Personal branding with a purpose

In the digital age, personal branding is an absolute must. In fact, while you may not realize it, you already have a brand. How you present yourself face-to-face, on social media and Google are all reflective of the brand you’re building. Whether you’re seeking a new job, wanting to move up in your organization, thinking about a career change, launching a new business or looking to attract new clients, a strong consistent personal brand is key to creating new opportunities for your career or business.

What do people think when they hear your name? What do they say about you when you’re not in the room? That’s all personal brand. The better question is: do you leave your personal brand up to chance or do you take charge of it?

A few weeks ago, I gave a presentation to Lancaster Young Professionals at The Candy Factory on personal branding, a topic I love talking about. I touched on the importance of creating a personal brand, shared examples of young professionals who have built their own personal brands and provided a few actionable ways to grow and maintain your personal brand.

For the full slide deck, check out "Personal branding with a purpose" on SlideShare.

Featured image by Ernesto Artillo.

See the exciting project I'm working on

Since many of you don't live in Lancaster, you probably missed it. Local reporter Meredith Jorgensen interviewed me on WGAL News 8! Watch the full video here. We discussed the exciting project I've been spending so much time working on. Lancaster Young Professionals is hosting its first-ever Red Rose Gala on October 28. It's kind of a big deal. You can read more about it here or buy your tickets now.

We're also looking for two young professionals to receive our first award, the Lancaster Young Influencer Award. Community service is such a big part of our organization. So, we decided to create an award honoring two great young people in Lancaster who dedicate their time giving back to the community. If you or someone you know qualifies for the award, please nominate them. The nomination deadline is September 5.

Behind the square boxes of perfection

I have 513 friends. I regularly share personal moments and epistolary updates with all of them. But how well do they know me? Just because we are Facebook friends, does that mean we really know each other? Are they even listening?

We are all guilty of social media manipulation. Snap a photo on a bright, sunny day, at a fun, interesting event. Throw in an exciting, exaggerated caption. Maybe add a filter and post it on Instagram and Facebook. It’s a square box of perfection. Right?

On the flip side, during a particular low moment, we tap open Facebook or Instagram and scroll through our friends’ feeds. Parties on the opposite coast. Adorable babies hamming it up. Over-the-top vacation get aways. And those damn, cute couples devouring up your feed.

We use social media to share the “best” version of ourselves. But a perfected perception doesn’t always equal reality. What you don’t see are the tears we shed. The bad decisions we make. The unbelievable mess in our living room. Real life isn’t always perfect square photos. It’s lived and messy. It’s beautifully chaotic.

Here’s a little peek into the reality behind my square paragons:

Looks like I'm just taking in the intricate ceiling of 30th Street Station after a great night in Philadelphia, right? Well, not quite. Mike and I spent a beautiful day in Philadelphia with our friends. As the night came to a close, we rushed to catch our train back to Lancaster. And we missed it by five minutes. Just five minutes. I spent the minutes after calming down Mike, and figuring out an alternate plan. My little brother came to our rescue, and we saved us. But those frazzled moments in between were less than perfect.

My family and I had a fun night out celebrating my brother Dan's 21st birthday, but getting there was a bit chaotic. As the host, my tiny apartment served as the hub for evening. Packing nine people in my living space meant cleaning and baking and rearranging and preparing. I was so distracted that whole day, I nearly forgot about an important work task.

Knubbs is unbelievably cute. There is no denying that. But the story behind the photo is a little less cute. My boyfriend works every weekend, and when his grandfather goes away, Knubbs is all alone. So, the two of us hung out one night. Since my boyfriend and Knubbs usually sleep together in his bed, I felt bad and tried to do the same. He refused to sit still ALL night. After enduring his fidget fit, I finally had enough and in his crate he went. Guess how much I slept that night?

Don’t let social media veil your perception of reality. No one is perfect. We are human. And being human means accepting the roller coaster of emotions - both the sunshine and the storm clouds.

Should you be Facebook friends with your clients?

While it may seem silly to some, I briefly struggled with deciding to become Facebook friends with one of my clients. What if I said something wrong? What if a friend posted an unflattering photo of me? How comfortable would I be if he saw all the photos I share of my family members?

For years, my generation, the Millennials, was told to be cautious of oversharing on the internet. We've grown up in a world where every accident and every rash tweet is indexed and archived away. Who could blame me for being wary?

