5 Ways to Build a Brand

Building a brand, and maintaining it, starts the moment you go online. There are business brands and professional brands, and these two realms often overlap. Even an 18-year-old with no idea of what he or she wants to do has an online reputation or “brand.” It’s what schools may look at when deciding if you should be admitted, what employers consider when choosing the best person for roles and what your potential dates find when getting ready for the first in-person meeting. Your reputation and brand are really all you have—it’s your first impression, so make it count.

Fortunately, you’re largely in charge of your brand since most of it is built online. In many cases, it’s you and you alone who’s posting information about yourself, from photos to reviews on third party sites. Reputation management isn’t just for enterprises or major companies. It’s something we can all do on a daily basis.

Take a look at some great websites and platforms, such as Flippze, Etsy or Amazon for examples of brand building done right. There are also YouTube stars and even the Kardashians (regardless of what you think of them) who are brilliant at brand building.

Here are a few ways you can build and control your brand:

1. Guest posts: If you’re a writer, infographic designer or vlogger, you can get more exposure and increase your leadership prowess with guest posts. This is how you get your name out there in the industry you want. Make sure you have a professional byline, professional photo (no selfies) and match your interests to the right website.

2. Manage your Google alerts: Set up a Google alert for your name, variances of your name and business, if applicable. You’ll be instantly notified when anything new about you shows up in Google searches.

3. Remove or bury low quality content: There’s no shame in googling yourself, and you might even be surprised by what pops up. It could be an old angsty rant you forgot about, a tagged photo from a drunken night out or some other content you no longer want out there. Each website has a different means of requesting content to be taken down, and in some cases you can do it yourself (like if it’s an old dating profile you forgot about). Otherwise, you can work on burying bad content with good. This is where a pro website, blog, guest blogging and other tactics come into play.

4. Create a professional website: Even if you’re “just” a student, there’s no reason you can’t have a professional website with a blog, your resume, recent projects and other details included. It shows future employers that you’re serious, tech savvy and helps you stand out. If you really want to shine, include a video introduction (just make sure it’s regularly updated).

5. Lock down your privacy: This is particularly true on social media sites. Every now and then, double check your privacy settings to make sure everything’s under lock and key. However, the best approach is to not post anything on social media you wouldn’t want the world to see.

Your brand can bolster your success or drag you down, so plot it carefully. Gone are the days when privacy was a given, and in the Digital Era you need to keep things squeaky clean. Keep track of yourself so that others don’t do it for you.

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Does Your Website Get Enough Social Loving?

Spreading the word about your business website takes more than just an interesting layout and engaging content.

If you really want to create an online presence for your business, you need to give your website a little social love.

Here are just a few ways you can make your business website more socially savvy:

Website-Boosting Social Media Sites

There are a number of social media sites out there that can help you boost your business website.

Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google+, Linkedin, Pinterest – these are the social heavy hitters. However, there are a few relatively unknown social sites that can help give your brand a major presence.

Among them:

• StumbleUpon – Adding your business to StumbleUpon gives millions of users access to your brand. Users type their interests in the StumbleUpon search bar and, if your business falls within their interests, your website will show up in their results. It’s basically an interest-based bookmarking tool for websites of all kinds.

• Quora – In a nutshell, Quora is question and answer social site that allows businesses like yours to answer common questions relating to your trade. It helps online audiences find questions to topics ranging from politics to cooking. Through Quora, you can link to your own website and increase your visibility.

• Reddit – Reddit is a website for die-hard social media fans. If you can land content on Reddit, your social profile will skyrocket because Reddit users will share your content until it’s viral. With that said, you have to offer some pretty unique website content to make it on Reddit.

Now that you know some of the social routes to take, here are some tips for promoting your business through social media:

Respond to Social Questions and Comments

Creating a social profile and posting on a regular basis is all part of the social media process.

However, once your website and your brand start gaining attention, you need to respond to any and all social questions and comments you receive.

The article “5 Ways a Website Can Boost Your Home Inspection Business” mentions the importance of staying on call 24 hours a day with your website.

Well, the same goes with your social activities.

Whether it’s a question about a product on your site or a comment on your service, social media is a great way to communicate with customers.

Social Timing is Everything

Social audiences peak at certain times of the day, which is something you need to remember when promoting your website.

Although every social environment is a little different, most social media users are active in the morning and at night.

Weekday afternoons are also a good time to promote your website on social media because users are usually on lunch break.

Take Advantage of Photos and Videos

There’s a ton of social competition out there, especially when it comes to businesses trying to share content.

If you really want to draw attention to your website promotions, then you need to use photos and videos in your social campaigns.

This can include anything from detailed product photos, pictures of your storefront, or videos of your business and its products in action. Catering to social audiences’ visual senses will increase exposure for your brand.

