Building a Credible Image When You Work in Multiple Fields

from WebWorkerDaily by Pamela Poole

How do you sell yourself and your services online, when you work in two or more fields? Won't a potential client's first impression be that you lack focus, and perhaps don't excel at any of the things you do? Freelancers don't always have the luxury of concentrating on just one field. We have to be flexible. We have to be creative with our talents. We have to pay the rent.

I was dealing with this a few months ago, when I was thinking of putting together a portfolio site. I was feeling like my presence on the Internet was scattered all over the place, and wanted a single site to which I could send professional contacts who wanted more info. I was tired of providing links to multiple profiles and blogs that didn't tell the whole story, and I'm not wild about any of the "identity aggregation" services that are out there.

Given all the different things I do, my primary dilemma was to make a non-static professional site that gave a good overall impression of what I'm about, professionally speaking. Below are some of the issues and approaches I pondered. Maybe they will be useful to you if you're in this position.

3 More Cool Twitter Tools To Do Your Tweeting With

from MakeUseOf.com by Wez Pyke

Over the last few years Twitter has became very popular with users but also popular for developers, and a lot of Twitter tools have been developed as a result. The easy to use API makes it incredibly fast to develop applications and that's why there are so many – some good and some not so good.

Here I will discuss 3 of my favorite latest discoveries.

Twi.tt

Twi.tt is a service that allows you to create and share pictures, videos, documents, audio and even polls. When you go onto Twi.tt you firstly need to sign into your Twitter account. Twi.tt uses the OAuth method for logging users in so it is secure and Twi.tt do not store your Twitter username and password.

If you have never logged into a Twitter service using OAuth before it is as simple as two clicks. First click the Sign in with Twitter button and then click Allow when you have been taken to Twitter.

Twi.tt allows you to upload pictures, videos, documents and audio from your computer, link to it via a URL or capture pictures, videos and audio straight from your computer. They are also planning on adding support for emails in a few days.

When creating a poll you have 112 characters for the poll question and there is no limit for the number of poll answers. You also have the option of disallowing repeated votes and not posting your poll to Twitter.

When your poll has been created you will be given a link to it and a link to it will also be posted on your Twitter feed if you did not select the option to not post there.

The profile page that Twi.tt creates for you is almost identical to your Twitter account as it has your background image and your profile image. People also have the option to comment on content that you have posted.

Tweepler

Tweepler is a service that was created by @coryschop that lets you organize people (also known as tweeple) that are following you and who you are following.

To login in to Tweepler you must enter your Twitter username and password at the top of the site. When you hover over Why? next to the login form you will see that they state your details are encrypted and not stored.

When you log in you are shown a list of people that are following you but you are not following back. These are listed as Unprocessed Followers. If you do not want to add a person you can move them to the ignore bucket by pressing the arrow to the right. If you want to follow a person back you click the arrow to the right of their name.

You will be able to see everyone's username, name, website, location and their bio. But if you click on more details you will get

• Information on the average number of tweets they post per day.
• The total number of tweets they have posted.
• Information on the number of followers they have
• The number of people they are following along with a ratio of following:followers. Their three latest tweets are also displayed.

It is possible to sort users by newest followers, oldest followers, name and username. If you don't want to bother going through all of the Unprocessed followers you can click the Follow All or Ignore All button at the bottom of the page.

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Tweetboard

Tweetboard is one of the most unique Twitter tools I have came across to date. What Tweetboard allows you to do is add a Twitter conversation for your site so that viewers can post messages and others can reply all in an easy to follow nested view.

Tweetboard is still in alpha but you can grab an invite by requesting one on the Tweetboard website by clicking the "Request a free alpha invite!" button. When you click the button it will take you to Twitter where you must send the message that is entered upon load.

When your account has been set up you will be notified. From the Tweetboard you can then grab the javascript snippet of code that will be placed on your website for Tweetboard to function. On certain content management systems and blogs the code may not work as intended to so some tweaking may be needed.

Tweetboard is a really good way of increasing traffic to your website and also a great solution of getting to know what your visitors think of your website.

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If you have a favorite Twitter tool or service then post a comment below and share it with us.

Reputation Accounts For 30-70% Of Your Value

Reputation Accounts For 30-70% Of Your Value: "

Branding on the right attributes is the difference between a leader and loser.

