About 90% of my work day is consumed by writing — one of my favorite things to do. Along with creating my executive clients’ personal brand communications and career marketing documents, I’m busy maintaining two blogs, contributing content to a number of blogs and websites (including here at Brand-yourself), and keeping up with my own business and career marketing materials.

In my spare time, one of my passions is working on NY Times Sunday crossword puzzles.

All of this is driven by my love of words. I’m always looking for resources that will help me find the right words and improve my writing.  If these resources make word-searching and learning fun, so much the better!

I readily admit that, although grammatical errors can drive me up the wall, I’m certainly no expert. I’m sure my blog posts contain mistakes that have my readers tsking.  That being said, I always try to make my writing as professional as possible.  The bottom line is, the way you write says a lot about you and your personal brand.

Here are two websites I’ve turned to recently to sharpen my writing:

Grammar Girl’s Quick and Dirty Tips

Mignon Fogarty (@GrammarGirl on Twitter) offers daily grammar tips, to which you can subscribe. Some topics she’s covered that plague me:

Ending a Sentence With a Preposition

Who Versus Whom

Lay Versus Lie

#8 in her Top Ten Grammar Myths, honoring National Grammar Day (March 4), is:

“Irregardless” is not a word. Wrong! “Irregardless” is a bad word and a word you shouldn’t use, but it is a word. “Floogetyflop” isn’t a word—I just made it up and you have no idea what it means.  “Irregardless,” on the other hand, is in almost every dictionary labeled as nonstandard. You shouldn’t use it if you want to be taken seriously, but it has gained wide enough use to qualify as a word.

Wordnik

According to their site, Wordnik (@wordnik on Twitter) is billions of words, 423 million example sentences, 4.7 million unique words, and over 185,000 comments, 95,000 tags, 74,000 pronunciations, 24,518 favorites and 728,464 words in 23,583 lists created by 39,849 Wordniks.

In a NY Times Sunday Magazine “On Language” article in December, Erin McKean, chief executive and founder of Wordnik, explained what the online dictionary is trying to accomplish:

“We’re using text-mining techniques and the unlimited space of the Internet to show as many real examples of word use as we can, as fast as we can.

A word is so much more than its meaning: it’s also who uses it, when it was used, what words appear alongside it and what kinds of texts it appears in.”

Wordnik includes definitions, examples, pronounciations, etymologies, and statistics.

The Word of the Day on March 10 was “shuckish”. Think you know what it means? Here’s the definition.

Related post:

65 Power Personal Branding Verbs to Nail Your Executive Value Proposition

An Executive Personal Branding, Online Identity and Job Search Strategist, Meg is a 20-year careers industry professional and one of only a handful of people worldwide to hold the Reach Certified Personal Branding Strategist and Master Resume Writer credentials, both gold standards.

“I love my work collaborating with savvy senior executives and entrepreneurs who know where they’re going, but need help differentiating their unique promise of value in the new world of work and executive job search, and positioning themselves to work their passion. My clients are typically c-suite, senior-level executives and rising stars.”

Find out more about Meg at Executive Career Brand, and by viewing her LinkedIn profile and following her on Twitter.

Support me by sharing this post:

As the green economy grows and evolves, so will the green job market. Green careers are hot these days, as companies, organizations and all of us scramble to “go green”.

You may be thinking a green job is in your future. But do you have what it takes to compete for these sought-after jobs?

Before you dive into a career transition, scope out the lay of the land and get all your ducks in a row.

A great starting point is Job-Hunt.org. Rated “Top” or “Best” site for job hunting and careers by US News & World Report, Forbes, and PC Magazine, Job-Hunt is one of my favorite resources for all things job search, for any industry and any professional level.

Here are a few Job-Hunt green resources and other get-started-now suggestions:

1. Identify needs and opportunities.

Do a Google search for company names, product names and relevant keywords to find resources, relevant blogs, articles and white papers. Set up Google Alerts for relevant keywords. For some helpful tips, see my post, Use Google Alerts to Amplify Your Executive Brand Visibility and Job Search.

2. Determine which positions to target.

Job descriptions often provide a wealth of information about the industry, skills/qualifications, companies and their culture, and challenges they face.

Along with helping you decide what green jobs may be a good fit for you, job descriptions will help you determine whether your existing skill set is up to snuff and transferrable. You may need to sharpen your value proposition by learning relevant new skills.

For job descriptions, check out:

-LinkUp, a job aggregator that also includes employer websites

-Job-Hunt’s list of Green Job Boards

3. Research companies you want to target and compile a grand list of at least 20 to work on penetrating.

Your research helps you with market intelligence and due diligence, and prepares you to intelligently communicate with decision makers at each company. See Job-Hunt’s list of 50+ Green Industry Employers.

Visit each company’s website to find a wealth of information, such as Boards of Directors, C-suite company leadership, and news and press releases. Arm yourself with plenty of information to excel at interviews.

