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Setting up Google Reader

In my last blog post, I talked about the benefits of Google Reader, and I’ll have more to say about that in the next post. For now, I thought you’d want to see how to get it working for you.

This may look daunting on first glance, but it’s really not hard – and the benefits are enormous, so please be patient and try to follow along…

First, I’d like to show you what my Google Reader setup looks like. I subscribe to 71 different news sources, which range from my own blog posts to specific searches on Craig’s List and Indeed.com. Because I promote myself as a subject matter expert on personal branding, I have to read a lot. It’s a lot of work for me – I have about 150 articles waiting for me because I haven’t looked at Reader since this morning.

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How to use Google Reader to help become a subject matter expert

Today, everyone has to be a subject matter expert if they want to get hired or advance their career. But the world is moving fast, and you have to stay on top of what’s being said in your field. In fact, your ultimate objective ought to be to become a thought leader in your subject field.

How can you do that? Since this is a big topic, I’m going to cover it in more than one blog post. First, let’s understand why Google Reader is important to you. I’ve embedded a wonderfully simple video about both Google Reader and RSS feeds. (Google Reader is an RSS feed reader – you’ll understand more about this when you finish reading and watching.)

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Another job search worry – your personal credit history

Wow, something else to worry about if you’re jobless. You can read the entire article here:

Just a snippet:

NEW YORK– If you thought your credit report only impacted interest rates on mortgages, credit cards and insurance premiums, think again. At a time when millions of Americans are struggling to stay afloat financially, your credit could literally kill your chances of landing the job you so desperately need.

Shocked? Get this: Up to 50% of employers now run credit checks on potential hires, according to the Society for Human Resource Management.

Thanks to career coach Randy Block for finding this article.

Posted in Personal branding.

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Google Voice: phone screening offers privacy and rings both cell and landline

Google-VoiceEverybody new to personal branding efforts – and plenty of old-timers as well – hesitate to give out phone numbers. Personally, I hate getting phone calls, and I’m unreliable about answering them. I answer every email, but you’re at risk if you call me.

A while back, Google bought GrandCentral, which has now been rechristened as Google Voice. It’s free, although you have to ask for invitation and there is a bit of a delay in getting invited. Click on this link to go to the signup form.

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Get Found! personal branding newsletter

Want to get a copy of my newsletter? Sign up here. I’ll be happy to send you a PDF you can print if you’d like.

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The July issue features articles on:

  • How good is your Google ranking?
  • Get GMail now
  • Create your Google profile
  • Use vanity profiles at LinkedIn and Facebook
  • Claim your ZoomInfo identity (but please also read this blog post)
  • Use email signatures
  • And links to some of my most popular blog posts

The newsletter is free, and you have my promise that your email address is safe with me. I’m sending these through a “real” email service that removes you instantly if you opt-out – and I’ll never share your email address with anybody else (unless it keeps me out of jail).

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Be careful about ZoomInfo and MyLife

I recently received an invitation to connect to a friend on MyLife.com. I’ve gotten these before, and I always politely refuse them, since I focus my social network connections on LinkedIn and Facebook.

My friend wrote back to say that he hadn’t sent me that invitation – but wait, this is only the start of the story…

It turns out – if this Wikipedia article is correct – that ZoomInfo feeds contact info on business-related signups to their associate MyLife. In itself, that’s a slimy thing to do, but it doesn’t end there.

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Virtual business card personal branding site

If you’re looking for a nice place to consolidate the different points of your online presence, you may what to look at Card.ly. I read about it today and immediately set up a profile. It’s actually similar to the profile you can create on Google (see this post). You have done your Google profile, haven’t you???

Here’s my card.ly profile:

card.ly

Why would I want to do this?

Funny you should ask – you should always ask this question before you listen to any cockamamie advice, even from me. First, if you’re going to do anything for a profile, do Google. That gives you a free ad on the first page of a Google search of your name. But Google Profiles aren’t as easy to set up as card.ly, and they’re pretty ugly in comparison. So if you want to show people that you “get it,” you’ll do both. The visual impact of card.ly is striking – there you are with icons for all your social networking sites, and all you have to do is click on the ones you use and provide a username (they don’t need your password).