When you’re ready to promote your business website and your brand, keep the social media pointers above in mind.

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Is Your Digital Footprint is Hurting You?

Hey there Socialnomics’ers

In my work as a career consultant I’m often asked to take a look at clients digital footprints and try to explain what they’re doing wrong.

The first thing to understand is that EVERYONE Googles you.

Most people aren’t going to Google 5 pages deep but you can be sure that if something comes up on the first 2 pages your potential employer or clients will see it.

There are two major problems when it comes to your digital footprint.

1. Red Flags – Red flags are things that suggest you are not the type of person a client or employer wants to work with. These include but are not limited to twitter or Facebook rants(My personal red flag), inappropriate pictures, mentions of drug or alcohol use, threats or aggressive bullying behavior towards others (even as “jokes”) and much much more.

2. Incompletes – When you start filling out a profile but forget to finish it or start a blog and update it a few times then forget it, I call your digital footprint incomplete.

Let’s talk about how to deal with both of these different kinds of digital footprint problems.

Get Rid Of Red Flags

With red flags you want to delete, delete, delete. If you, like me, love ranting on Facebook or Twitter, make sure that you make your feeds private and turn off screenshot captures. Before you send out a resume or make a client presentation, Google yourself a few different ways.

Since I have a very common name, I make sure to Google my name along with Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and any other social media I use. I also Google my name with my career title, to see what that turns up.

Deleting red flags is easy but that’s only one half of the battle. The next part of red flags is making sure you don’t create new ones! Chances are if you have a few red flags now, you will create more later. If you’re like me ,this means you need to exercise personal judgement on your public accounts and then create a fake name for your private accounts this way even if someone does find my tweets they will be under Rashard Lannister instead of your real name.

Make Incompletes Complete

The last step of fixing your digital footprint is to fix all your incomplete information.

Add your place of employment or any other missing information to Facebook.

Update your blog 3 times a week if you’re going to keep it or delete it entirely. A blog that doesn’t get updated is way way worse than not having a blog to being with.

Add clear pictures of yourself to all of your public feeds.

Fix any broken links on your website ESPECIALLY if they lead to your blog or bio or anything a potential employer or client will want to check out.

Eliminate anything that says coming soon or under construction on your website(s)

Lastly and this is a HUGE pet peeve of mine, make your contact information easy to find! If you have one of those contact forms get rid of it, serious people know that you don’t respond to those and it makes you look unprofessional. Have your email address, phone number and all relevant social media information easily locatable on the main page of your site. This alone will get you more business and interviews.

Ok let’s re-cap in today’s article I talked to you about how your digital footprint could be hurting you.

We looked at red flags and incompletes, understanding that you need to delete and control red flags and complete the incomplete information.

Now you know everything you need to fix your digital footprint so that everyone can see how great you truly are!

Best,

Jon Lee

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How to Find and Hire the Right Programmer for Your Startup

The secret to hiring the right programmer is to look for smart people.

When you are writing code, every single line requires the programmer to make quick decisions. Whether it is about what line to write or what function to add, there are multiple decisions involved in each line of code. So when you are looking to hire a programmer, you need to look for someone that you can trust with these decisions.

Decisions are judgment calls, and if you are smart, it’s more likely that you will make the right call. That is why it’s extremely important to look for smart people when interviewing candidates for your programming job.

Smart people will not only get the job done well, but they will also attract other smart people. Contrary to popular belief, most programmers don’t want to be the single rockstar on a team of other programmers that cannot keep up. Smart people want to work with other smart people. They also want to spend their time with other smart people. So if you make sure to hire smart programmers in your interview process, they will get the job done right, and they will make other smart programmers want to join your team.

The hardest part, however, can be actually finding these smart programmers and weeding them out from the rest.

Resume Screening

Unfortunately, there is really nothing on a resume that shows whether or not a candidate knows how to code. Resumes are pretty useless for the process of hiring a great programmer, but they are a necessary evil in the job world. How else are you going to find programmers that you might not have known about?

You should not use this part of the hiring process to try to sniff out great programming skill. A piece of paper is not going to tell you that. However, there are a number of things that you can look for in the resume stage that will at least help you narrow down your pool.

First, you should look at the quality of writing. Great writing indicates strong thinking skills and an ability to organize and present ideas. It can also be useful to ask candidates to submit a cover letter along with their resume in order to gauge writing skills.

Typos are a bad sign in both resumes and cover letters; they indicate that the candidate is not detail-oriented and does not double check his or her work. Another red flag is a generic version of a resume or cover letter that could be sent to any company, which shows a lack of interest in your company on the candidate’s part.

Other things to look for in the resume stage include passion, smarts, creativity, and previous screening. If the candidate comes from a prestigious university or impressive company, then they have already made it through intensive screening processes for those institutions. Creativity is harder to standardize, but look for anything that makes a candidate’s resume stand out from the rest. GPA, activities, and past experiences can be indicative of passion and smarts.

