Linking Up with LinkedIn Dayton

Today I was given the dis­tinct honor of address­ing the LinkedIn Day­ton net­work­ing group at Champps in Cen­ter­ville, Ohio on the topic of lever­ag­ing web based tools to build your per­sonal brand.  I want to thank every­one who attended the event.  I hope you found it to be fun and infor­ma­tive. I know that I had a blast and made a num­ber of pro­fes­sional con­nec­tions in the process.

I was given this oppor­tu­nity by respond­ing to a call for speak­ers put out by Joe Durbin and Michael Mor­ley, who orga­nize much of the LinkedIn Day­ton group’s actual face to face meet­ings.  This was the first break­fast meet­ing, and they sent out an email request for speak­ers, which I responded to imme­di­ately.  I thank them for allow­ing me to be the first, and hope­fully not the last, speaker.

As for the con­tent of the pre­sen­ta­tion, I offered my 2 cents on how to lever­age the emerg­ing web to build your brand and fur­ther your career.  I talked about my recent job changes, and the valu­able lessons I learned about the impor­tance of both know­ing peo­ple, and more impor­tantly, being known.  I have given sim­i­lar pre­sen­ta­tions before, but have never related the per­sonal his­tory of how I even got into blog­ging and social net­work­ing rel­a­tive to the crazy events of my life.

My mes­sage in a nut­shell was this.  We live in a new age.  40 Years of “doing good work and get­ting a gold watch at the end” are done.  You have to take own­er­ship of your life and your career.  Build­ing a net­work plays a huge role in deter­min­ing your abil­ity to con­trol your future.  This applies to all areas of life, not just finance.  The web makes it eas­ier and more afford­able to build your brand, and to lever­age your strengths to cre­ate your future career.

I spoke about how indi­vid­u­als can lever­age every­thing from Microblogs like Twit­ter and Plurk, to Blogs using Word­Press, Pod­casts, Squidoo, Social Net­works, and other free and easy tools to join the con­ver­sa­tion and estab­lish an area of exper­tise.  I tried to deliver enough explan­tion of these tools to make them under­stand­able, with­out being too tech­ni­cal in how they work.  We dis­cussed numer­ous ways to uti­lize LinkedIn, beyond just an online repos­i­tory for con­tact infor­ma­tion.  (Research Data­base, Employ­ment Tool, Sales Infor­ma­tion, Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Vehi­cle, Infor­ma­tion Source) In sum­mary, it was a high level overview of a broad swath of web 2.0 tools that can ben­e­fit those who seek to lever­age the web as a per­sonal brand­ing tool.

Blog­ging and social media have changed my life in so many ways.  They led me to my cur­rent job at LUCRUM — where we use blogs, social net­works, wikis, and pod­casts to build the com­pany both inter­nally and exter­nally.  They have gen­er­ated count­less con­nec­tions with other peo­ple around the globe, and put me in touch with some of the most bril­liant minds on the planet.  I love what I do, and I am delighted that I not only get to do it, but that peo­ple are inter­ested in hear­ing me talk about it too.

Thanks again to all who came to the event today.  If you have ques­tions about any­thing I cov­ered, or did not cover, in my pre­sen­ta­tion.  Please drop me a note.  I am happy to help in any way that I can.  I look for­ward to the next LinkedIn Break­fast, where I will get to eat, social­ize, and enjoy watch­ing the speaker.

David E. Bow­man — LinkedIn