Pick:
They've done a lot of very fun contests like the free nuggets for that kid Carter. They just threw out a number of retweets to get free nuggets for life and just made it really fun. Those are a couple of brands I think that are doing really well. You guys if you want me to stop with timing, just Nikki or Amy just let me know. Let's see. This a long question, dating and social media. A lot of my brand is engagement within politics. A few years ago, there was someone that matched on a dating site and a conversation happened before we met, then he googled you and start to argue with you about politics before you even met. The date didn't go well.
Marissa Pick:
I'm not surprised. Didn't stop him from contacting me again on to other dating sites. Thoughts on how social media affects dating? Wow, that's a very interesting question. I have never been asked that. That guy sounds like a real jerk, so hopefully you never talk to him again. Someone that is conversational, again, this is why you should google yourself. Whatever you're active and known for is going to come up first. I'm sure if you can get a name, you're going to do the same thing when you're dating somebody. But again, having that intersection of personal and professional life on your networks and then having the same on dating, what are you putting into the various dating apps?
Marissa Pick:
Again, I met my husband at Brandeis so I haven't ever been on any of those apps, but be cognizant about what you're putting into your personal networks, and how that might come up in a Google search. It's very public and it's ... I've put myself out there a lot on social media and it comes up in Google. As you're dating, just be cognizant of who you are and stay authentic to that. If there's somebody that's coming up and fighting with you before you go out on a date, I would say, run. Definitely run. Well, let's see. Let's see if I take one more question. Brand new, this will be the last question, brand new to self promotion and changing careers, so please speak about crowdsourcing content.
Marissa Pick:
I love this. If you're changing careers, if you're brainstorming an article, one of the best ways to do this is pose the question, think of the headline of your article and use LinkedIn or Facebook or Twitter or whatever you want to source it out. One of my things that I did at CFA was a whole campaign around, how would you change finance for the better? We decided that we would make it an image, post it on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook, and we put it out there. We actually, I found one of the editors in my company that would go through and curate all the different content, all the different answers, and he would respond and he put together a piece of content incorporating people's responses from social media into the article.
Marissa Pick:
It was the number one article for almost two months within our analytics, because people were so excited to see the intersection of online and offline. If you're doing something like that, that you intend to publish, make sure they're asking for permission if you're sharing an image or their response. But if you're crowdsourcing, have you read any great books lately? If anybody's looking for a job, I'm looking to pay it forward. I want to do something nice. If you have a connection or if you're on the job search or if you're affected by COVID, I was would love to help you with networking, something like that just making it conversational and driving engagement, but also spending the time to go back and respond.
Marissa Pick:
I think brands that are doing these well, brands that put something out there as a brand and go through and respond to the comments. I think Allbirds, the shoe brand does it really well. They gave away thousands of shoes to healthcare professionals. Then you can actually sponsor shoes or healthcare professionals still. If you go on to their Facebook page, people were so responsive to this campaign that they ran that they actually overwhelmed, and whoever was managing the account went through and responded to every single person on the Facebook page. That, to me is a brand that sticks out and is authentic, because they're spending the time.
Marissa Pick:
Have fun on LinkedIn ... Have fun on any of the networks that you're doing and focus on the career. Again, throw up a video if you don't feel like doing a long form content. Throw up a question and just enjoy the various answers and responses and go from there. You can't really go wrong. I think I'm going to end on that because the questions are still coming up. Again, as a reminder, if you have questions, just shoot me an email, visit me. We'll put up a comment tomorrow in the Facebook group, so definitely come there if you want. Amy I feel like you're ready so I'm going to hand over to you.
Amy Cohen:
I'm ready. Okay. Thank you, Marissa. I'm working on it. My daughter's updating my LinkedIn page as we speak.
Marissa Pick:
I love it. Perfect.
Amy Cohen:
Thank you all for attending. You can find Brandeis Women, I know that was one of the questions on social media. Our Facebook group is BrandeisWomen, one word, and our LinkedIn group is Brandeis University Women's Network. You could search us out and find us if you have any questions, and if you can't you can send me an email or Talee an email. I'm amylynncohen@gmail.com. I'd like to thank all of you for attending. Your participation, involvement and contributions are essential to the success of the Brandeis Women's Network. We've been thrilled with the response we've had so far, and we look forward to many, many more events and seeing you at many more events.
Amy Cohen:
Just as a little plug, if you would like to host an event, if there is something that you're interested in discussing, if you teach a cooking class or whatever, please again, reach out to us. We're always looking for hosts of events. Thank you, Marissa. Thank you everybody for attending. Stay safe and we look forward to seeing you soon. Thank you.