She shares how Law School Class of 2011 and 2012 J.D.’s from New York Law School, Florida Coastal School of Law, Hofstra Law, Cooley Law School, IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law, DePaul University College of Law, Widener University School of Law, Thomas Jefferson School of Law, and others filed class action lawsuits against their their alma maters for consumer fraud.
These unhappy graduates claimed their law schools mislead them about their post-graduation employment prospects (direct article quotes):
Disgruntled law-school graduates who filed suits accusing their alma maters of deceiving them about their chances of landing a well-paying job haven’t had much success in court.
More than a dozen class actions were filed in 2011 and 2012, but courts across the country have knocked out the lawsuits one by one, including a recent dismissal in Florida. Only a few remain.
There’s Good News. I see opportunity for these unemployed attorneys. I see solo entrepreneurs with legal expertise to offer clients. Here are three (3) online platform ideas so unemployed lawyers as well as practicing ones can land their own clients and market themselves.
Hi Social Media ReInvention Community. Sorry for not publishing and keeping in touch over the last few months. Some personal hiccups derailed and distracted me. Writing about these share-worthy links and sharing my take on why you’ll find them valuable is part of the process to get myself on track. (more…)
I hope you enjoyed a blessed and joyful Christmas Holiday with your family, friends, and loved ones! Here are your share-worthy links to enjoy during Sunday Brunch. Have a great Sunday!
2. Unreasonable.is: The 7 Emails You Need to Know How to Write. Email isn’t dead. It remains one of the first ways we build and establish relationships. If you want your emails noticed, read, and acted upon by important/busy people, read this great, how-to article. This one went straight into Evernote for frequent and easy reference.
Well-paying professions previously limited in opportunity for women opened up (e.g., corporate finance)
Other prestigious yet "conventional" professions provided relatively lower risks and higher success outcomes (e.g., medicine, law)
The decision to have children and the responsibilities of child rearing (versus their male counterparts who remained unencumbered with these commitments)
The most successful Stanford Class of 1994 female entrepreneur, Jessica DiLullo Herrin, executed a flanking strategy to build and grow Stella & Dot. She created a digital services company but shunned The Valley’s traditional route creating a product or using venture capital funding. In her words (direct quote from the article):
Fingers Crossed, It Won’t Be the Last. Social Media ReInvention Community Members know of my excitement when LinkedIn Pulse published two other blog posts in the LinkedIn Pulse Social Media Category:
Thank You for Your Continuing Support! I published my first Social Media ReInvention blog post more than five (5) years ago. Time flew by.
Thank you for granting me permission to share with you my love of technology, digital marketing, social media strategy, personal reinvention, and writing.
Here’s a screen shot one of my closest friends sent me from his iPhone. Thank you for taking time to read and support my art:
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I made a 2014 resolution to publish an eBook / presentation.
This presentation / eBook describes three (3) career management lessons I've learned from my Dad and applied to my own career:
1) Learn From the Best
2) Get Published
3) Get Back Up — Fast!
My Dad inspired me to apply each of these lessons in a digital marketing and social media context (e.g., blogging, participating in Twitter, reading books of marketing strategy thought leaders, connecting directly with marketing strategy thought leaders, etc.).
These lessons describe the opportunity for online self-publishing, personal brand / personal reputation management, and the teachings of different marketing strategy authors. The marketing strategy authors (and their books and blogs) that have inspired me include Seth Godin, Ann Handley, Mitch Joel, Tom Peters, and David Meerman Scott.
It's my way of showing my Dad how much I admire and respect his individual achievements (and the obstacles he overcame).
Thank you and I hope you enjoy and benefit from reading it. If you find the content helpful, please feel free to share this presentation with others.
"It's no longer enough to simply have a resume. Students now need a professional online presence." – Holly Paul, former US Recruiting Leader, PriceWaterHouse Coopers (now Chief Human Resources Officer, Vocus).
Do You have a Professional Online Presence? Is Your Professional Online Presence Differentiating? If you said no to either of these questions, I hope you'll continue reading a little longer. Developing a professional brand / presence requires work, time, patience, and discipline. If you make the commitment, this investment increases the probability a company recruiter (or your first boss) will:
Find you online
Select you for that crucial first interview
Seeking a Job in Marketing, Public Relations, or Communications? Majoring in these Fields)? If you nodded "yes," the authors / books described in this two-part post are MUST READ content. These gurus are driving the future landscape of digital marketing, public relations, and communications.