Whether you think you should become Facebook friends with your clients or not, I'm very happy with my decision. During my client's quarterly trips to the states, we crammed in as many stories about jazz, travel and, of course, craft beer as we could. In between, we'd get to know each other better over a course of Facebook comments, likes and messages. He'd share his magnificent travel photos with family, and I'd share some of my writing. I remember he sent a personal message on Facebook about how much he enjoyed reading my personal blog. He told me he spent hours reading it. Hours. I was taken aback. He was a busy guy. Always on the road, traveling somewhere new. I was touched he would take hours out of his day to read something I wrote.

His words stay with me, particularly after I learned of his recent passing. He made me realize all your passions - be it photography, travel, writing, yoga, cycling, horseback riding, technology. These passions are your +1. They give you your creative edge. These things you love so much make you better - in your career and as an individual.

How can you separate your personal life from your professional life when they are intertwined? You shouldn't shut off who you are when you go into work or when you leave. Unless, maybe, your name is Norman Bates. Why strip away your personality, when it is the very thing that makes you interesting and dynamic?

As the Millennials advance in their careers and move into positions of power, I imagine the attitude of what "professionalism" means will change. Shouldn't you present yourself, both online and in real life, as the most honest, true version of yourself? If you do this, becoming Facebook friends with a client wouldn't be nearly as big of a deal.

What do you think? Are you friends with clients or colleagues on Facebook? What about Twitter?

The echo chamber: the dark-side of the internet

Do you ever consider where you get your news? For me, I first scan Twitter, looking to see what stories people are linking to. Then I hit up my inbox for my daily dose of theSkimm and Quartz. Next up, I read New York Times, The Atlantic, a little Hacker News, then maybe the Wall Street Journal and, if I have time, I sneak a peek at the Washington Post. I can't forget the many marketing news sites I follow or all the client-related news I consume. Phew. That's a lot of news to pour through every day - all fairly varied opinions, but always some repetition.

What about you? Do you find the same news stories and ideas are covered to death? Maybe you've grown accustomed to the echo chamber. Or maybe you actually like it that way, because it continually confirms your own beliefs. And, hey, who wants to mess with the status quo, anyway?

The idea of the echo chamber, or the dark-side of the internet, is not a new one. Farhad Manjoo, a technology columnist for the Wall Street Journal, argues in his book True Enough that digital technology is dividing society into distinct tribes that read, watch and listen to news that confirms their own beliefs. Eli Pariser, former executive director of MoveOn.org and author of the The Filter Bubble, asserts that personalized algorithms like Facebook's News Feed hurdle us face first into a narrowing compass of ideas and news. Cass Sunstein, author of Republic.com, questions if we're just echoing our friends' ideas about the world, are we doomed to become more polarized as a society?

Yikes! So, how do we escape the echo chamber? Or work around it? It all comes down to what you do with the news you receive and how you interpret it. You might be exposed to certain range of stories, but you still decide on how to process the news. Plus, you have a choice to seek other resources and shake things up a bit.

Pierre Omidyar, founder of eBay and philanthropist, recently spoke on NPR about his $250 million investment in a news operation. Omidyar is building a general-interest news site from the ground up. He wants to offer a passionate voice to the often overlooked, investigative stories and bring the news to a broader audience.

“Audiences today really want to know who is reporting the news to them. You know, trust in institutions is going down, and audiences really, they want to know the people behind the story. They want to know how it’s being reported to them. And so there’s much more appetite for connecting with people who have expertise, a real passion around the topics they cover, a real voice. They put themselves in the story, because of that expertise. They’re not afraid to share their opinion. And audiences actually want to connect to personalities.”

What really caught my attention was his method for delivering the news. He'd like to customize the news experience much like Netflix does for movies. By creating an algorithm to serve up a variety news stories, he seeks to introduce points of view you might not naturally seek mixed with points of views more aligned with your own. The idea is to get your gears turning. Maybe you leave a comment, or maybe you don't. But Omidyar is banking on you slowly becoming more engaged with many different viewpoints.

With this global communication medium becoming more intrinsic in our lives, there is a lot of opportunity to connect with people around the world. We're peeking through the window into other cultures and learning so much. I'll be interested to see the impact Omidyar's idea has on the echo chamber theory and how it influences the way we get our news in the future.

With the trust in institutions going down, how important is it for individuals from an institution to put themselves into stories? What are your thoughts on the idea of the echo chamber? What does your daily news menu look like?

Fake it till you make it

Ever feel like you don't own your success? Or you don't have the skills to be doing what you're doing? It's an actual thing. Psychologists call it the "impostor syndrome." The fear of being perceived as a fake holds you back from pushing for bigger and more challenging opportunities. And the funny part is, most people who feel this way are actually incredibly capable.