Before we called it personal branding, the overarching term for what society thought about you was simply your “reputation.” Of course, that society may have been your middle school classmates who always picked you last for dodge ball teams. Even if you’d practiced over the summer or entered high school one half foot taller, the stain of your poor ball handling (and evasion) skills remained.

Who you are and how you show up

It’s the reason why changing schools is not always a bad thing. You can upgrade your style, inveigle yourself with a better crowd and play on your parent’s guilt by squeezing them for a cooler phone. At that age, we’re acutely aware of what makes up our reputation: looks, friends and possessions.

Per BusinessWeek’s report on reputations of publically traded corporations, branding is responsible for the often-vast difference between book value and market capitalization. “Reputation for being able to deliver growth, attract top talent, and avoid ethical mishaps can account for much of the 30%-to-70% gap (between) … Proctor & Gamble versus Unilever, and Johnson & Johnson versus Pfizer … as seen in price-earnings ratio.”

On a granular and personal branding level, only certain elements of what is collectively called your reputation or brand, matter to people who will pay you, invest in your company or trade for a stake in either. Your actual skill or core competency – what you think your being hired or contracted to do – may be less important than your outside interests or personal creed.

United Technologies Corp (UTX) provides a teachable moment. After Communications Consulting Worldwide expertly dug into UTX’s reputation, the researchers found UTX didn’t need to do a better job communicating about its products or markets. The jump in value would come from messaging about the company’s environmental responsibility, innovation, and employee training.

Hence, a complete overhaul of your personal brand will probably be a waste of time, maybe impossible and come close to clipping a hangnail with a buzz saw. Just pick the three or so qualities that matter most to your market.

If you’re a big head of technology, your communications skills may need work. If you’re a writer, you’re mastery of technology may need work. Everyone needs clear evidence they play well with others, and most of us need to demonstrate empathy, trustworthiness and the ability to get a hard thing done. Almost everyone needs to use the right hair product.

In my business, appearances matter. See if you can discern how I weave that element of my personal brand in the Op-Ed piece I wrote for Marketing Daily last Friday, where I cut into Lane Bryant’s new social community.

Incorporating elements that matter

How do you incorporate the elements that matter into your personal branding or re-branding?

1. Pick a philanthropy or cause that allows you to develop the personal characteristics that make you more valuable than your years or skills.
2. Get mentored by someone who demonstrates the qualities that make people great in your industry.
3. Use the space you take in social media to reveal dimensions about your brand that go unseen by people who just work with you.

Author:

Nance Rosen is the author of Speak Up! & Succeed. She speaks to business audiences around the world and is a resource for press, including print, broadcast and online journalists and bloggers covering social media and careers. Read more at NanceRosenBlog. Twitter name: nancerosen.

http://www.personalbrandingblog.com/reputation-accounts-for-30-70-of-your-value/

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Don't Let Academia Advise You On Your Future

Don't Let Academia Advise You On Your Future

I find the constant worry about grades quite pathetic, as if your future was dependent on their outcome. Okay they kind of are if you are planning to build your life around the perks of the educational system. But if you’re willing to put in the effort you might consider redirecting that same effort out into the real world where the return on your energy is much higher. Begin by starting something.

Anyone can do it. If you think you can start your own entrepreneurial venture do it, if you not the self-starter type that’s fine, find someone who is, whose vision you like and work for them. Be a part of something special, something remarkable, something that makes a difference.

You really don’t need anything to get started, but our education system tricks us into thinking we need like 4 degrees and a 5 page resume before we can start something. There is no counsel that accepts and rejects ideas. The only thing stopping you is your own lack of initiative. (Well that’s not entirely true, there are bigger challenges once you get started). But taking the initiative to start is the hardest part and yet it’s really not the hard, it’s just takes a little bit of self reliance and conviction.

The education system will keep telling you need better grades to pass this assessment and get a better job, and that you have to please your superiors. It’s all just a big wankathon. It feels like that scene in the Matrix where you see the mechanistic real world and all the humans plugged into little capsules, that harvests their energy while they are preoccupied with the virtual reality called the Matrix.

In our world today, young people are preoccupied by memorizing information they won’t remember after the test is over, studying topics they don’t care about for a marginal increase in entry level salary, taking boring internships that seem like a good resume check and binge socializing in their free time to forget about how much the aforementioned activities suck.

