What about you?
I have been an entrepreneur for nearly 30 years. People think my last name is Magazine. They introduce me as the owner of ThePowerXChange or the editor of X-Ray. People remember me as the XTensions lady. This is a persona problem, not just for me but for other C-level executives and entrepreneurs. I ask you: If you’ve spent the last few decades working for or creating a company and you’ve been so effective that you and the company are now one, is separation without anxiety even possible?
I’m not alone. I know many of you here by the company for whom you work. In fact, just this morning I was on a call with a long-time colleague who is now with another company and I kept thinking how odd it was to hear him talk of a new product…
Ready and willing — or not — you may be going forward sometime soon to find the next great thing, as my colleague has, so how do you re-establish yourself? I have a better question, how do you establish yourself as you instead of as the next company for whom you work or that you launch?
The web offers a veritable garden of options for getting your name out there, but do you think about search results when someone is looking for you? I’ve been providing search-engine optimization (SEO) and social-media optimization (SMO) advisory services to a company lately and one of their clients is looking to define a specialty of his company as a new industry offering. Unfortunately at the same time he is trying to gain recognition and validation, a porn star of the same name has published a book that is doing fabulously on Amazon. Needless to say, search results on his name are less than congruent with his desires.
Gauging by the amount of spam I receive, I think there must be 2.7 million SEO/SMO specialists out there. They all promise to get your web site on page one and for 90% of the products, it’s actually a fairly simple task. A site map here, a meta tag there, a good link campaign, and violà, you’re on page one.
Now what about you as the product? If you are looking to change careers, write a book, become a CEO of another company, how are those search results now? If you have a unique name, maybe they are good. If you don’t, maybe you should take a look a writing a book and publishing on Amazon. It worked for a now-famous porn star.
Here’s an example to which you can relate. You are currently the CEO of a publishing software company (after all, that’s what we all have in common here). There have been a number of press releases that include quotes from you. Those were picked up by various industry web sites and online publications. There’s also the company announcement about you joining the company. All good. Everything is positive. You’re in great shape.
Now it’s time to move on. Maybe because you want to, maybe not. For whatever reason, you’re on to the next gig. Tell me, how does the board that’s looking for their next CEO find you? A recruiter? Sure. The recruiter goes straight to Google and searches for “great CEO software,” and there you have it. 5,190,009 results.
Let’s narrow the search. “CEO software increase revenue.” Wonderful. 3,876,234 results.
The process continues until the recruiter has figured out some magic phrase that identifies a pool of candidates that may have the skills for which this board is looking.
If want that call, you need to stand out. It is possible. Search engines are most effective when they return accurate results. It is the desire of every search-engine manufacturer to be the best at “reading” the customer and giving them what they want. SEO and SMO is about giving then a little help.
To get our best shot at bubbling to the top of a search-engine result, you need to start thinking about a separation. You should do this whether or not you are moving on. You are an individual; not the office in the corner. Start thinking about some professionally and personally identifiable marks (and I’m not talking tattoos). If that recruiter is looking for a CEO that increases revenue, you have to be known for that. Someone has to explain to a search engine (through a conversation with the search engine’s “spider”) that you are the right, best, most qualified, and available candidate.
This process is called “optimized professional visibility” (or optimizing professional visibility). What it means is that you expose yourself — professionally this is. You tell a search spider about every single thing you have ever done in your entire professional career that is congruent with your goal. You don’t just say it once and be done with it; you say it again and again. You say it in as many different ways as you can imagine. You say it in every possible manner in which someone may be searching.
So take just a moment, and think this through: When I search your name, what will I find?