LinkedIn and Branding: An Effective way of Branding Yourself

Today, we all try to sell our skills to get the job that we all dream about every day. Okay, may be not every day, but the point is we tend to look for opportunities to expand our career to get that dream job. Before we discuss effective ways of branding our skills, let us consider what exactly are we selling? If you are in the Computer Science field, you are not only selling your programming skills, or software development skills, but you are also selling countless hours you have spent on successfully honing those skills. We have developed our skills over a period of time, and as we head out in the “real world”, we have to effectively sell our skills to tell the employers who we actually are, and to achieve what we really deserve.

How to Brand Yourself?

Now that we understand the importance of our skills and what we are selling, let us look at some of the effective ways to brand ourselves. When it comes to branding ourselves, networking is the most essential tool. It is important to maintain our network because there are great amounts of chances that you will get your dream job via networking. In most of the cases, how it works is if some member from your network has a job opening, you will be the first one to be informed, or you will be recommended by that member (And that recommendation usually does the magic!). So, how do you get yourself into a network? There are many possible networking sites that enable you to join the network. Personally, I like LinkedIn because it is the most “professional networking” site available.

What is LinkedIn?

LinkedIn is a professional networking site that has nearly 238 million users, and 3million business pages (1). Ever since LinkedIn’s launch in 2003, LinkedIn is helping their users to network professionally with others. LinkedIn allows its users to find their classmates, colleagues, alumni, and clients who are connected with each other professionally. LinkedIn also has very similar feature as Facebook of liking posts, joining groups, and sharing interesting posts.

LinkedIn for Networking

LinkedIn allows you to “connect” with your friends, colleagues, and clients who share similar skills or know you professionally. What is interesting about LinkedIn is their “Second-degree connections” and “Third-degree connection”. These two features are one of the most important things about LinkedIn networking. Additional connections work as if you have a friend in your “connection”, then you can have an access to their connections (known as “second-degree” connection), and you also have an access to connection of “second-degree’s” connection (known as “third-degree” connection). For example, if you have around “800 direct connections (then it) will give you an overall network up to approximately 10 million individuals” (2). This means that connecting to just 800 individuals will give an access to countless individuals; thus giving you a great opportunity to enhance your career. Another important feature of LinkedIn includes "following" specific companies that users like. For example, if I like Google, I can follow Google, and I will be able to see every updates they make on their official page. Following companies you like is important because they might update “job openings” via their LinkedIn page. Third important tool to consider when expanding your network via LinkedIn is joining groups. For instance, I am associated with Computer Science group of San Jose State University, where group members’ posts about upcoming events that are related to Computer Science, or job opportunities. Lastly, LinkedIn will automatically posts some interesting job opportunities on your home page based on your interests, skills, and other information that you have provided on your profile.

Overall, LinkedIn is an effective way of networking with millions of members. LinkedIn is an endless network which enables you to expand your professional career. I hope you enjoyed reading about LinkedIn and branding. I will be looking forward to your replies, and suggestions to improve my blog posts. Thank you for your time!

Reference:

1.       http://expandedramblings.com/index.php/by-the-numbers-a-few-important-linkedin-stats/

2.       http://biznik.com/articles/the-truth-about-linkedin-2-3-degree-connections-and-whether-to-ignore-them-or-not

3.      http://www.thewilsongrp.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/crowdsource.jpeg

4.       http://www.linkedin.com/

QR Codes: Importance and Security of QR Codes

This QR code is for my Blog

Have you ever seen a box-looking barcode and wonder what it is? They are QR codes, or Quick Response codes. QR codes were developed by a Japanese company to keep track of their inventories. Today, QR codes are becoming very popular in the United States, Europe, and many other countries. QR codes can be found everywhere around us. Newspapers, magazines, fliers, business cards, and T-shirts (Yes! On T-shirts) often contain QR codes. But, what are we supposed to do with these QR codes? We are supposed to scan them with our smart phones, or tablets to gain more information about the product, receive instant coupons, know more about upcoming events, or get contact information of someone. So, how do we get a QR code scanner? Anyone can simply download free apps available on the App store or Google Play to scan QR codes. (Yes, it’s that simple!)

Why QR codes over 1-D barcodes?

It is important to differentiate between QR codes and 1-D barcodes to understand the importance and advantages of QR codes. First, QR codes can be scanned from a 360° angle, whereas 1-D barcodes can only be scanned from horizontal sides. Second important difference is the amount of data each barcode can hold. As Sankara Narayanan, an information security researcher, points out in his article, “Bar codes are linear one-dimensional codes and can only hold up to 20 numerical digits, whereas QR codes are two-dimensional (2D) matrix barcodes that can hold 7,089 numeric characters and 4, 296 alphanumeric characters, and 1, 817 kanji characters of information.” The ability of QR codes to hold more data is what makes them very useful, and with this advantage business owners can put more information about their products, or include URL of their websites to inform consumers about the current sales. Lastly, QR codes take less space compare to 1-D barcodes. So, QR codes can be helpful in saving printing costs for small businesses and large corporations.