As I’ve said before, people need to have something they actually want to do. And if you don’t your focus should be on finding that, anything else is a waste of time. Once you find that passion your learning will have a purpose and you’ll be amazed at the increased enjoyability and retention.

What I find very sad is that it’s not students’ fault. They haven’t really chosen this path. It’s the default path and no other options are presented as viable. And default paths are incredibly powerful especially when every other option is seen to be fit only for the losers of society. Interestingly, almost anyone who has been successful has realized that there’s something more out there and have decided to opt out.

I am working on startup that I hope will play a significant role in showing people that there is something more. Many people are already working on this and many people have written books about living successful, fulfilling lives and escaping the status quo. These books pump some people up enough to launch them out of the gravitational pull of the status quo and into a new realm of living. But that’s rare. Most people don’t have the self-confidence and drive to do that. But we still need to help the people who are clearly dissatisfied with their present and would like something more but they don’t know how. Well, that’s what we’re going to do. We are going to show you there’s something more, pop you on a bike with wings, (give you a can of Redbull…kidding, I hate that stuff) guide you past the point of no return and then let you fly off the edge to begin your entrepreneurial ascent, and with your new dimension of freedom you’ll look down on the seemingly two dimensional world below, watching your peers go through the same old pattern of corporate ladder climbing, hard dispassionate work and few rewards.

No really, without the dumb imagery, we’re going to help people who have big ideas, but don’t know how them happen, actually get their ideas off the ground and make them a reality.

I’m hesitant about linking to Force For the Future, because it’s super, super pre-alpha but there’s a form on the site where you can request advice and mentorship if you’re a young person, or offer it if you’re an older more experienced professional.

Step It Up At Work And Save Your Job!

From Step It Up At Work And Save Your Job!

With the economy in the tank, companies are still laying off employees left and right and every time you turn around, businesses that were once thriving have closed their doors for good. It’s no wonder you tread lightly at work these days; you have every right to be concerned your head may be the next on the chopping block. And unless you’ve got a trust fund the size of Texas, that is a very real possibility for millions of professional women across the country.

Granted, if a company truly can’t afford to keep you on payroll, there is nothing you can do to change that. The best thing you can do in that case is to review your severance agreement (if you are offered one), apply for unemployment and begin your quest for another job.

However, there is nothing wrong with making it extremely difficult for your boss to let you go, should a layoff become a possibility. The trick is to be suave about it. Here’s how:

Always be one step ahead of your boss. Do you get your work done without being asked? Do you get a head start on projects that aren’t due for a few weeks? Do you make sure your boss has everything she needs for a meeting and are you proactive about finding solutions to problems she may be having? How about helping with responsibilities that aren’t necessarily yours, but you offer to do them anyway?

It may sound like overkill, but it could really mean the difference between a paycheck or none at all. Your boss is stressed beyond belief right now, trying to meet goals in a down economy, so she may be less apt to shower you with praise for a job well done. However, if your boss asks you for something and you say you’ve already done it, you send the message that she can count on you when they need it most.

Focus on the job-not the clock. Sure, we’ve all got husbands, children, pets and social lives outside of the office, but one of the quickest-and easiest-ways to lose your position in the possibility of a layoff is to be out the door every day at five on the dot. Your boss can and, quite surely, will take that as a sign that you don’t like your work, that you have enough on your plate, or both.

I’m not saying to kill yourself taking on more work than you can or want to handle, but if you get to work after your boss in the morning and then leave before her at night, maybe you should rearrange your schedule, give or take ten minutes. It can’t hurt to ask her if she needs anything before you head out for the evening, either. Your effort will pay off in spades when she remembers all the times you helped her with something at the last minute, trust me.

Turn on the charm. When you’re overloaded with work and stressed out, it’s easy to forget your manners. Always say “please” and “thank you” and try to bring positive energy and good humor to the office. Even if you’re having the worst day of your life, it could be the day when your boss decides she has to let someone go and your bad mood could earn you a pink slip. The more difficult the times, the more reason you have to smile-because you still have a job. Let’s try and keep it that way-you really can’t afford your bad mood.

Show your range. It never hurts to ask to help with projects you weren’t assigned to. Not only will it earn you recognition as a team player, but your boss will see you as the valuable, well-rounded employee you truly are. After all, the employees companies are not willing to part with are those who can pick up the pieces where the others left off.

