Tag Archive for 'ictQATAR'

7 Power Tips for Shameless Self Promotion on LinkedIn

Published by Brian Wesolowski on May 26, 2010 in social media. 2 Comments Tags: , , .

LinkedIn is booming in popularity and is making headlines with its expanded integration with Twitter. ictQATAR’s Marketing Manager Julia Astashkina shares her insights on how you can take advantage of LinkedIn to market yourself to find a new job or make valuable business connections.

Reid Hoffman, the founding CEO of LinkedIn believes in “time wasters and time savers”, at least this is what he told me in his Palo Alto office almost 7 years ago when his business networking site was getting off the ground and had less than a million users. It’s the idea of creating a time saver that inspired Reid to create a technology platform to help facilitate business networking in a targeted way; it still has no rivals when it comes to business networking and professional self-branding.

So how do you use LinkedIn effectively to help your career and business in ways you cannot really do on Facebook and Twitter? As with all of the social media tools, the more activity and interaction, the better the results. Let’s look at 7 power tips that will to get you started.

  1. Create a rock star profile. Your profile should reinforce your personal brand and highlight your uniqueness. Once you’ve signed up, registered your account, make sure that your profile is complete and includes carefully crafted keywords that could also include relevant URLs as anchors. This strategy will help with search engine optimization and getting you where you want to be – on top of the searches.
  2. Use high impact headlines. This is another way to optimize your job titles, instead of typing your job title right below your name, try a more descriptive approach emphasizing the scope of what you do.  For example, instead of saying, “Recruitment and HR”, use a more elaborate “Executive and Career Coaching, Talent Selection and Team Development.”
  3. A picture is worth a thousand words. Multiply that by 65 million people and you will have an answer why you should put a face to your name. Besides, many people remember faces better than names and you will have more chances to connect to people who you already know. You should opt for professional, but friendly head shots.  No passport photos please. They tend to be a little too serious.
  4. Embrace videos through SlideShare application. Did you know that information presented both visually and orally is retained up to 60% more than that presented only verbally? Videos are definitely on top of the list when it comes to differentiating your personal brand from the crowd. SlideShare application is an easy way to share videos of a talk, presentation or a demo.
  5. Accelerate your connections. The objective is to increase your circle of influence and get access to as many people as you can – if you only have 50 connections, your search results will yield a fraction of what could have been. But don’t increase your footprint by connecting with anyone at any time for any reason, there are better ways other than being an open networker to build your strong position while maintaining your personal touch.
  6. Position yourself as a thought leader. The “Answers” is a tool that will help you stay engaged with your network and also build a reputation of an expert in your field. This section is a great platform for ideas and thoughts to be shared, and with the wide-ranging interest areas you can build a stronger profile in the search engines, by allowing for more keyword references.
  7. Make use of related groups or create one. Twitter is still on top of the list for staying informed in key business areas, but LinkedIn Groups can help position you as a mover and shaker in your area of expertise. There are already a number of interesting groups in Qatar ranging from the 4,000 members of the Qatar Business Network to some with anemic 1 member count. Joining groups will add value to your profile and help others find you.

With LinkedIn forming strategic partnerships with players like with Palm, Twitter, Microsoft, and RIM, there are many more strategies and tools to explore – the world is getting a lot smaller and your journey to the next job or business partnership is made easier. Are you LinkedIn yet?

-Julia Astashkina, ictQATAR Marketing Manager

Are you thinking critically?

Published by Brian Wesolowski on February 11, 2010 in Digital Content and User Experience. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , , , .

If you’re not, you should be. And you should be sure to teach your kids how to do it too. This week I attended a forum hosted by my employer, ictQATAR, on digital communications literacy that addressed the importance of building literacy in the new, pervasive forms of communications – online, video, audio, etc. It takes literacy away from just text and into the digital realm where most communications takes place today. And more importantly, the forum addressed the need to move from general media consumers, to media understanding – and to do that, we must think critically.

I had the chance to hear from and speak to numerous international digital literacy experts at the forum. All of them of course agree that we need to teach digital media literacy so that people can actively engage in the emerging digital age.

One of the people I most enjoyed chatting with was Tessa Jolls (video interview coming soon on ictQATAR’s YouTube page!), President of the Center for Media Literacy in the US. She made teaching critical thinking logical. Her Center focuses on helping teachers and parents teach children critical thinking skills needed to be digitally literate in a structured way. Their goal is to make sure people can access, analyze, create and participate with media content – clearly it’s not just about consumption!

Something she shared that seems so simple, but is really quite sophisticated, is five key questions you should ask yourself about the digital media you interact with (developed by the Center for Media Literacy):

1. Who created this message?

2. What creative techniques are used to attract my attention?

3. How might different people understand this message differently?

4. What values, lifestyles and points of view are represented in, or omitted from, this message?

5. Why is this message being sent?

These questions are valuable for all of us – not just children. In a world where we are constantly bombarded by digital messages, we should take a step back and think critically – it will go a long way towards make us more than digital media consumers, but digitally literate media consumers!