I recently wrote a short little article for a networking newsletter called The Networking Edge titled:
Building a Personal Internet Presence the Easy Way - by Ron Bates
I've received a lot of positive feedback from those that have taken the time to read it.
What prompted me to write it is that I'm truly amazed at the number of "high profile" executives that I communicate with (especially Marketing Executives) who are "invisible" on the Internet. If you go the extra step and couple the executive's employer's company name with the executive's name when doing a search on the individual in Google you might find them, but if you just search on their name they are no where to be found.
I've been really amazed at what I've been able to accomplish by leveraging the Ecademy platform in a very short amount of time.
Most people know that your Ecademy Profile will be indexed associated with your name along with some of your Ecademy blogs and ranked high when doing a search on your name in Google. That said, I've been - blown away - as to how you can drive the ranking of other - non-Ecademy - webpages just by providing links to them in content created on Ecademy. These links are also indexed - and - associated with your name by search engines.
As just one example, I have a 1-page bio hosted on my executive search firm's website. It isn't something you can navigate to through the website and just click on a link to view. You actually have to know the URL to access it. I simply host it under the domain so when clients ask to know a little more about me, I can just send them the URL rather than send them an MS Word document as an attachment.
My search firm's website is simply on line information for clients who require it. I just point them to the site rather than E-mail them a bunch of attachments. The site isn't really a direct marketing tool such that I'm concerned about it SEO or ranking high in search engines. It's Alexa ranking is about 13 Billion or something insignificant (i.e., it's non-existent).
Prior to joining Ecademy, my 1-page bio was no where to be found when doing a search on my name in Google or MSN.
After joining Ecademy, building a profile and doing some basic blogging, I've been able to drive the ranking of my 1-page bio to rank 3rd or 4th on Google, and pretty consistently it's the 1st on MSN. On MSN it even ranks higher than my Ecademy profile.
This is extremely powerful if you want to establish and maintain a personal internet presence. It isn't necessarily a huge advantage to simply return a hit that says:
Ecademy Profile: Ron Bates
That still isn't obvious it's referring to me.
But a search return on the first page (let alone the 1st - 4th hit) that says:
Ron Bates - Expert in Mission Critical Retained Executive Search
Well, you can't even come close to this kind of exposure via other mechanisms without a awful lot of work/expertise/money.
Because I believe so strongly in how Ecademy can help a proactive job seeker (given most recruiters "Google" executive candidates prior to contacting them) I have also written about it in my article Conducting a Job Search Campaign.
What I've also been amazed at is the number of Ecademy members that aren't aware you can accomplish this via Ecademy.