You Actually Can Earn Money by Taking Online Surveys

from MakeUseOf.com by Simon Slangen

Earning money out of your home, online. Many people play with the idea, and some  even go after it. There are various ways to pursue it. One is to write, like I do, for websites or blogs. If you've got it in you, I recommend you to do it. We've written in the past about websites to earn money writing, check it out.

But not everyone's got the feel for it. There are of course other ways. You can, in fact, earn money taking online surveys or company offers. That's right, you can get paid for giving your opinion. Before I began to work at MakeUseOf, I worked this possibility for a time. A 16 year old boy, in Belgium, gathering some extra cash. This only begins to show how 'open' this all is. Your age and nationality matter little to none, the only thing you need is an internet connection and some time to spare.

Today I'd like to show you how to tackle this line of 'work'. The various tips and tricks involving successfully engaging it, and the trustworthy places to go for your survey fix.

Step One – Get Real

Before you start trying to earn money taking online surveys, there are a few things you'll need to realize.

Do not expect to make money in truckloads. You (most probably) won't get hundreds of dollars a week, thousands a month, whatever the ads try to tell you. True, when you participate in a multitude of high-roll surveys daily you can make a fair amount, but things don't work out like that in real life.

Those high-roll surveys will be a sporadic surprise, rather than routine, and depending on how many company aims you hit or miss (do you handle the budget at home, or do you live off your parents? Are you a jock or a nerd?), the amount of surveys you receive can differ greatly. Also, when considering the hourly earnings – some surveys can take up a lot of time – you're not exactly well-paid.

However, if you enlist for a reasonable number of survey services, you can certainly score some extra bucks. Best of all, you don't need to be able to actually do things, just have an opinion – and everyone has one of those. Just keep in mind that this is a little extra money, instead of your new job.

Step Two – Get Ready

You want to be properly set up before you go. Besides cluttering your address with surveys, you'll encounter some false – spamming – services if you go venturing on your own.

I highly suggest registering a new email address for the job, to keep pleasure and business apart, so to speak. Go with Gmail (a lightweight and easy interface is advised in days to come, it'll also be needed to set up our filters) and pick an easy to remember name.

Filters

If you keep the different suppliers separated, it'll be easier to see where the occasional crap is coming from. Don't worry, you won't need to register twenty-odd different addresses, Gmail helps us with that.

1. If actual@gmail.com is your email address, use actual+service@gmail.com for the different services. (e.g. if I were to enlist myselft on GTM, I'd use the mail address simonspam+gtm@gmail.com). As Gmail completely ignores the addition mark and suffix, all emails will arrive in the same inbox, but we'll be able to separate them by using filters.
2. Creating the actual filter is a lot easier than you'd think. However, you'll have to repeat the process below for every service. First, press the Create a Filter button at the top of the page.

   

   Next, enter the actual+service@gmail.com as the receiving address, and head to the next step.

   

   You can then choose how to manage this part of your mail. Choose for it to skip your inbox and be added to the service's label. You'll be able to access it in a separate folder at any given time, located on the left portion of your screen.

   

If you ever receive spam on one of your pseudo-addresses, you can easily put a halt to all incoming traffic. Just edit the right filter, and select Delete it.

Step Three – Get Paid

The final and most simple step. Register on a multitude of (trustworthy) survey suppliers, and wait for the 'work' to come. You'll quickly notice that different sites work different ways, with different systems and paygrades. Usually you'll need to wait until you've reached a certain amount (ten to twenty dollars) until you can cash out – sometimes a wiring to your bank account, most often Paypal.

Below you'll find three of the highest recommended sites, by us and other satisfied users over the internet. All are international.

1.  SurveySavvy

If you're going for the bucks, you definitely need to enlist for SurveySavvy. Each survey gets assigned a dollar value, between 2 and 20 dollars. Even when you don't fit any of that month's surveys, you get automatically entered in the monthly sweepstakes, where they give away fifty 10 dollar prizes.

2.  American Consumer Opinion

Don't be misguided by the name, they work worldwide. They pay between 4 and 25 dollars per survey, and also automatically enlist you for their monthly sweepstakes. Don't pass on any surveys you receive.