Note: I am not an Amazon Affiliate Program Member. I tremendously respect the following authors because of their invaluable guidance in developing a professional online presence.
Turn Your Non-Working Time Into a Competitive Advantage
Read. Read. Read. The following suggested authors / books are not "cookie cutter" or "10 easy steps on how-to land your first job out of college / summer internship in a lousy economy" resources.
"For the last sixty or so years, the job market for educated workers worked like an escalator. So long as you played nice and well, you moved steadily up the escalator, and each step brought with it more power, income, and job security."
"But now the escalator is jammed at every level. Many young people even the most highly educated, are stuck at the bottom, underemployed, or jobless."
The Start-Up of YOU's principles describe the entrepreneurial strategies and career tactics traditional liberal arts undergraduate classes overlook. Understanding and applying these entrepreneurial strategies and career tactics can guide you in the current job market.
Dan Schawbel wrote Me 2.0 and Promote Yourself. The New York Post selected Me 2.0 as 2009's Number 1 career book. Promote Yourself (his latest book) is a current New York Times bestseller. Dan's also the Managing Partner of Millenial Branding, a Gen Y research and consulting firm. He is the personal branding authority for millenials.
Great Insights Relevant to All Professional Ages. In my opinion, Dan's professional branding teachings apply to ALL professionals and job seekers. I studied the 2009 first edition in my early-forties.
Why Me 2.0 Matters
Me 2.0 provides easy-to-understand suggestions for creating a professional brand online by:
Evaluating blog hosting options (if I could go back, I would select WordPress)
Starting, writing, and marketing a personal blog
Participating wisely in social networks
Developing relationships with influential bloggers in your targeted industries
Understanding search engine optimization's (SEO) impact on your professional career
Key content generously shared in these chapters include:
A Personal Brand Questionnaire (for evaluating your personal brand and how well you are digitally communicating it)
The Essential Components in Building a 3D Personal Brand: Giving Abundantly, Helping Others, and Building Relationships
A Personal Brand Audit of Online Tools (such as a personal blog, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google Search, and Google Alerts)
Building and Targeting a Niche for Your Professional Online Presence
A Bonafide Visionary. Here's a direct quote from Mitch Joel in Six Pixels of Separation "predicting" why a professional online presence matters more than ever for new college graduates (this was in 2009).
"The most compelling statistic of all? Half of all new college graduates now believe that self-employment is more secure than a full-time job. Today, 80% of the colleges and universities in the U.S. now offer courses on entrepreneurship; 60% of Gen Y business owners consider themselves to be serial entrepreneurs, according to Inc. magazine. Tellingly, 18 to 24-year-olds are starting companies at a faster rate than 35 to 44-year-olds. And 70% of today's high schoolers intend to start their own company, according to a Gallup poll."
(from Mitch a few paragraphs later):
"Here's what he's really saying (e.g., Mr. Malone): Without noticing it, we have once again discovered, and then raced off to settle, a new frontier. Not land, not innovation, but ourselves and a growing control over our own lives and careers.
Mitch Joel's Latest Book is Ctrl Alt Delete. My biggest personal mistakes/regrets in understanding and building a professional online presence are:
Not publishing this personal blog at least 10 years earlier.
This concludes post three on helping recent college graduates and current undergraduates build a professonal online presence. I hope you'll return for post four (e.g., Part 2) sharing six (6) more authors and their respective books. Post 4 should be published in two weeks.
Your Turn: Have you read any of these books? If so, how useful do you think they are to recent college graduates and current undergraduates. Are there other books you think would be helpful? Please let me know in the comments.
Note: This is post three in a series sharing resources to help new college graduates and current students land full-time jobs or internships. If interested, here are links to other posts in this series:
An Important, Daily Habit. Every day, look for LinkedIn Questions reflecting your personal or professional interests. You don't always have to answer a question. But, a daily monitoring habit (i.e., 5 to 10 minutes of review every morning) can help you gradually and continuously build your online reputation and personal brand within specific topics.
A Two-Phase Process. The process for efficiently monitoring questions in LinkedIn Answers requires two (2) tools:
A LinkedIn RSS Feed for Your Favorite LinkedIn Question & Answer (Q&A) Categories
A Dedicated iGoogle Tab Centralizing Your Multiple LinkedIn Q&A RSS Feeds
The time investment for building this process is less than 15 minutes.