If you are looking to hire an intern who will hopefully turn into a full time employee, it is best to look at only juniors in college. If you only hire juniors for internships, then you can extend them an offer at the end of the summer, and you will not have to worry about other jobs influencing their decision.

Phone Interviews

Like resumes, phone interviews should not be used to screen for direct coding ability. Instead, you should use phone screens to judge whether or not the candidate is smart. Do not worry about getting into too much detail, but have conversations about things like algorithms and data structure. You might also ask a candidate how they would build something specific using code. These conversations will allow you to see if the candidate is highly technical.

Many successful phone interviews are broken down into three parts. First, ask the candidate to talk about a recent project he or she has worked on that is especially cool. This will allow you to hear about the kind of work the candidate has done, and you will be able to listen for passion and drive. Second, present your candidate with a design problem so you can see their thought process. Finally, allow your candidate to ask you questions about the company.

In short, phone interviews are a great way to discuss technical topics that do not require writing code. This conversation should be strictly in English—no coding languages yet. Remember, you are trying to judge whether or not the person is smart, and this stage of the interview process is an excuse to have a technical conversation, which gives you the opportunity to make this judgment.

Remote Code Tests

Code tests will give you the opportunity to screen for coding ability. Finally! You can do these interviews in person or online. If you choose to give remote code tests, watch the candidate’s computer as he or she works. Whether it is remote or in-person, ask your candidate to explain the thought process behind the code they are writing.

This stage is extremely important, as it allows you to see whether or not a candidate is actually a good programmer. This is the stage to sniff out novice versus expert programmers, so it is easy to be quick to judge. However, remember that this is an interview setting and your candidate is probably nervous.

On one hand, see how they act under pressure. On the other, extend them a free pass on being nervous and realize that they might make small, stupid mistakes that they would not make if they were not being watched by someone with the ability to make or break their career. Candidates are not typing into a compiler that might catch these mistakes, so it’s ok to excuse things like typos and simple syntax errors.

In this coding test, you can ask candidates to use a standard language that every programmer should know, or you can let the programmer choose the language they are most comfortable working with. Either way, see how they talk through what they are thinking—do they have a plan? What is their thought process?

In Person Interview

To ensure little error in hiring, each candidate should go through at least 5 interviews before he or she is hired. The last interview should be saved for a senior manager or someone high up on your team.

When you are giving an interview, it can be helpful to avoid asking a question that you already know the answer to or asking a candidate to solve a problem that you have solved the day before. These kinds of questions will lead to biases towards candidates who gives the same answer you gave. Remember: you are looking for smart candidates, not identical candidates to you. The best team is made up of people that think in different ways.

It is also helpful to keep asking the same questions to different candidates. This ensures a fair process and helps you as an interviewer. By asking the same question, you begin to realize what to look for in an answer. You can also compare candidates more easily.

The goal with in-person interviews is still to decide if the candidate is smart and if they will get the job done. Similar to the phone interview, present a problem that acts as an excuse to have a conversation.

Decision Time

Only hire people that you feel 100% confident about. Sure, any process might present false negatives, but you would rather lose someone good than take a chance with someone that will not end up working out.

If you hire bad candidates, you will have to fire them later on, and you will have to clean up mistakes from poor performance. Bad hires become liabilities.

The options should always be “hire or no hire.” There should not be any “maybes” involved. If a candidate is a “maybe” then they are automatically a no hire.

Be absolutely certain someone is good before you hire them.

Over Complicated?

The hiring process is long, and it requires a lot of time and energy if you want to find the best programmers. But it’s even more of a headache to end up with a team of poor programmers. If you try to skirt around a thorough hiring process, you will only regret it down the line.

If all of this seems like too much, or if you do not know enough about programming to set up this kind of screening process, it might be best to turn to outside help. Reach out to a developer friend, or find online sites, like Toptal, that will take over the process for you. Toptal will not only connect you with freelance developers, but its team of engineers screens each developer for you as well. As a plus, you can work with these programmers first on a no-risk trial basis before deciding to bring them onto your team full-time. Other sites like Freelancer will provide job boards where you can post your project, and developers will apply.

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Snapchat’s big change: Just tap instead of holding down

Mashable - Snapchat just changed everything you thought you knew about its app.

Snapchat made major changes to its user interface in an update Wednesday: you no longer need to hold down to view a Snap or Story. Instead, the company is introducing a new “tap to view feature.”

With the update, which is available now on iOS and Android, you can view your Snaps and browse your friends’ stories with just a single tap. The change will be a big one for regular Snapchat users as keeping your thumb on the screen was one of the disappearing messaging app’s signature UI features — accidentally move you thumb and the message would be gone forever.