Research and make a list of key decision makers at your companies of interest. You’ll then work on positioning yourself in front of them.

4. Learn the lingo.

See Job-Hunt’s Green Industry Glossary and Guide to Green Terminology.

Leverage your newly-gained skills and knowledge to market your credibility and viability online. Blog and tweet about relevant topics so you’ll be found by hiring professionals who search online to source candidates.

5. Expand your network.

Do keyword and people searches at LinkedIn, Twitter, and other social networks to identify thought leaders and subject matter experts who are active there. Find out what they’re talking about and involved with, and which resources they rely on.

Look for your target list of key decision makers at your companies of interest and see what they’re up to on these sites. Look at their profiles to see which LinkedIn Groups they belong to. Join them and begin contributing. Follow them on Twitter and re-tweet them.

See Job-Hunt’s list of over 100 Green Industry Professional Associations and Societies, broken down by categories such as Biofuels, Building & Construction, Engineers & Engineering, Health & Medicine, Recycling, Solar Energy, and Wind Power.

How to use this extensive list of professional organizations:

Connect with and help people in the know in this thriving industry. Get a feel for whether you may be a good fit, too. Identify key decision makers whose radar you want to get on.

Check out the membership directories to source key decision makers and potential employers.

When you join a professional association, be sure to add it to your online career marketing communications (Brand-Yourself page, VisualCV, LinkedIn profile, web portfolio, etc.). Recruiters and hiring decision makers searching those keywords when vetting candidates will likely be led to your online materials.

Related posts:

Free Green Careers & Personal Branding Advice Guide

2010 Top 10 Executive Personal Branding and Job Search Trends

An Executive Personal Branding, Online Identity and Job Search Strategist, Meg is a 20-year careers industry professional and one of only a handful of people worldwide to hold the Reach Certified Personal Branding Strategist and Master Resume Writer credentials, both gold standards.

“I love my work collaborating with savvy senior executives and entrepreneurs who know where they’re going, but need help differentiating their unique promise of value in the new world of work and executive job search, and positioning themselves to work their passion. My clients are typically c-suite, senior-level executives and rising stars.”

Find out more about Meg at Executive Career Brand, and by viewing her LinkedIn profile and following her on Twitter.

Support me by sharing this post:

If you’re a busy professional like I am, you do a lot of emailing. In job search, you’re probably emailing even more than usual.  This increased traffic of professional correspondence begs the question:

How can I best sign my email messages?

If you’ve just been signing your name, you’re missing a golden opportunity to reinforce your executive personal brand and further market your unique promise of value.

Take the time to put together an email signature that will leave a lasting impression and also lead people to all the on-brand information they need to know (and you want them to know) about you.

It’s fairly easy to configure your email account with an automatic signature for outgoing messages. Once you’ve created one, you can easily insert, adjust, or remove your signature depending upon the recipient.

When creating your signature, assume that the email recipient will know nothing about you, but will want to know about you. Keep it brand-evident and on-point – don’t bog them down with clutter and an overly long laundry list.

Definitely do the following to brand your email signature:

Use your full name, not a nickname. Even if you know the recipient well, your email may be forwarded to someone else who will have no idea who “Bobby” is.

Include your current title and employer. If you’re not employed, include your professional title, such as “Global Business Operations Leader” or “Senior Turnaround Management Executive”.

Provide the best phone number to reach you at any time. Don’t confuse with several numbers. Your cell phone is probably the best bet (you won’t need to worry about having someone at work, or or anyone besides yourself, intercept the call).

Send a clear value message with an abbreviated version (1-2 lines) of your personal brand positioning statement. Haven’t worked on your brand statement? Then invest some thought in a short brand tagline that showcases your strengths while differentiating the value you offer over your competition in the job market. Make your tagline, and therefore yourself, memorable.

Use your personal email address.  No reason to take the risk of job-search-related emails popping up in your inbox while your current boss is sitting at your desk talking to you.

Include a link to your personal blog or website “About” page, if you have one (if not, sign up now!). This is the portal to all of your personal branding efforts!

Include your LinkedIn profile badge (instructions here) or URL, or a link to your Google Profile. Either of these can stand in if you don’t have a website.

Include your VisualCV badge or URL.

Include the phrase “Follow me on Twitter” with a link, if you’re active there.  You should be!

You may also want to include these in your email signature, especially if you don’t have some of the above essentials:

Relevant certifications and credentials

A recent noteworthy publication of yours (book, e-book, white paper, etc.)

A link to a professional video of you

Some caveats:

It’s best to use plain text without special characters, to be sure everything will appear at the receiving end just as you sent it. Only use what’s on your keyboard, such as pipes ( | ) or colons ( :: ), to separate the text, and tildes ( ~ ), hyphens ( – ), or asterisks ( * ) for bullets.