From my experience, this rings true more for women than men. I've seen it in action. Even Sheryl Sandberg wrote about in her book Lean In.

The resolution? Fake it till you make it. Hold on. Don't get carried away with your disdain for the phrase. I'm not encouraging you to be deceitful or intentionally harm others. Sometimes you just need an extra boost of courage. So, you fake confidence. Or try to sell an idea that was thrown together at the last minute. It helps you feel more credible when you're out of your comfort zone. It's more of a fake it till you believe it. You won't always know how to do everything right off the bat. Just know you can figure it out along the way.

You're better than you think! How do you learn not to listen to that voice and achieve great things?

A career reflection: Two years at HMA

Change tends to sneak up on you. You never truly see it as it's happening, because change occurs in small instances every day. I imagine it's how parents feel as they watch their children transform. You move from day-to-day, reaching firsts, battling over messy rooms and worrying. Then, poof, they're graduating, moving out and transforming into an adult.

It's the same with any other kind of change. You rarely notice it until it becomes impossible to ignore. It took my boss, Drew, explaining one of my better qualities for me to realize it - my ability to work through a challenge, see the big picture and find a solution. Huh. I guess I do manage to do that, don't I? This conversation brought about a lot of career reflection, particularly the past two years at HMA.

It also brought about many different versions of this post. For me, writing is what helps me process my thoughts and reinforce lessons learned. I don't really do it enough, if you ask me, especially when it comes to my job. I chug along day after day, working to find solution after solution, rarely stopping to think on the significance of my personal accomplishments (Don't lie. I know you do it too.) and how much I continue to change.

Technically, I started my career at HMA in 2011 as a freelance writer. After interviewing for the copywriter and SEO/copywriter position, I was thrust into writing copy for an interactive brochure about a client's highly technical North American arm. Little did I know my baptism-by-fire first experience with HMA set up how the next two years would flow.

Back then, we were an agency of nine. Now, we are 20 strong with additional technical experts all around the world. In that time, I've created processes, rewritten processes, failed and succeeded at kickstarting best practices for our SEO and PPC services, as well as content development and social media, or as we like to call it, real-time media.

I've probably worn nearly every hat possible, but that is, after all, the HMA way. Then, in between, there were a lot of little triumphs, big victories, early mornings, late nights, hiccups and throw ups. I get a little overwhelmed just thinking about how much I've done in the past two years. It's a lot more than I imagined I'd accomplish at 26. After I pause and catch my breath, I get a little excited imagining all the great things in store for myself.. It's kind of fun to let your brain wander off and think about these things.

When was the last time you stopped to reflect on your accomplishments in your career? How do you take what is unique about you and make it useful?

Love at first one-page site

Is love at first sight possible? The skeptic in me says it's probably not. But what about love at first site? My SEO-driven mind tells me no, but it seems my heart has fallen hard for one-page websites. Yes, I realize it's an ongoing design fad. But there are some really well-done scrollable one-page websites telling great stories. And I do love a good story.

Beauty of it all

The fun part is, with a beautiful design, many of these sites encourage exploration, making the page more engaging while teaching you something new at the same time. It sparks interest without giving away too much information that might confuse or intimidate the reader. You experience emotion, thrills, surprises - the same things resulting from a well-written novel.

Technicalities of one-page websites

While one-page websites are great promotional vehicles, it's probably not your best option if your main objective is SEO. Websites with multiple pages afford more opportunities to rank for different keywords as many pages are indexed rather than just one. It's also important to keep in mind a pretty site doesn't always mean visitors will convert. Consider your objectives, plan your site accordingly and test, test, test!

Now that I've gotten all of that out of the way, here are some of my favorite one-page websites:

Wedding invitation folly

I'm a far cry from a romantic, but, I must say, engaged couples are telling incredible stories by way of a one-page website. The linear story of Jess and Russ sets the bar high. Their website encourages you to learn more about a  couple you've never even met with interesting artwork and a parallax scrolling effect. I was on the edge of my seat waiting to see where the story took the three of us next. The best part is the art found on the site is designed with love by their friends.

Educational tale of fracking

Living in Pennsylvania, it's hard to escape all the discussion about the fracking in northern counties. When the topic comes up, I'm surprised to find how little people actually know about what is happening in their own state. You almost forget you're learning about the perils of hydraulic fracturing, when scrolling through this beautifully designed one-page website. It visually explains the basics of fracking, including the resources used and byproducts created by the controversial process. It certainly makes me contemplate all the angles of fracking.

