Special guest post by Glenn Raines
Glenn Raines is the “Revealer of Value” at Social Media Moves where he helps companies align their business objectives and brand strategies with social media channels for customer engagement. He will be the featured presenter on Experts Connection on 8/24/11.
A few months back, Google unveiled its top secret social networking effort called The Google + Project. This is significant because Google has essentially created a social networking platform around its powerful search engine. So what makes this important for executives in career transition or managing their career development? Plenty.
It’s About Your Findability
For any executive focused on managing their career, having a LinkedIn profile is a must, hands down. But while most of the focus in recent years has been on LinkedIn, Google has been lurking in the shadows with its own answer to the professional profile – The Google Profile. Now the Google Profile has been around for a few years and I’ve created a bunch for executives to raise their visibility and personal branding. One of the real key benefits to having a Google Profile – along with a LinkedIn Profile – is that it can help boost your findability on the world wide web – beyond the closed garden walls of LinkedIn. For example, when someone “Googles your name” there’s a strong chance you’ll rank high in the Google search results. But what’s really nice is that it allows someone to click on your Google Profile link and read your whole profile without having to log-in as LinkedIn requires.
A Lot More Real Estate for Your Content
Another key benefit of the Google Profile is the amount of content it allows you to create. For example, the LinkedIn Summary Section limits you to 2000 characters (approximately 400 words). To date, I haven’t found the bottom of the content trough with the Google Profile. So why is this a big deal? You can do a lot with formatting content to cover your bio, skills and value you offer to prospective employers. For example, you can format paragraphs, add subheads and bullet copy. You can even add testimonials by importing your recommendations on LinkedIn. What’s more, the Google Profile lets you add weblinks to your content which makes it interactive and engages your reader to explore other places on the web that help tell your story. You can see how I do it on my Google Profile here.
Images and Links to Reflect Your Professional Brand
At the very top of the Google Profile is the Image Scrapbook. This is an option you should add to your Google Profile. Why? It’s one more opportunity to convey your professional focus. Most people will feature pictures of their pet, vacation, hobbies, etc. Nothing wrong with that. If fact it’s a good thing to show “life and work balance.” But you can also use this image area to feature the logos of companies where you’ve worked, or products you helped design – maybe even patented. You can even use the image gallery to communicate words to reflect your best attributes: Focused. Dedicated. Innovator.
You can also add links on the right hand side of the Google Profile to your other places on the web. For example, you can add a link to your LinkedIn Profile, blog, website or other places on the web that align with your professional personal brand, expertise and interests. Again, the Google Profile does not limit you to the amount of links you add. My advice is to make sure every link to a website or other place on the web is aligned with your personal career goals and objectives.
Creating Google+ Circles to Target Your Job Opportunities
Now that the Google Profile has been integrated into the Google+ social network, you can create specific “circles” to segment and manage the people you want to follow and communicate to within the Google+ community. So why is this a big deal? Imagine taking your target company list – the companies where you want to work – and finding other people with Google Profiles who work for your target companies. You can start following those people on Google+ (they don’t need to give you permission). For example, you can create a Boeing Circle, Microsoft Circle, etc. Segmenting your Google+ network in this way lets you share relevant content (e.g., Google+ posts) to specific groups to convey your focus, subject matter expertise, experience, etc. You can also engage these individuals with your target companies by adding a comment to their posts. This can lead to a dialogue with them to earn their trust – even a referral to a key hiring executive at that target company.
Google’s Future and What it Means to You
Google has a lot of firepower when it comes to search and how it plans to grow Google+ to become a formidable player in professional social networking. No doubt, Google will leverage many of its existing products to help executives use the Google+ and Google Profile platforms to promote their value and hone their career paths. Already, one can share their content focus (Google Reader) to let others know their area of expertise. In the coming months, Google will launch Google+ Business Profiles. Again, this will give you the opportunity to engage with your target companies that have corporate Google Profiles. And while Google+ is in its infancy, creating a Google Profile is a first great step to establish a baseline so others will find you via Google search. From there, it’s up to you to make sure your Google Profile sings your praises in just the right way to achieve your professional career goals.