The Multiple Benefits of RSS Feed Subscriptions
Turn Your iGoogle Home Page Into a Custom Content Dashboard. RSS feeds enable you to create personalized content or news dashboards. When you set up your RSS subscriptions, you'll realize multiple benefits:
Time Efficiency: Centralized content from multiple sources is easier to find and consume
Fewer Emails:Multiple RSS feeds allow you to receive updated content without email notifications
Content Customization: Your RSS feeds subscriptions reflect only the content / knowledge you choose to receive
Here's an example of how my LinkedIn Question & Answer RSS Feeds for multiple categories look in my iGoogle Page:
Subscribing to the LinkedIn Questions & Answers RSS Feed
How to Get Started. Here are the steps, you need to follow so you can set up the LinkedIn RSS Feed:
1. From your LinkedIn Home Page, highlight the "More" link in the top, right-hand corner. You'll see a prompt for "Answers":
2. After clicking on the "Answers" link, you should arrive at the LinkedIn Question & Answers Home Page. It looks like this:
3. The next step is to select a category you find interesting. The "Recommended Categories For You" is LinkedIn's custom feature offers suggestions based on your LinkedIn Profile. You can also select a category by selecting one of the categories on the far, right-hand side under "Browse":
4. In this example, I selected the "Blogging" Category. To subscribe to the RSS Feed for "Blogging," click on the orange RSS icon on the bottom, right-hand corner:
5. Copy the hyperlink highlighted in the text box where it says "or copy the RSS link:"
Creating a LinkedIn Answers Tab in Your iGoogle Home Page
Hold on to the RSS link you just copied! We're not going to paste the LinkedIn RSS hyperlink just yet.
1. Opena new tabin your Internet browser. In this new tab, please select your iGoogle Home Page.
2. Click on your "Google Home" tab. You should see a "little down arrow / toggle switch" to the right-hand side of "Google Home."
3. Click on "the little down arrow." You should be prompted with a command that says "Add a Tab."
4. After clicking on "Add a Tab," the following screen should appear:
5. Fill in the name of your new tab and click on "Ok"
6. I named my new tab "test tab." Your new tab should look something like this (but with the name you selected for your tab):
7. In your new tab, click the prompt on the top, left hand-side that says "Add gadgets"
8. After clicking on "Add gadgets," you should see a prompt at the bottom, left-hand side of your screen that says "Add feed or gadget"
9. Click on this link and you should get a screen that looks like this:
10. Now, remember that RSS Link you copied earlier from Step 5 from Subscribing to the LinkedIn Question & Answers RSS Feed so you could be alerted to any new questions in the Blogging Category?
That box above is where you're going to paste that RSS Link. After pasting in the RSS Link, click Add.
11. If the RSS feed is added correctly, you should now see a prompt that looks like this:
12. To make sure the LinkedIn Answers Blogging Category Feed is added correctly, you'll want to click the prompt on the top, left-hand side that says "Back to iGoogle"
13. Voila, your new RSS Feed is captured in your iGoogle tab. Now, you can add multiple LinkedIn Answer Categories to this iGoogle tab to monitor several types of LinkedIn Questions — a big time saver.
14. Adding Multiple RSS Feeds to Your Custom iGoogle Tab is Now Super-Easy. You might be thinking that sure was a ton of steps to follow! Well, you're right. But, you've done the hard part — creating your customized iGoogle tab.
From this point forward, whenever you want to add a new LinkedIn Answers Category to your custom iGoogle tab, repeat steps 7 through 12 of Creating a LinkedIn Answers Tab in Your iGoogle Home Page.
The Premise / Goal / Timing of This Weekly Feature
Premise. If you like the content in this blog, you may like the type of content I regularly read and study on the Web.
Goal. On a weekly basis, I'm going to publish links to three (3) articles I find interesting. I'll include a brief summary with some bullet points explaining why I think the content is worth consuming.
Timing. I'll publish this content every Wednesday / Thursday.