One thing this does for me is to promote some of the sharing sites that most people don’t know about. I frequently share items in Google Reader – for those of you in the support groups I’m in, I usually post a message to the appropriate Yahoo group. But I’m actually flagging much more than I post on Yahoo, and if you think I’m a good filter for you, it’s a good way for you to learn fast by letting me pass along the most important (for you) articles to read.

It remains to be seen how much this will help your Google and Bing profiles. In my opinion, you need to be thinking about both of those, especially if Microsoft actually does a search deal with Yahoo. Google still has a commanding lead in search, but some people are saying that a MS/Yahoo alliance would give them almost 1/3 of the search market – so you’d better be watching your presence there as well.

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Be sure to check alternate spellings of your name – your personal brand

Perhaps you’ve been wondering how to deal with fullname/nickname issues (Walter Feigenson vs Walt Feigenson). Well here’s something else to worry about – misspellings of your name. You probably don’t have to worry about that if you’re John Smith – but you sure do if your name is John Smyth. In my case, misspellings are all over the globe.

What do you do about that? I’m not sure yet, because I’ve just started thinking about this problem. The good news (for me) is that most of the misspellings actually show Google’s guess that it’s actually me. If anything, that’s even more impressive than looking yourself up and finding some results on page 2.

Misspelling is a common issue in search engine optimization. Most experts will tell you to include common misspellings in your keywords and meta tags. If you’re finding that the common mistakes aren’t being handled to your advantage by Google, you can even write a blog article like this one, which will get indexed and may make it easier to find you. I know one person who puts some of the common misspellings of her name in her LinkedIn Summary,

For the record, then, here are some common misspellings of my name:

I’m OK for all these: Feigensen, Fiegenson, and Feigonson.

feigensen

But if you’re looking for Walter Ferguson or Walter Fergenson, you’re going to find a Costa Rican songwriter, not me. Since this is a very common misspelling, I could probably stuff that name into my blog’s meta tags, but I’m not sure what impact that would actually have. And since there are already several paid ads for this name (mostly from public directory companies that want to sell you information about him), even using the paid listings offered by Ziggs.com might not help.

Going back to the fullname/nickname question: it’s really best to concentrate on one or the other for your public profiles. I don’t like using middle initials for the simple reason that people looking you up probably won’t know yours.

Google actually does a pretty good job for many nicknames. They know that Walt and Walter are the same. But how about Teddy Kennedy – would they also equate Edward with Teddy? So think about your own naming conventions – pick one and stick to it for your own personal brand.

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How to complete your LinkedIn profile

Many people have trouble getting their LinkedIn profile to 100% completion. Of course, I always have sage advice for these people, but yesterday I created a profile for a friend, and I can’t get it to 100% myself. And none of the expert friends I have can say why.

Completeness

You may be wondering why you want to get to 100%. Here’s LinkedIn’s answer: you are 40 times more likely to get found in a LinkedIn search if your profile is complete. I’m not sure I’d accept that as absolute truth, but one of your guiding principles when you’re looking for work is to remove all obstacles.

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Claim your LinkedIn vanity profile and use it in your personal branding

This is a simple task for you, and it has a big payoff. Follow these instructions, and you too can have a LinkedIn address like mine: http://www.linkedin/in/wfeigenson. By default, your LinkedIn profile has a bunch of numbers in it and is clearly something another person could never remember.

My usual question: why?

Simple, you want to use your LinkedIn profile in your email signature, on your business cards, on your resume – every place you want to promote your personal brand. Remember, repeated exposure is one requirement for establishing a true and lasting brand. That’s why you should also use the same identity wherever you can. For example, I’m wfeigenson on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and in many more places. And it’s my email address as well. So whenever somebody sees a wfeigenson on any site, they can be pretty sure it’s me.

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