Vehicular adventures around the world

While contemplating how an international company could tell a story about its product, I stumbled on this site for Cadillac ATS. By using beautiful imagery from four different locations, this landing page functions as a discovery portal and is a bit different compared to most other one-page websites. You can travel to each one of the interesting locations by clicking and then scrolling. Offering up videos and engaging statistics about the car's performance, the website tells of a worldwide trek made much more enjoyable in a Cadillac ATS.

A statistical approach

WordPress.com sent out personalized emails to blog owners detailing how their blogs performed in 2012. I'm sure you've guessed by now that it was all encapsulated in a one-page website. Each post on my blog is represented by a rocket powered by HTML5 and later made available as a jQuery plugin on GitHub. Pretty cool, right? MailChimp did something very similar to share its 2012 annual report.

Are you new to one-page websites or has your one-page love blossomed into a full-on romance too? Maybe you've even designed your own? I'd love to hear what you think!

IFTTT: a website for the forgetful

Everything I needed to relax and forget about all of my stress was packed into a single bag. This meant sun, sand and a self-imposed limit on technology was on the horizon. Coincidentally, my stress-free family vacation fell on the first week of the Olympics. I wasn't too keen on spending my days and evenings parked in front of the TV when there was a whole beach to enjoy and cooler full of Victory Golden Monkey to drink. But how could I miss the Olympics? Then I stumbled on a genius solution. If this then that or IFTTT. It's sort of like baking but for the internet. You can create a variety of IFTTT recipes to make internet life easier. The recipes are a combination of triggers and actions based on various channels you can activate and link to your account. I created a recipe that allowed ESPN (the channel) to push me a text message (the action) every time the U.S. won a gold medal during the London 2012 Games (the trigger). It was wonderful, and I felt so on top of everything. The only problem was holding back the news until my dad caught up and watched the games later that night.

Here are few other useful IFTTT recipe examples I've managed to create:

I'm so busy sometimes the first of the month can zoom past me unnoticed. Then I feel like a huge jerk for forgetting to pay my rent. Now IFTTT has me covered.

I hate how sterile most blog post tweets often sound. But I figured I'd give this recipe a shot. As important as it is, I tend to forget to share my personal blog posts out on social media. Hm. I'm beginning to sense a theme here. I wonder what Forgetful Jones would think of IFTTT?

When it comes to favorite-ing tweets, I can get a little carried away. I mark tweets I want to come back to or download whatever awesome presentation people link to later. This recipe is great in that it keeps all my favorite-ed tweets in a single Evernote note. I can go back to them as often as I need to without digging through Twitter.

I'm in the process of dreaming up a recipe to remind myself to check fantasy football line-ups this season. Any ideas? What other recipes have you created? Generate your own recipes and share them with me!

The brevity of Twitter

Less is more. Make every word count. Feverishly hammered into my brain while in college, these mantras are still encoded in my behavior as a writer. Maybe all the hammering is why I find Hemingway's writing style so appealing. His penchant for brevity, omitting extraneous information to strengthen the story, is something I lust for. I am constantly pushing myself both personally and professionally (death to verbose emails) to keep my writing to the point. This hammering is probably also why Twitter has become one of my favorite social networks. The best stories are always told simply and clearly. Twitter is no different. It forces you to make the 140 characters count. Truthfully, 85 to 100 characters usually do the trick and are much more retweet friendly, but it is downright frustrating to do sometimes. Here are a few tips to keep from sounding social media hack:

• Limit the use of abbreviations. It's almost as disheartening as reading texts like "where r u?" or "LOL." (I have a personal aversion to LOL.) I know we live in the world of shorthand, but sometimes it just sounds bad.
• Use bit.ly links, or a similar shortened link service, to track analytics for your tweets. This allows you to see how engaged your followers are and discern your most popular content.
• Think before you tweet. Given the immediacy of the social network, it's easy to quickly type out a tweet and be done. Think of your readers and audience for a second. Would they care or even be interested?
• Lead with the good stuff. The journalistic inverted pyramid rings true even when it comes to social media. Start off with the most important pieces of information. Then focus on making them short, clever and compelling.
• When mentioning people, use a conversational tone. Nobody wants to talk some business drone. Unless maybe you're a bot.
• Sometimes your tweets warrant hashtags. They add context and often clarify what you mean. Hashtags are often created around events and are searched or followed by others.