Time to Clean Up Your Act

At least in the northern hemisphere.

Which means … it’s time to take a look at the way you are exposing and expressing yourself to the world.

It’s time to take a look at your your social channels and your plans for using them.

There is no wrong answer

More and more we are seeing an intensive focus on developing and maintaining our personal brand. The fact is this is how people and organizations perceive us. So, it’s worth the time to make sure we are putting our best food forward. This is just one step in the process to make sure you stand out in your career.

This is not a narcissistic view of ourselves or the world. Rather this is becoming the new reality of how businesses, business partners and peers perceive us. So, my suggestion is to embrace it and to take this time of year to evaluate the way you are exposing and expressing yourself.

In the past there was a more focused effort on degrees and things that we did with academic and scholastic endeavors. While academics are still important there is now a heavy emphasis on things that happen on social media channels. So, it’s worth it to take a look at the channels you are using and perhaps should use.

But, where to start?

There is no wrong place to start. You’ll probably have a good feeling for where you want to start first. Whether you have the time and energy to put into that one key place right away is up to you. It might be easier to start with a lesser used social media channel to begin your spring cleaning efforts.

One good place to start is your most commonly used social media tools.

For example, if you spend the majority of your time on LinkedIn, which I highly recommend for people in business. Then it’s worthwhile for you to plan for a larger chunk of time to focus on this aspect of your personal brand.

Make sure you take the time to decide where you want to:

• Do More
• Do Less
• Then to develop a plan.

In addition to LinkedIn are you using Facebook, Twitter, Periscope, Blab, YouTube and other social networking tools? Also, make sure you consider whatever blogging platforms you are using. Do the same analysis for each platform. If they are providing value … consider keeping them. If not, make a decision to pull the plug. If they aren’t providing the value you expect you might want to put them on a plan for 30 days to see if there is something you can do to improve them.

There are a lot of examples out there for optimizing your use of the various social media channels. For LinkedIn I’ve written a 5 part series of blog posts on Mastering your LinkedIn Profile.

Ultimately, if you want to stand out in your career you need to take care of the things that people see when they go looking for you. Even if they aren’t looking directly for you the things they find will define you.

Take this time to do a little bit of spring cleaning.

Just like with your desk, your car, and your house every so often it is worthwhile to take a little bit of time to clean things up, clean things out, and to clean up your act.