If you want to build a bigger professional profile for yourself, some of these resources will likely help you.
Some I have written, others are links to other resources. There are many more. I plan to keep adding to the list.
E-books to get your content out there
Social Media Marketing
A lot of speakers on this topic today are still at the point of telling people who to accept as a friend on Facebook, and why you need a LinkedIn profile. And it goes pretty quickly from that beginner level to advanced metrics, with not a lot in between.
Most people who want to build professional profile get the basics -- they've got a blog, they've got a Slideshare account, they're on Twitter.
Content, Tone and Personality
"Building Online Trust: 7 Tips for Being Authentic Online", Alice Hansen, Inc. Magazine. (http://www.inc.com/guides/201104/how-to-build-online-trust-by-being-authentic.html)
Great advice on how to show authenticity and build credibility through how you talk (e.g. selective disclosure), and what you do (use a real name). Great advice for major brands, but would apply to anyone building their personal brand. I started using my real name in most comments online a long time ago, and I wish more people would do that.
"Six Ways to Manage Your Online Reputation", by CB Whittemore, Content Marketing Institute Blog. (http://www.contentmarketinginstitute.com/2011/05/how-to-manage-your-reputation-online/)
CB is always worth reading for her practical approach to the art of social media and customer engagement. In this article she shares ways to monitor your Google search results, develop digital profiles, set expectations for your content and responsiveness, and develop content ideas.
"Five Things to Avoid Doing On Your Business Blog", by THOMMA, Blue Volcano Media Blog. (http://www.bluevolcanomedia.com/2011/05/16/5-things-to-avoid-doing-on-your-business-blog/)
Five great tips, all rules I've broken, but try not to. My favorite to avoid: talking only to yourself. Sporadic posting is a problem many business blogs have -- if you can't post regularly, you should rethink the strategy. (Yes, I've been guilty!)
"How to Build Your Reputation on Social Q&A Sites", by Aliza Sherman, Gigaom Collaboration. (http://gigaom.com/collaboration/how-to-build-your-reputation-on-social-qa-sites/)
Quora, Focus, and Namesake are all profile building tools that work on the principle of experts sharing answers to business questions. If you have seen LinkedIn Q+A, these sites are very similar. Aliza Sherman provides a good description of each of these sites, including the type of people and quality of conversation.
I keep discovering more of these social Q+A sites -- I'm sure they exist in every category or vertical.
http://technologymarketers.com/marketingAnswers/
Metrics and Measurement
Klout (http://klout.com)
Klout is a social media tool that measures your influence on others. Their algorithm is heavily associated with Twitter, and tracks how many people include you in a list, how many retweet your posts, comment on your content, and so forth. Very easy to use, and pretty interesting.
Useful tools
Paper.li (http://paper.li)
Paper.li will take a feed of your Twitter subscriptions and condense it into an easy-to-read newspaper, such as the Susanology Daily. The service is completely automated and catching on quickly. You can choose to automatically retweet your creation, as I do, or you can just use it to keep up. Note that this paper is about the people YOU follow, which is what makes it so cool.
Scoop.it (http://www.scoop.it/)
Scoop.it is another content curation tool - at the time of writing it is in beta mode. It requires some active curation on your part -- you select topics and give them key words, and then Scoopit delivers a set of content you can choose from. A downloadable bookmarklet lets you easily add content to your topics. You can subscribe to the content that others curate, as well as offering your own content. Here's a sample I created in a few minutes: http://www.scoop.it/t/building-profile-with-content-marketing
How To Articles
"How to Add YouTube Videos to Your Site or Blog", Karen Rubin, HubSpot Marketing Blog. (http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/13057/How-to-Add-YouTube-Videos-to-Your-Site-or-Blog.aspx)
Simple video on video.
"How to maximize the value of SlideShare", KIT, SlideShare Blog. (http://blog.slideshare.net/2011/05/04/how-to-maximize-the-value-of-slideshare/ )
SlideShare is a great tool that should be part of anyone's content marketing strategy. You can easily repurpose content, and the medium has content in it's DNA -- it's not about finding a date, or posting a joke, it's about learning. The article has links to some good tips. One biggie: if you want more viewers, you probably need a longer slide-show.(But not a long boring show, a long useful show!)
