Self Marketing
Let me just say, up front, that I’m not a marketing guy. I don’t work in marketing, and I don’t particularly like the way many places go about marketing.
That being said, I know quite a few people who do work in marketing, and I’m always interested in how people in the legal industry market themselves, so I do occasionally come upon some legal marketing stuff online and take a look. Today was one of those times. A post by Steve Matthews over at Stem’s Law Firm Web Strategy.
Now Steve was responding to Matt Homann’s 10 New Rules for Legal Marketing
and one of Matt’s “rules” caught my eye, not so much because of the law firm marketing aspect, but because it applies to many other areas, including marketing your own career.
9. Your future clients have been living their entire lives online and will expect the same from you. If you’re invisible on the web, you won’t exist to them.
This idea struck me, as i said, because it applies to some areas of our careers now, and will continue to become more and more true in the future. As more and more hiring managers and HR people are comfortable living their lives online, they’ll be looking for information about you online and will be making assumptions about you based on what they find, or don’t find as may be the case. If you work in a cutting edge field, or especially if you want to work in PR, communications, marketing, etc., you’d better be using the available resources to market yourself, not only to the HR people who may Google you after getting your resume, but also as a way to connect to the people who know those HR people!
Now, outside of Silicon Valley, I have my doubts that the majority of hiring decisions include much searching online, but a significant amount of them do, and that number is only going to go up as the generation that has always used Facebook, Twitter, etc. grows into the business world and simply expects to be able to find out what they want to know about you online.
That also points out how important it is to remember that the Web is a public medium, and that you need to present yourself in the best way possible. In short, you need to use the tools we have that enable us to communicate to the world, to sell yourself. It’s true for social networking, dating sites, blogging, and it’s true for professional networking as well.
