A Fresh Look at Ziggs

Ziggs’ website design has just been updated with a fresh new look!

Come see all the new ways we can help you build your online brand, plus connect with your existing friends and many more new people now at Ziggs.

Caller ID for the Internet

Admit it. You've screened your calls at times thanks to caller ID. Caller ID is one of the most popular features on home and cell phones today. Wouldn't it be nice to know a bit more about who's "calling" for you on the Internet as well? In other words, who's Googling you?

ABC and Fox news have recently produced a news story that describes Ziggs' Search Alerts service as "caller ID for the Internet." If you're familiar with Ziggs Search Alerts, you may already know how valuable it is to get an email notification from Ziggs each time someone has searched for you and then viewed your Ziggs Profile through any search engine.

Elizabeth Yekhtikian, Account Director at Blanc and Otus, says she receives a search alert from Ziggs at least once per day. "I can check on the site and it shows me with little maps where the searches are coming from, and from exactly which town, within which state or part of the country or the world," said Yekhtikian.

You may be wondering how Ziggs knows where someone has searched for you from? Technology is the key, according to Tim DeMello, CEO Ziggs: "Every computer has a Web browser that has an IP address, which basically gives you a location," said DeMello. "It gives you the ability to time stamp it. So if someone goes to Google and they are in San Diego, we clearly know the time they went on and the time it came into us. We know what browser it came from." If you're a member at Ziggs, we share this information with you.
If you'd like to get notified and learn more about who's viewed your Ziggs Profile through any search engine, just register for free at Ziggs. This service and many others at Ziggs - services that help you develop an online profile and control your online image - are all free.

If you're already a member of the Ziggs community and would like to learn more about who's been searching for you, visit your Search Alerts Map now.

See how Fox news describes this free service: "Who's Googling You?"

A New Year. A New You.

The newest PEW/Internet study reveals that more than 53% of US Internet users (up from 22% in 2002) have looked up information via search engines on people they know, including work colleagues, friends, neighbors, old flames and more. In light of this insight, it becomes ever more important to really shine online.

So, as the calendar flips forward to a fresh start in the new year, it’s a good time to take stock of one’s accomplishments over the past year. Take a moment to savor your victories, learn from your challenges and set a new course for 2008. As part of this effort, ask yourself how have you changed in the past year… how have you grown? Then, take what you’ve earned and learned and incorporate it into your Ziggs Profile to advance your online brand to reflect the newest you for 2008.

How to update the online you for '08

Expand your Smile ... Add some new photos to your Ziggs Profile, up to six, to give your visitors a better view of you.

Bond over Books ... Instantly add images of your favorite books to your Ziggs Profile….what you’re reading, what you’d recommend.

Lead with Groups ... Join an existing group or start a new free public group at Ziggs to connect with colleagues over topics of interest, from investments to sports to parenting. Then include a link for every group you participate on the Interests page of your Ziggs Profile

Now that you're off and running, best wishes for a happy and healthy new year.

"Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go." - T. S. Eliot

Brand U Topia

Personal branding -- the art and science of developing your personal brand -- has become one of the most powerful motivational drivers behind the rise of personal blogs, social networking, amateur journalism and the ubiquitous self-expression found across the Web today. I am always inspired to see the breadth of participation from people, ranging from experts in their fields to newcomers or amateurs on a topic, who are leaving their own personal stamp on the web with their virtual voice, so to speak.

Case in point, the recent global telesummit, “A Brand You World”, covered the topic of personal branding from many different angles. If you’re interested in starting your personal brand online or continuing to build upon what you've already established, you may find the new content now available from this global telesummit quite helpful.

Here are a few of the sessions available for your listening pleasure:

Express Your Personal Brand Through the Power of Podcasting
With Neville Hobson

Jazz Up Your Personal Brand for Business Success
With Marc Gobe

Evangelizing Evangelists to Build a Business and Build Your Brand
With Guy Kawasaki, joined by Ziggs' Founder Tim DeMello

MicroBranding: Build a Powerful Personal or Local Brand…& Beat Your Competition
With T. Scott Gross

Promoting Brand You with Viral Marketing on the Web
With David Meerman Scott

How to Write a Great Business Blog
With Debbie Weil

For more information, visit: http://www.personalbrandingsummit.com/

A Brand You World's 2007 Global Telesummit

This year is the 10th anniversary of Tom Peters' thought-provoking article on Personal Branding, published in Fast Company in 1997. To commemorate this event, leading personal branding strategists from around the world have organized a global telesummit on the topic of Personal Branding, to be held on Thursday, November 8th.