In a blog post Wednesday, the company acknowledged the change will take “a little getting used to for anyone who has been Snapchatting for a while. ”

But the change doesn’t mean you’re stuck looking at extra-long Stories. The app still allows you to skip to the next photo or video by tapping on the screen or you can swipe down to exit a Story completely.

Image from Snapchat

The update also brings a new “Add Nearby” feature that allows you to add new friends on the app based on the people around you. Snapchat says this will make it easier for groups of friends to find each other on the app. You can find “Add Nearby” in the “Add Friends” menu, but you’ll only see usernames for those who also have the “Add Nearby” screen open on their app.

Snapchat also added more personalization features to Snapcodes — that’s the QR code-like feature introduced in the Discover update — with animated selfies Tap on your Snapcode, you can find it by tapping on the ghost icon at the top of the app’s camera, and the app will take a burst of 5 rapid-fire selfies. All five are played within the ghost on your Snapcode, much like an animated GIF.

Finally, Wednesday’s blog post notes the addition of two-factor authentication, which was added in a previous update. You can enable the security feature, which uses your phone number, from the “Login Verification” menu in the app’s main settings.

Article by Karissa Bell for Mashable

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Go Green on Social Media

Social media is fun.

It’s the way media is going and pretty much everyone and every business has some sort of social media. It provides a sharing outlet, a way to connect and stay in touch.

It also provides a great learning medium that we often overlook.

No matter the topic, you can reach out on social media and garner great information.

For instance, if you are interested in becoming more active in the green movement, get out there on social media and you may be surprised what you can learn and how you can get involved.

Learning More

Among the ways your social networking can assist the green movement:

• Ask – If you have questions, research them on social media. Twitter is a great forum for this, as well as some of the lesser knows, like Prezi. You can learn about the green movement and what big things are taking place.

• Learn – As the following article looks at, you can find ways to enhance your education or career in the green realm, like through 3PDH online courses that support green building.

• Research – You can research particular businesses, government organizations or specific public figures to see exactly what role they are playing in this movement. Whether you look at their twitter feed or a specific website, you should be able to pick up some valid information.

• Discover – Find out what is going on in your area. You may find some events or seminars that you can attend to learn more, network and get more involved.

Getting Involved

Among the ways to get involved:

• Finding events is a great start – Perhaps there’s a park or nature center that plays a big role in the green movement close by, and you can volunteer. Social media is great for finding information like this. You can use specific sites for information and follow social media as well.

• Tweet and post about what you are doing – If you write a green blog, promote it on social media. If you are organizing or even aware of an event, post it. Report afterwards so your followers can see the effect you made.

• Connect – Social media is the place for forming like-minded connections. You can share philosophies and what you are doing to help the environment. Not only can you make strong connections, but you can also find support and positive enforcement of what you’re doing.

Social media has a lot to offer, much more than you may think.

Don’t be shy with it – get out there and use it.

You never know what difference you can make!

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​How to get Apple Music on your iPhone, iPad, Mac and PC

CNET – Apple has released iOS 8.4 for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch users. The update includes a series of bug fixes, along with a new app to access the company’s new music streaming service, known as Apple Music. The service offers unlimited on-demand access to over 30 million tracks for only $9.99 per month for a single user or $14.99 for a family of up to six.

Also included with the iOS 8.4 update is access to the Beats 1 Radio station, which is available to free to anyone with an Apple ID. Beats 1 will go live on the air at 9 a.m. PT, 12 p.m. ET.

On an iOS device

You won’t find Apple Music in the App Store, instead you must update your device to iOS 8.4. This can be done by going to Settings, followed by General, selecting Software Update, and clicking on the Download and Install button.

Once complete, click on the white Music icon on your home screen. You will be given the option to either go to your music or to begin your free three-month trial of Apple Music. If you click the trial button you will be asked to choose a membership type (either individual or family), sign in, agree to Apple’s terms of use and confirm your purchase (you won’t actually be billed until after 90 days). This will give you access to the on-demand portion of the streaming service and features such as unlimited skips and saving music for offline listening.

Even if you don’t sign up for the trial, as long as you are signed in with your Apple ID account, you can still access the free Beats 1 radio station, follow musicians on Connect, and listen to Apple Music radio stations (with ads).

On Mac and PC

Apple Music is also available on Macs and Windows computers. In order to use the service you will need to have the latest version of iTunes installed. To check for an update on a Mac, open the program, click the iTunes drop-down menu in the top left corner of the screen and select Check for Updates. You will want to be on version 12.2

On a PC, click on the drop-down menu in the top left corner of the screen, select Show Menu Bar, then click on Help in the menu bar and select Check for Updates.

Last updated on Wednesday, July 1, 2015: Information on how to get Apple Music on Windows and Macs has been added.

Article by Dan Graziano for CNET

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