On Wednesday, Women 2.0 Ottawa held its second event - with a focus on ‘networking 101‘ and how to develop and manage your personal brand.

Maureen McCann of ProMotion Career Solutions, a company that helps clients break the cycle of career mediocrity by improving their confidence and marketability, lead the session and took us through an interesting exercise which I’d like to share with you.

Networking can be difficult for some people. As Maureen states, you are either a natural or you have to ’study’ to get good at it. Certainly for some people it can be difficult to walk up to an individual or group of individuals at an event and start a conversation with them. How do you introduce yourself? What topic do you start with, etc.

Maureen’s tip is to think first about what you want to achieve out of networking. You obviously are engaging in the networking process for a reason. Perhaps you are looking to promote your company and your expertise. Maybe you are looking for employment or are looking to hire. The point is - whatever your reason, you definitely have a reason!

To make it easier on yourself Maureen suggests you go through the following exercise. I’ve also included an example for each stage:

• - Write down your objective for networking
  Ex: To meet women entrepreneurs and other women working in technology to share best practices, learn from one another, etc
• - Write down who your target audience is for networking
  Ex: Women in technology and women entrepreneurs
• - Follow by writing down what you have to offer your target audience
  Ex: Access to a network of women who work in technology and/or are entrepreneurs themselves. Providing a channel through which these women can support one another, share best practices and learn from one another.
• - Then write why you are good at it
  Ex: I can share my experience as a high tech marketer and my experiences as a woman in a management position with others. Women 2.0 Ottawa is a grassroots initiative that offers women a new way to network and learn from one another in a relaxed and open environment. I enjoy bringing women together in an effort to offer support and mentorship opportunities for them.

Building my personal brand - where do I start?

Ok - so now you’ve identified your target audience for your networking efforts. But what is your 30-second (or less) pitch? How would you describe your top 3 attributes to someone you’ve just met? As Maureen stated Wednesday night, it can sometimes be difficult to figure this out. Especially for some women who have been taught in their early years to be modest and not to promote themselves. And sometimes these attributes are obvious to us and other times we have a hard time figuring them out.

Maureen referenced an online tool that can help you identify both your positive and negative attributes. After all, it’s important to know your weaknesses so that you can take steps to improve on them. The tool is called 360 Reach. It’s a personal brand assessment tool you can use to ‘get the real story’ about how you are perceived by others.

How 360 Reach works

You pay $29.97 to send a series of questions around to your friends, family and colleagues. They answer these questions (all done online through a secure interface) about you giving comment on both your positive and negative attributes. The responses are kept completely anonymous to ensure you receive candid feedback. You can then use this information to understand how others perceive you. This can be invaluable when focusing on your professional and personal development.

In a previous article on networking and managing your personal brand, we talked about the importance of managing information about yourself on the World Wide Web. Maureen suggests you conduct an exercise to determine your ‘Google Quotient‘ - your personal online ranking. The Executive Update describes your Google Quotient (GQ) as:

…the number of hits found on your name in a Google search, or thought of another way, it’s your personal online ranking. Your name is your key word, and when someone searches for your name, they should come up with references directly related to you and, ideally, your personal brand. Your job is to increase your GQ in a positive way.

To start, you can do as The Executive Update suggests and simply conduct a Google search on your name to see what comes up. Maureen also suggests using a free online identity calculator offered by Career Distinction. The instructions for using this tool also tell you to search your name in Google but what it does is help you to interpret the results by taking you through the following steps:

1. What’s the total number of responses Google returned?
2. What’s the total number of responses on the first three pages of results?
3. Now go back to those first three pages of your Google results and manually total up the responses that are NOT about you. (They are about someone else with your name.) Enter the total for pages 1, 2, and 3
4. The tool then asks you to look more closely at your results, and then check from a list of options the one that best describes your results (no relevance, little relevance, some relevance, high relevance, complete relevance)
5. Finally you select from another series of options a statement that best describes the career level for which you are aiming (these are aspirational - relating to the next level in your career you are looking to reach.)

My results:

To guinea pig it out, I used the tool to calculate my own Google Quotient. Here’s what the Online Identify Calculator told me:

Your online identity score is 9 out of a possible score of 10.

Congratulations. You are digitally distinct. This is the nirvana of online identity. Keep up the good work, and remember that your Google results can change as fast as the weather in New England. So, regularly monitor your online identity. Read Chapter 11 of Career Distinction for more ideas on how to continue to build your brand online.

I’ve always wanted to reach nirvana in my life so this is fantastic news for me! Seriously though - I encourage anyone interested in assessing their online brand identity to try the tool out. It’s free (in beta right now but seemed bug free to me) and only takes a couple of minutes. If you’re comfortable, enter the responses you get in the comments section below.Happy brand identity hunting!

- Melany Gallant
Women 2.0 Ottawa co-founder