The buzz about this event, A Brand You World, is spreading around the world, as organizers, speakers, authors and participants will be joining together on this day from across the globe to discuss and learn more about the value and power of personal branding, plus how to apply it to your career and business for greater success. In light of the incredible value this event will be offering, Ziggs is very proud to be a sponsor.

To virtually attend A Brand You World's 2007 Global Telesummit:

Register for Free (see Register Now box in the right hand column)

Read the Press Release

See an Overview

This event is expecting over 100,000 participants and will consist of 24 separate seminars, loaded with value and expertise on personal branding from dozens of world class speakers.

We're very excited to share that Ziggs' very own Tim DeMello will be a speaker at this event at 10am EST on November 8th, on the topic of "Evangelizing Evangelists to Build a Business and Build Your Brand."

Mark your calendar today! I wouldn't miss it.

"Get a Better Paying Job"

Gerri Willis, columnist for CNN Money, just published some great tips about which online tools to use in a search for a better paying job.

Gerri recommends that you 1) get connected, 2) be Google-able and 3) target your search.

She says “boosting your visibility online is more and more important, and there are companies out there that can help.”

“Check out Ziggs.com where you can post a free professional profile on the site. If a recruiter is looking for a job candidate online, your name may just pop up at the top of a Web search. [With Ziggs] you’ll even be sent an e-mail alert if someone clicks and views on your page [your profile].”

Gerri is referring to Ziggs Real-Time Search Alerts. Every time your Ziggs Profile is viewed, you will receive an email alert that tells you from where you were viewed, what time the visitor viewed your profile, as well as what search terms were used to find your profile. This free service helps you keep tabs on how often people are finding and viewing your Ziggs Profile.

New for Search Alerts, Ziggs now offers a global map with a red pin point for every location in the world from which you’ve been searched and viewed. To see the power of this hot new feature at Ziggs, click on your Search Alerts link in the Message Center of your Hub.

In addition to creating a free profile at Ziggs and being alerted each time your profile is viewed, job searchers can also search and network with the millions of other professionals listed in the Ziggs Index of Professionals. Find local people in your field of interest for free using Ziggs People Search. Try it out today.

Our thanks to Gerri for recommending Ziggs as a helpful tool in the world of job search.

The Personal Side of Branding

I recently spoke with William Arruda, personal brand guru, founder of Reach and co-author of Career Distinction: Stand Out By Building Your Brand. William has circled the globe helping thousands of clients build their online personal brands for career growth. It was very gratifying to speak with a comrade-in-arms on the topic of the power of personal brand building and taking control of your online presence on the Web today. Questions he asks every professional:

“Do you stand out among your competitors or colleagues? Should you command higher compensation? Can you pick and choose the clients, projects or assignments you want? Are you achieving your professional goals?”

To help professionals achieve their goals and stand out in their field, he has developed the “Personal Branding 1-2-3 Success!” program. Available through the Reach website, you can learn more about how he helps his clients build success with building their personal brand.

William has created a Ziggs Profile to support his own online brand. You too should be proud of the fact that you’ve already taken one of the important steps in creating an online brand with your own Ziggs Profile. Now, be sure it’s up to date and expresses your best self today.

Riding the Digital Fast Lane

In 1993, Marc Andreessen and NCSA and the University of Illinois developed a graphical user interface to the world wide web and called it Mosaic. The digital fast lane was then officially opened to early adopters with this first graphical browser. Fortunately for you and me, today it’s easy to ride the digital fast lane, without being a techie.

If you already have an online profile at Ziggs, congratulations! You are officially on the digital fast lane. You have successfully merged onto the high speed lane of Internet life. Maintaining your Ziggs Profile - refreshing it when needed, typically once a month – helps ensure that your online image drives well and always looks great on the digital highway.

But what about your friends and family. Are they on the digital highway with you? Have you brought them online to join you? Having an online professional profile listed at Ziggs is quite frankly the easiest and safest way to participate in the online world in the good company of millions of other professionals. Once in Ziggs, your people can create their own profile, then you can all create groups, discuss topics, even send polls online – the digital fast lane, all within the privacy of your own online world at Ziggs.

See you in the fast lane.