2. The Three Laws of Future Employment by Daniel Jelski: This is a THOUGHT-PROVOKING article commenting on individual competitiveness in today's dynamic employment market. Jelski's three (3) laws and subsequent conclusions are important:
Law #1: People will get jobs doing things that computers can't do (i.e., jobs requiring human-human interaction)
Law #2: A global market place will result in lower pay and future opportunities for many careers (but also in cheaper and better products and a higher standard of living for American consumers)
Law #3: Professional people will more likely be freelancers and less likely to have a steady job
(Direct Quote from the Fortune Article): “Here’s the scary part: Roehm rarely misses a chance to talk about how delighted she is with online advertising. Last year she spent 10% of the budget online; this year she is allotting closer to 18%; next year, she says, she will allocate more than 20%. Do the math: In 2006 roughly $400 million of Chrysler’s money that used to go into TV, newspaper, and magazine ads will be spent on the Internet. Says Roehm: ‘I hate to sound like such a marketing geek, but we like to fish where the fish are.'”
A 34 Year-Old Marketing Executive Publicly Declares a $400 Million Bet on Digital Marketing ROI. Wow! Here’s a gutsy, young, rising, marketing executive superstar who’s publicly stating her $360 million and $400 million bets to achieve digital marketing ROI in the next two years! Not only did this quantitatively trained University of Chicago MBA convince a highly conservative executive management team to think and invest differently but she also commanded their $2 billion global marketing budget.
Fast Forward to After a Highly Publicized Departure at Walmart in December 2006. After numerous high profile promotions and industry accolades, Ms. Roehm abruptly found herself at a personal and professional crossroads. Starting in 2007, her short tenure as a Senior VP of Marketing at Walmart was her last full-time, executive marketing position for the next five years.
While looking for her next opportunity, Ms. Roehm started her own marketing consulting practice. And, to say she encountered daunting challenges and setbacks during this time is an understatement. A July 2009 Fast Company article, Behind the Rebranding Campaign of Wal-Mart’s Scarlet Woman, and a Fortune Magazine “Where Are They Now” segment discuss her obstacles in regaining a full-time executive position during that five-year period.
She wanted back in the C-suite. But, as articulated by Fast Company, Corporate America wasn’t willing to take on “damaged goods.”
How Did Julie Roehm Recover and Reinvent Her Personal Brand?
The Governing Question. And, here’s how I will attempt to answer it:
Examine how Ms. Roehm leveraged social media technologies to reinvent her personal brand
Offer my opinion on her multi-channel social media strategy and individual channel tactics
Conclude why I think her move to SAP fits from a social media perspective
What This Post WILL NOT Attempt. A lot of content exists online about Ms. Roehm’s departure from Walmart. I couldn’t avoid it while conducting the research for this post.
Therefore,
I will not rehash any of that online content and provide my personal opinions on it
I will not pass any personal judgment on Ms. Roehm in relation to that online content
If you’re looking for a sensationalistic piece, please click to a different website / blog. Because, you’re wasting valuable time by staying here.
If you’re interested in answering the previously stated governing question, I hope you’ll please stick with me for just a little while longer …
1. Roehm Crafted a Personal Social Media Strategy First
A Home Base Personally Branding Julie Roehm.juliearoehm.com is her personal website where she controls every positioning aspect of her personal brand:
Brand Persona Attributes: C-Suite Executive, Marketing Expert, Smart, a Likable Personality
Targeted Buyer Persona: C-Suite Executives in Marketing, Branding, and Public Relations
Target Industry Expertise: Retail, Financial Services, Automotive, New Media
Online Assets Focusing on a Cohesive Brand Message. And, she showcases these personal brand attributes by delivering and linking a cohesive and consistent marketing message among each of these online, personal branding assets:
Her Personal Blog: “I’m an authority who publishes insights on marketing strategy.”
Videos (especially from Fox Business News): “A major news network has me regularly comment because I’m a marketing strategy authority.”
The Julie Roehm Twitter Feed: “I read, study, and share interesting content on marketing strategy.”
LinkedIn Profile: “I’ve held several marketing strategy authority positions or consulted for large organizations as a marketing strategy authority.”
A Multi-Channel Hub and Spoke Model with Both Long-Form and Short-Form Context. The multiple channel strategy executed here is worth highlighting in this age of real-time streams via Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+:
1. The Marketing Pull. Her website, blog, and videos contain the long-form context demonstrating her expertise to the target audience. These online properties give her the runway to provide more details and examples of why she’s a bonafide marketing authority in her target industries.
2. The Marketing Push. Her LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter contain the short-form context to share content she’s provided on her “pull assets” (i.e., a recently published blog post or tweeting an article link relevant to a specific industry or area of marketing expertise).
2. Roehm Leveraged Online Video to Her Advantage
The Julie Roehm Personal Branding Killer App. Ms. Roehm leverages online video brilliantly. These videos demonstrate her personal strengths as well as different views of her personality:
Articulate and Smart
Subject Matter Expert
Thinks Quickly on Her Feet
Confidence: e.g, she knows this stuff cold
Humor: e.g., she pokes fun at herself and doesn’t take herself too seriously
Plus, notice how each video positions her as one of the following:
Julie Roehm, Consumer Analyst and Marketing Expert
Julie Roehm, Marketing Strategy Consultant
Julie Roehm, Marketing Expert
* Example: Leveraging Online Media in Branding Strategy
Note: I provided the Fox Business News videos this way because (1) Fox doesn’t allow the use of video embedding in external sites and (2) The URL in one of the videos produces funky-looking “duplicates” on my published blog post. Sorry for the inconvenience.
3. Roehm and Her SAP Senior Marketing Executive Colleagues Share a Common Ground: Think Like a Publisher
Both Her New Boss and a Senior Marketing Executive Colleague Self-Publish a Blog and Use Twitter. Ms. Roehm, her new boss, and one of her senior marketing executive colleagues agree on an important aspect of a global brand’s marketing strategy: self-publishers win in social media.
How can I make that type of a statement? Her SAP senior marketing executive colleagues also actively self-publish online content:
And, during the interviewing process, I’m sure Ms. Roehm showed this online content portfolio to her SAP colleagues to make the case for her knowledge, expertise, and creativity in executing a successful social media strategy.
Thinking Like a Publisher Means Creating “Show-Me” Content. Ms. Roehm started actively blogging in March 2009 and opened her Twitter account in May 2007. That’s given her significant time to create, publish and build a sizable online content portfolio. To her credit, she aggressively self-published content for the past five years to position herself for senior marketing executive positions.
Conclusion
In the July 2009 Fast Company article cited earlier, Ms. Roehm made the following observation:
“She now ranks cultural fit — geographic and corporate — at the top of her list, adding that her ‘aggressive-aggressive’ personality, as she describes it, doesn’t jibe with the ‘passive-aggressive’ politeness of the South. ‘I wanted to be able to show that I can adapt anywhere, I can do anything. The thing I learned about myself is that I’m not a full-on chameleon, and there’s nothing wrong with that.”
I have no knowledge of SAP’s corporate culture. But, I do know these three (3) things after analyzing her personal social media strategy:
1. Julie Roehm maximized her online personal branding opportunities.
2. She strategically self-published content that’s tactically distributed via multiple social media channels.
3. Her content delivered and reinforced a consistent brand message highlighting her marketing strategy capabilities and expertise.
Did her online activities alone win her this new professional opportunity? Of course not.
But, her online content strategy significantly contributed to winning her new senior executive postion at SAP. I look forward to tracking Ms. Roehm’s progress because she’s always been someone to watch.
And, I wish her good luck.
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Tom Peters is co-author of In Search of Excellence – the book that changed the way the world does business, and often tagged the best business book ever. Keep up with Tom at tompeters.com, ranked #9 among The Top 150 Management and Leadership Blogs.
His globally-respected work on business, leadership, and management includes:
Thank You Mr. Peters and Team! I’m honored by the listing on your website. I jumped for joy when I saw my blog post on your Media Sightings page!
Who Says Blogging Is Dead? The people promoting this message are misinformed. Don’t buy into this noise. Read this direct quote from The Brand Called You about earning recognition and building reputation for your personal brand:
“If you’re a better writer than you are a teacher, try contributing a column or an opinion piece to your local newspaper. And, when I say local, I mean local. You don’t have to make the op-ed page of The New York Times to make the grade. Community newspapers, professional newsletters, even inhouse company publications have white spaces they need to fill. Once you get started, you’ve got a track record – and clips that you can use to snatch more chances.”
Blogging Matters More Than Ever. Take note of this advice from Seth Godin and Tom Peters about marketing your personal brand via writing a blog:
Your Turn. You’ve got something inspiring inside you. Share it in your blog, your column, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, or Google+. I want to read about your victories!
