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Tuesday, March 07, 2006

Five Tools for Online Personal Branding

Much has been said about branding yourself in today's online world. With many candidates now being 'googled' before an interview it's as important than ever to maintain an personal online brand. So here are 5 online tools (other than a blog or a personal website) that you can use to increase exposure to your profile and skills.

1. ZoomInfo - Create a profile for yourself and join a database over 27 million business professionals. Many recruiters use this large database to source candidates so get yourself listed.

2. PR Web - Offers free online press release distribution services. They are the largest Newswire catering to small and medium sized companies and organizations and one of the largest online press release newswires. Individuals can post a press release as long as its newsworthy.

3. PageBites.com - in addition being able to search jobs from around the web PageBites offers job seekers the chance to post their Bio online. These bios are searchable for free by anyone so its a great tool to promote yourself, your blog or your personal website.

4. LinkedIn - If you haven't heard about LinkedIn by now then you are missing the boat on promoting yourself. LinkedIn is a social network site that allows you post your profile and network with other individuals. When your network connections invite their connections, your Network starts to grow. Its a great site to uncover job leads and be found!

5. Jigsaw - similar to ZoomInfo, Jigsaw is a user based site where actual users upload and share information about their professional contacts. In fact you may be listed in there and not even know it. Find out if you are in Jigsaw...

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Check out www.fastpitchnetworking.com

In terms of personal branding... They offer you the ability to network over city-centril webcast events, AND you can have your Fast Pitch! Profile posted on Google (called Google Your Pitch!).

Anonymous said...

Another great tool to check out is qAlias - they optimize your name as an Adword, and give you a professional, adfree showcase where people can find what you want them to, about you, online - when they search your name.

It is amazing what less than $10 a month can do when you begin to use a profile on qAlias to interlink all the things you are involved in.

www.qaliassignup.com

Or Google me - Andy Greider - for a sample.

Sam @ ZoomInfo said...

I work at ZoomInfo and we recently introduced a new product in beta. It's called Zipi, the plugin for Microsoft Outlook.

Zipi allows you to find contact information on over 15 million professionals: name, company address, company URL, phone and email. This may be a stretch, but I could see job seekers using this tool to help map out organizations in preparation for their interview.

If you want to learn more about Zipi, here is the URL (submitted for your consideration): http://www.zoominfo.com/zipi