A Tale of Two Profiles

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…”

The opening line from Charles Dickens’ historical novel A Tale of Two Cities, written in 1859. For those who missed this in 8th grade English, it’s a story of two cities, London and Paris, and two characters. Charles Darnay is the high-standing, romantic French society man, who is respectable but not interesting. Sydney Carton is the English barrister who is charismatic and magnetic but seedy and secretly exciting. It would be interesting to ask Dickens for his reaction to today’s world where millions of people have created their own online “characters” or profiles to portray themselves as either respectable and honest or to present a more alluring living-in-the-fast-lane life of hipness and hotness.

Just as Elvis and the Rolling Stones were considered provocative and erotic in their day, so today’s adults sometimes see the explicit online imagery and communications expressed in some social networks as out of bounds for them and their own children. It will be fascinating to watch how the new generation growing up in social networking websites matures into professionals with careers and to mark how their online personas or profiles morph with them from social to professional. Which type of profile have you created?

From Profiles to Avatars

Beyond an online profile, virtual worlds, such as Second Life, give you the ability to create an avatar, a virtual online representation of yourself. Depending on your goal, your virtual self can be similar to you or complete fantasy. For example, one of the most famous avatars in Second Life is the one created by Ian Hughes, virtual world pioneer and evangelist. Known inside as epredator, it’s befitting that his avatar is fantastic (and looks nothing like him).

According to Irving Wladawsky-Berger, even IBM now has policy guidelines on creating an avatar: "Virtual worlds give you the ability to create the way in which you want to represent your digital persona visually. This can be anything from a reasonable likeness of the actual person to a fictional creature... In general, your digital persona’s appearance is up to you. When you are using your avatar or persona in association with IBM, however, your judgment in these matters should be shaped by the same general guidelines that apply to IBMers in physical environments – i.e., that your appearance be appropriate to the context of your activities. You need to be especially sensitive to the appropriateness of your avatar or persona’s appearance when you are meeting with IBM clients or conducting IBM business."

So, how many identities can one person have? Actual, virtual, physical, student, work, home? The list could go on. How about having just one?

Now Back to the Physical World

For the majority of us living in the physical and professional world, here are some tips on portraying your best professional self online while also projecting interest and depth - in other words, be the best of both Darnay and Carton:

For the career-minded, it’s a must-do today to post a profile in two professional networking websites. The first, of course, is Ziggs. For those unfamiliar with Ziggs, this website offers you the most comprehensive profile template for daily use in your current profession as well as for visibility to recruiters for both passive and active job searches. In addition to Ziggs Bio-Builder which helps you easily write up your own bio, your Ziggs Profile gives you several ways to build honest interest into your professional points. For example, by answering a few of the interview questions offered in your Ziggs Profile, you can present a more well-rounded view of yourself that gives a newcomer a better chance to bond with you. Here's a great example of a very professional yet expressive online profile at Ziggs: Meet V. Cheryl Womack.

Ziggs also offers daily utility by giving you the ability to import the people important to you into Ziggs from most popular email systems. Then easily create and use groups, discussions and polls to better stay in touch with your colleagues, your clubs, your charities, as well as family and friends.

In addition to Ziggs, LinkedIn is the other important professional networking website that lets you create an online profile. It’s a good tool for the job seeker needing to network outside the immediate circle of contacts.

And for the edgy at heart, MySpace and Facebook will continue to be home to the online profiles of date seekers, band promoters, music followers and collegiates.

How to Get a Better Job While on Vacation

Just the simple act of creating an online profile at Ziggs immediately puts you in front of thousands of recruiters, including Fortune 500 blue-chips like Microsoft, Sony and Pfizer, who come to Ziggs daily looking for new candidates for great jobs...new candidates such as yourself. So even when you're off on your summer vacation, your professional profile at Ziggs remains on the job in the eyes of recruiters.

CNN's Money Magazine recommends Ziggs for this purpose:

"If you recoil from networking events, never get around to putting out feelers and have no clue how to 'work a room,' congratulations! You're the ideal candidate for a terrific new job."

"More than a fifth of the Fortune 500, including blue-chip names like Pfizer, Sony and Microsoft, use these outfits [i.e. Ziggs] as part of their recruiting process."

"The bottom line: Even if you're not looking for a new job, you want potential employers to see you in the most flattering light. Fortunately, it's easy to take control of your [online] profiles."

If you don't have a free professional profile at Ziggs, create one today. If you already have one, be sure it is complete and compelling. Maximize your profile by answering the Interview questions offered in the Interview section of your Ziggs Profile. Your answers to these questions give you the opportunity to share more of the real you in a positive light with your audience, far more than a resume could ever provide