I recently spoke to a great advertising and sales executive in NY. This executive had worked for multiple large advertising agencies and several start up organizations. His success was evident based upon his salary and the blue ribbon clients he had helped throughout his 15 years as a marketer.

I asked him what he had been doing in the past 3 months to find a job? He said he had been making multiple connections with recruiters in various cities and making submissions to marketing specific job boards.

I asked him how that was going? He said nothing had come of it. I asked why have you been successful as a marketing and advertising executive in your career? He said “relationships”.

Building relationships is so much more then replying to job boards, it’s connecting with people on an individual basis. This is very similar to what can be seen in the consumer marketplace. The hiring executives are consumer who are looking to “buy” based upon the opinions of other consumers.

LinkedIn is a perfect example of creating the perception of people/companies buying your brand. If you have been successful and respected in your job it’s easy to get someone to “recommend” you on LinkedIn.

Act as you would with your target market, and put yourself in the shoes of your buyers. What are they thinking? What triggers them to buy “you”?

Don’t think it’s cold or impersonal. It’s far from impersonal. In the social media blogosphere there is something called “transparency”, which is exactly what it you think it means. Folks aren’t going to recommend you unless you truly have performed well, and have been a pleasure to work with (if that’s what they said in your recommendation). While blogging you need to be transparent. If you are blogging for a company you need to be open about who you are and how you are connected with an organization. The same goes for selling your personal brand to a potential employer.

Back to the Advertising Executive. I turned the tables on him and asked what are you doing for YOUR brand? How are you selling yourself and separating yourself from the competition?

It’s interesting to see how successful marketers react to downsizing. Executives that have been incredibly successful for their clients and agencies can lose hope during a downturn.

Marketers are deadly and far smarter than the average bear within an organization. Open your books and remember your Marketing 101 classes. Research your targets and engage them where they live: online, in market and at work.

Please let me know your thoughts on how your marketing expertise has helped in your job search. What is YOUR brand?

True story. What do they say, “Truth is stranger than fiction?”  Obviously, a bit of an extreme but it’s what marketers are facing today as they struggle with these social media and nontraditional marketing tools the global consumer is using.  People (and specifically non-techies) have taken control of the online conversation. I am neither the first nor the hundredth person to blog or twitter about these phenomena. It’s an exciting (but scary) time to be a marketer while new technology and mass consumer adoption is occurring we are seemingly stepping into an economic downturn. Cover your ears if you don’t want to hear it but Recession (with capital R) typically is felt by marketers right in their ad budgets so as to keep companies’ “profit generating centers” alive. Entering from stage left - cheaper and potentially more effective social media strategies.

In reference to the title of this blog, virtual worlds are making a comeback in the US and across the globe:

http://digg.com/odd_stuff/Online_divorcee_jailed_after_killing_virtual_hubby_Yahoo

Life has been up and then down in the world of “Early adopters”. I have worked with several clients in the past who have virtual islands they own in a 3-D virtual world called Second Life created by its residents. Since opening to the public in 2003, it has grown explosively and today is inhabited by millions of Residents from around the global medium used for laypeople’s expressions of fantasy, including wished-for spouses, regions of living, etc. This interactive online game is used for information, recruiting and even B2B sales. The recently hired CMO of Second Life has started breathing some new energy into this emerging media:

http://digg.com/tech_news/The_Second_Life_of_Second_Life

As we continue to be bombarded by messages from companies and in turn become numb to their outreach, new challenges emerge. How can we separate ourselves from the fire hose of media? The belief that social media is used only by teenagers or those who can’t hack it in the real world is a fallacy.  Marketers must come to terms with this.  Maybe not to the extent of the online divorcee/virtual murderer, but to the point where marketers recognize that failing to master these powerful tools can be a career killer.  If that doesn’t spook you…..

Happy Halloween, All.

Website status online is largely determined by two major factors: content and links. It is vital to understand how these factors effect online success in order to maximize their strength.

All website owners and organizations aspire to have their site on the first SERP or Search Engine Results Page. In order to achieve this status, an online marketer must pay close attention to both factors mentioned above. When a web searcher types in a query or keyword into the search box, they expect to find websites that match their intended interests. The online marketer’s role is to ensure that websites contain the content that the searcher is expecting in addition to presenting the site as a reliable and authoritative source.

Authority is where the links come into play. In short, the more websites that link into a site, the more reliable it appears. Appearance is everything to a search engine like Google or Yahoo. They take the number of links into consideration when calculating your placement on the results page. Therefore it is clearly a combination of excellent content and strong linkages that make your site “appear” valuable to the search engine, and in turn attract the searcher.