Write out URLs instead of using hyperlinks. They may not show up in your recipients’ email message.

Skip your home mailing address. You don’t want security-sensitive information floating around out there.

Avoid including a legal disclaimer notice, unless you’re required to for some reason.

An expanded, branded email signature will mark you as up-to-date and savvy to the new world of work. It will help decision makers vetting candidates like you learn what differentiates the value you offer over others.

Design your signature to resonate with your target audience and entice them to want to open your attachments and consider you.

Related posts:

10 Steps to an Authentic, Magnetic Personal Brand

Want Personal Brand Health Insurance? Follow the 3 Cs

An Executive Personal Branding, Online Identity and Job Search Strategist, Meg is a 20-year careers industry professional and one of only a handful of people worldwide to hold the Reach Certified Personal Branding Strategist and Master Resume Writer credentials, both gold standards.

“I love my work collaborating with savvy senior executives and entrepreneurs who know where they’re going, but need help differentiating their unique promise of value in the new world of work and executive job search, and positioning themselves to work their passion. My clients are typically c-suite, senior-level executives and rising stars.”

Find out more about Meg at Executive Career Brand, and by viewing her LinkedIn profile and following her on Twitter.

Support me by sharing this post:

You’ve defined your personal brand and created your career marketing materials, designed to resonate with your target audience.

And you know that, in job search, you’re in a sales and marketing campaign for your corporation of one – Brand You.

How are you going to market your unique promise of value to potential employers?

You’ll need a well-rounded brand communications plan that incorporates real-life and online personal marketing to capture the attention of recruiters and hiring decision makers.

If you think your online presence doesn’t factor much into hiring decision-making, see my post Does Your Online Identity Scream “Hire Me”? All other things being equal, a strong online footprint can tip the scales in your favor.

I safeguard the integrity and vitality of my own plan and keep it humming with personal brand health insurance – the 3 Cs – clarity, consistency, constancy.

Here’s a good part of what’s in my brand plan:

Online Profiles/Presence:

• 2 blog-based websites, Executive Career Brand and Executive Resume Branding, and one static website.

-Both blogs are included on several other blogrolls

• LinkedIn – 100% complete, branded, searchable profile
• Job-Hunt.org Personal Branding Expert bio
• Brand-Yourself blog weekly columnist bio
• Google Profile
• ZoomInfo
• Business Week’s Business Exchange
• Business VisualCV
• Personal VisualCV
• Amazon – I need to update this.
• Facebook
• Careers industry professional associations

Social Media:

• LinkedIn. Network updates 2-3 times a week. Active with 20+ Groups. Manage Job-Hunt.org’s new LinkedIn Personal Branding Help sub-group. Come join us!
• Active Twitter user, post several times a day. RT my tweeps regularly. Drive traffic to blogs through Twitter network
• Post at least twice a week to my 2 blogs
• Guest blog regularly at various other relevant blogs
• Comment regularly on relevant blogs (I try to be the first responder so my comments sit at the top of the list.)
• Weekly columns (Mondays) here on the Brand-Yourself.com blog
• Personal Branding Expert at Job-Hunt.org, contributing articles once a month
• E-list/online forum sharing and discussion through personal branding and careers industry professional associations
• Contribute articles and content to executive networking/job agent/job boards
• Contribute content and document samples to numerous job search/personal branding e-books and print books each year
• Press releases to various publications several times a year
• Branded email signature, with links to blog, LinkedIn profile and VisualCV
• Self-Google several times a week to monitor how I’m doing

Networking / Continuing Education

• Keep up with my professional network, virtually and in real-life. That means actually speaking by phone frequently. Emailing alone just doesn’t cut it
• Attend numerous professional webinars/teleseminars each year
• Put faces to names by attending at least one professional conference each year

WHEW!!! I think that pretty well covers it. That’s what keeps me busy marketing-wise. It can be a challenge fitting all this in with working my job, which is helping senior executives build their personal brand communications plans.

So, what’s in your communications plan? What are you doing that I should be doing?

Related posts:

10 Steps to an Authentic, Magnetic Personal Brand

How NOT to Build Your Executive Personal Brand

Digital Distinction: Does Your Executive Brand Pack a Punch Online?

An Executive Personal Branding, Online Identity and Job Search Strategist, Meg is a 20-year careers industry professional and one of only a handful of people worldwide to hold the Reach Certified Personal Branding Strategist and Master Resume Writer credentials, both gold standards.

“I love my work collaborating with savvy senior executives and entrepreneurs who know where they’re going, but need help differentiating their unique promise of value in the new world of work and executive job search, and positioning themselves to work their passion. My clients are typically c-suite, senior-level executives and rising stars.”

Find out more about Meg at Executive Career Brand, and by viewing her LinkedIn profile and following her on Twitter.

Support me by sharing this post: