In this age, your webinality is important. You need to have an identity. Yes, we participate in the web 2.0 while we are person 1.0, time has come to upgrade to that person 2.0. You must develop and evolve out of the traditional person to have success in this age. Transitioning from person 1.0 to person 2.0 is not automatic. It requires a lot of work.
You must redesign your web footprint and have presence. You must connect to the social system and build a brand around yourself. Your webinality (web and personality) cannot improve if you do not invest time on it.
The best way to create good webinality is to develop expertise in something. You need to have an aura of authenticity. Without that, you cannot succeed. You must not be jack of all trades. You have to find a space and dominate it. Have a vision of the image you want in the web and build it. Do you want to be seen a tech expert or a comedian, on the web? You decide. What you do is just very important and having that capacity to know your goal will help you. Your webinality must be nurtured and curated!
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Follow these ideas presented by one of our editors
- Presence: Open at least one social media or blog account.
- Specialize: Define an area of interest and build around it. A five-minute online search should reveal what you represent. You need to differentiate yourself and showcase your core skills and unique capabilities to potential hiring managers.
- Accuracy: Always remember that once that post goes online, you may not control who sees it. If you lie on your accomplishments, your classmate or co-worker is just an IP address away from challenging it. Make it accurate – always, otherwise, you will destroy your persona.
- Comprehensive: While blog should be short, once in a while, develop comprehensive articles in your field and post them online. It could mean expanding a class project you worked on, adding more contents, and fully proving your expertise. Half-baked contents will not take you too far.
- Judgment: What you post or share online defines who you are. Your profile defines you – values, interests and reliability. For employers, they want reliable team leaders and you must not offer less in your web personality.
- Vertical Integration: Seek to connect with people ahead of you professionally while building a horizontally network.
- Generosity: Share and exchange good ideas. Invite people to your network and be generous to promote good ideas from others. Write professional reviews on books, journals and articles. In no distant time, people will reward you.
- Policy Matters: If you are working, ensure you adhere to policies on using the company’s name online. There is a threat that you could be a source of data leakage that can hurt competitiveness. Your profile must not be another portrait of your employer – you must be wise to separate both, where necessary.
- Continuity: Professional online branding is a continuous work-in-progress that requires constant tune-ups of networks, contents and profiles. It must be constantly nurtured.