Visibility Is a Choice

Last November I wrote a blog post entitled “Is Invisibility Costing You Your Next Position.” Based on the overflow at the CFO conference roundtable, it’s a topic in which CFOs are at least curious, if not flat out interested.

As a result, I recently reposted the piece in a private forum ... and received the following response from a reader:

Let's face it: most "social media" is full of young people because they don't have anything better to do. It's less age discrimination and more competency discrimination. People who spend their days Twittering, Blogging, Facebooking and Googling each other aren't doing their jobs.

Real professionals, people with responsibility, don't have time to mess around with status updates or wind-bag pontification. Executives who "want to be found" do it through real-world networking. It's little league to assume that you'll be hired based on your blog.

A CFO doesn't have to Facebook or tweet or even blog to be leveraging social media. But he is absent from Linked In at his own peril.

Without a personal-professional web portfolio, Linked In becomes his home base. It is an effective Web 2.0 version of the old paper corporate bio, and everything he does online points back to his profile. In fact, with the URL as part of his outgoing email signature, his profile has the potential to go viral.

Within Linked In itself, though, are a variety of apps that can help every Finance Executive build his visibility and his value-positioning. For instance,

-- Share what you’re reading through the Amazon Reading List.
-- If you do presentations with PowerPoint or Keynote, upload your non-proprietary presentations, or portions of your presentations, in Google Presentations or Slideshare.
-- Create video clips of speaking engagements and attach them to your profile.

And be sure to use the Linked In status update bar to share resources, speaking engagements, and conferences you’re attending with your network.

All of these things are, in my humble opinion, critically important for raising visibility among a CFO's target audience as well as recruiters who specialize in your area of expertise.

You don’t have to tweet, or Facebook, or even blog. But choosing not to embrace social media, even minimally, is choosing to be invisible.