3.  Harris Polls

One of the most respected survey sites out there – both by users and professionally. They award you relatively generous with Hlpoints, which you can redeem for gift cards, prizes, and sweepstakes. They work internationally and "are continuously investigating international laws regarding sweepstakes rules and eligibility". More information on their questions page.

4+ Other Sites

You'll want to enlist for as many survey suppliers as possible. Check out Online Paid Surveys for other websites. You can filter them on geographic availability and get more information out of the reviews.

This is where we round up this article. I hope you've learned something and will be able to put it to use. If you've got any other questions or comments, head straight to the comments section below.

http://www.surveysavvy.com/

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Personal Branding vs. Self-Awareness

Originally from WebWorkerDaily by Georgina Laidlaw

Recently, I've been thinking about personal branding and finding myself disagreeing with the idea that it's something with which we should all be concerned.

While I was reviewing "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Personal Branding," I read this quote in a section detailing the personal brand extensions achieved by Madonna:

"And then in 2008, when she was turning 50 and her career was perhaps waning, she thrust herself back into the headlines by having what was described as an "affair of the heart" with baseball superstar Alex Rodriquez, about 20 years her junior, which lead to both of their divorces."

The implication that a person would have an affair and divorce in order to relaunch a waning career embodies most of the reasons why I can't think of personal branding as a priority.

Don't get me wrong: I agree that as human beings, we're naturally concerned with the way others see us, particularly in a professional sense, as those perceptions affect our ability to earn an income while doing something we love. But there's a line between self-awareness and commoditizing ourselves in order to achieve "success." I think the difference between the two is probably self-respect.

What is a Brand?

A brand is a concept that's developed to simply and clearly communicate a product's benefits to a target market. Today's generally held wisdom advocates that everyone should be actively working on building their personal brand.

This premise assumes that everyone's competing in a cluttered market where prospects have little time. So we need to be known not by a complex set of attributes — versatility, dedication, the ability to turn jobs around quickly and on budget, knowledge, expertise or talent — but by a unique selling proposition. Some personal branding pundits indicate that we should distill ourselves into a few sentences that clearly identify our point of differentiation and brand values. This is so that should we meet a prospect while networking, we can deliver a killer description of ourselves that resonates with them and causes us to be "top of mind" when they next need a person with our capabilities.

What is Success?

I disagree with this view, because I see the distillation of myself into a few key sentences as a kind of commoditization. While I appreciate that it's good to be clear about your capabilities, skills and experience when you're pitching for work, I see straight-up branding — presenting myself as embodying a few crucial brand values formulated to resonate with a prospect — as a denial of the complexities that peoples' personalities naturally entail. The kinds of complexities that make people, and life, enjoyable. To me, denying or ignoring those complexities is also something of a dishonesty, or at least a disservice, to both myself and my client.

For me, success is doing something enjoyable with people I enjoy being with. I want to know more than their elevator pitch — I want to understand their complexities and paradoxes, and I want them to respect mine. My most successful client relationships have entailed a similar level of honesty on the client's part.

I see success as being appreciated for who I am and what I can do, so I balk at the idea of avoiding saying or doing certain things because they might erode the integrity of my personal brand.

What Does Personal Branding Mean?

We're not all Madonna, and not all of us take personal branding to the point that we're willing to divorce our partners in order to relaunch ourselves into the public eye. That said, it's fair to say personal branding can lead to certain kinds of behavior:

• broadcasting certain news about yourself in order to "generate interest" in your brand, or keep it "top of mind," rather than because you're excited about it and want to share that excitement with others
• having to reconcile with yourself over something you did and enjoyed, or something you want to do, that doesn't fit with your personal brand
• maintaining certain contacts and avoiding others on the basis of whether or not they support or agree with your personal brand
• trying to make your private life entirely coherent with your professional persona
• seeing each day as an opportunity to build your personal brand, your friends as potential brand evangelists, your activities and relationships as tools by which you can either support or erode your brand
• trying to alter your personality or philosophy to make your personal brand more consistent

What's the Alternative?

I'm not sold on the concept of personal branding — I prefer the less catchy idea of self-awareness. Instead of brand values, I think of basic human qualities like honesty and integrity, and being proactive. Instead of planning a personal brand extension, I like to ponder the question, "This is cool, but what will I do next?" and to follow my heart (rather than my brand strategy) in making a choice. I realize that this attitude may be seen as ignorant or homely or naive, but so far, for me, it's created the kind of success I want.