QR codes for promoting Company’s Brand

QR codes can be very useful for business owners to promote their brands. Since they are very easy to generate, business owners should generate a code for their business use. For businesses, QR codes can provide contact information, current sales information, give customers Wi-Fi access (great for cafe, and restaurants), options of getting instant coupons, and provide more information about products. Businesses should consider using QR codes because a recent study shows there are more customers who are keen to use QR codes and shop through QR codes because it saves them a hassle of waiting in long lines. The numbers of users who are shopping through QR codes are steadily increasing and it would be very smart tactics for business owners to advertise their brand via QR codes.

 Security of QR codes  

                  

Although QR codes have significant advantages, we should always consider security of QR codes. It is essential for users to understand security of QR codes because often QR codes are connected with shortened URL. It is very hard to decide whether shortened URL will take one to safe site, or unsecure site. If the site is not legitimate, then it can download malware in to your device, or the URL will lead you to the website which is controlled by hackers. In these cases, users might lose their personal information stored on their smart phones, such as bank account information, personal photos, and much more. More information on QR code security is discussed in this article. A solution to this problem can be solved by choosing a correct QR code scanner app. Some of the free available QR code scanner apps let you preview the webpage that the QR code will take you on. This is very useful because it enables users to reject the request if they find out that QR code they are using is broken.

I will be looking forward to hear back from you. Please leave your comments below to give me feedback, and inform me about my blog post. 

Social Networking and Security or Lack of When Promoting Your Brand

In the 21^st century, social networking sites have become very popular. They also became very important part of our daily lives. We utilize many social networking sites to stay connected, convey our regards, wish each other for their birthdays, and to associate ourselves with certain groups. But, why social networking sites are very important tool for businesses? Many companies see this new innovation as a great way to expand their businesses. For instance, companies like Microsoft, Cisco, Star Bucks, Target, and many others use their Facebook pages to inform their audience about their new innovations, current sales, and offer discounts. These companies use social networking sites as a tool to get immediate feedback from their customers, and improve their products based on their customers’ feedback. Social networking sites have helped many businesses to expand their businesses via connecting to their customers directly. 

This image of Windows's Facebook Page illustrates their current sales, and links to directly shop from their Facebook page.  Source

Things to consider when promoting a company's Brand  Source

Important things to consider when promoting a company’s Brand: 

Since social networking is important for expanding businesses, there are few vital things to take into consideration when promoting brands on social networking sites. First, business owners should target specific audience. They should choose their audience based on age groups, demographics and locations. For example, if someone is selling video games, their best audience would be kids and adults, but not senior citizens. To get better understanding of the importance of audience profile, this will be a very useful source. Second, it is important for business owners to know what consumers are talking about their brand because their vital feedback can help in improving products. Consumers’ feedback determines fate of product because consumers are more likely to market products to their friends and relatives by spreading the words. So, it is essential to figure out what consumers are talking about owners brand on the web. This source will enable individual to find out what consumers are talking about them. Another important thing to consider is to active participation of consumers in conversations. Simply actively updating the company’s Facebook page and encouraging consumers to comment on recent statuses can achieve this task.  

source

Security of Social Networking sites: 

It is crucial to manage security of owner’s social networking sites because some hackers would be able to hack into owner’s account and get access to all-important documents, users’ data, and private information of business. This would damage owner’s reputation, it would break consumer’s trust in owner’s business, and owners and users both will have to jeopardize their personal information. Since many companies are using direct buy options from their Facebook page, many consumers will have to risk their bank account information in case if someone is able to get access to the owner’s social networking sites. But what can business owners do to protect themselves from web threats? There are many careful steps that business owners’ can take to save themselves from becoming victim of hackers. First, owners should strengthen their administrative account. One simple way of doing this is by assigning at least two administrators (admin) for a business page. Additionally, admins should regularly review admins’ activity, and delete things that seem to be threat. For instance, some users might put their advertisements which have a risk of containing malware. They should use one-time password feature to receive temporary password every time to strengthen their business account. More information on one-time password can be found here. Another important feature to utilize on social networking sites is, deleting unnecessary comments. In Facebook, owner has an option of keeping posted comments on their page or deleting them, if comments seem to damage the owners’ reputation. This feature is important to use because there will be certain occasions where someone will try to spam business page or write inappropriate comments.