April 2008 Hall of Fame
Brand-Yourself.com: Professional web identities for stude...
Brand-Yourself.com: Professional web identities for students to differentiate from competition in the job market
Simply put, tags are keywords used to identify an idea. Just click on one of the tags below to find like-minded ideas.
-
Q1: We are initially targeting college seniors in "creative" majors that would bring more than a resume to an interview. Who else would benefit from our service?
(3 replies)Are you sure you want to report as abuse?
03.17.09 | 08:23 PMI think you should start even younger - target teens who may be applying to competitive summer and vacation programs - I work with creative teens and they are always interested in applying to something. Plus, in New York City, where we are, students who want to go to specific public high schools need to apply to high school and often need to interview or show a portfolio to get into really competitive schools - and this is PUBLIC school. School choice is really great but can be difficult for those students who don't have advocates or who don't know how to represent themselves. Anyway, look younger too! Check out our idea here: http://www.ideablob.com/ideas/4903-Inspire-the-Next-Generation-of- Good luck, Marisa
Are you sure you want to report as abuse?
04.02.08 | 09:44 AMNew teachers are another group that you could market to. With No Child Left Behind teachers have to do more things to get a job. In Connecticut for example teachers need to complete what's called the BEST program where they design a portfolio that contains examples of their work. I help many teachers with this. I would look into it as it is something that they are required to do. I know many pay hundreds for help with this. I'm sure other states have similiar initiatives.
Are you sure you want to report as abuse?
by coverofnight04.01.08 | 12:41 AMYou should expand your market beyond seniors and try to look in to freelancer and other professions that would benefit from having an personal website that could display their documents and such
-
What advice do you have to help me grow my idea?
(9 replies)Are you sure you want to report as abuse?
by LegacyMan08.18.08 | 04:31 AMI guess I'm late to this, but it sounds like a great idea. I'm not sure if it is an option that has been considered, but many students coming out of college right now will inevitable change jobs more frequently than even their parents did.
You could market this service to business related schools and departments, and also work with small businesses to develop an intern service.
Also, you could provide affiliate links to business card printers so that recent graduates that are serious about their careers could have a way to market there online presence while out and about. This could kill a couple of birds with one stone: it would be a value added service that wouldn't increase your overhead, and done through an affiliate marketing program, it could be an additional source of income.
Are you sure you want to report as abuse?
05.04.08 | 11:46 PMi think this is a very good idea and you have received some good feedback already!
have you considered talking to career counselors at universities?
If you can have them sign up for your service on behalf of the students at that university (you may have to start with a small school!), you are directly paid by the department (or college or university). the students pay for it through their tuition, "activity fees" or another fee (which universities are really good at coming up with :) )
I would target the professions where competition is tough and the payscales are high - like Business or Law or maybe even engineering. Many engineers have worked on a lot of projects as part of academics or co-curricular activities that they would love to brag about - and your site will help them do that.
"A Brand Management Dashboard that allows you to track your position on search engines and provides tools to improve your Google rank" - I dont think this is really important for a graduating student...but it might be helpful for professionals or sma…morell businesses
Are you sure you want to report as abuse?
04.30.08 | 09:25 AMI really like the idea of providing assistance to students entering the workforce. I mentor and interact with a lot of these newbies (and my husband hires many young adults just out of college). I also think it's important to help educate these new young professionals on what should be basic work "do's and dont's," which often seems to be inherently missing in young job candidates. For example, don't go to an interview dressed up like you're going to a club (e.g., wearing tight, low-cut clothing), don't tell a potential employer you're available to start working at 4 pm when you're applying for a salaried, full-time job that starts at 8 am, do expect that a salaried job may sometimes mean having to work longer than 8 hours a day, and do go into an interview having researched the company and position you're interviewing for so you can develop thoughtful responses beyond, "I just think the job sounds interesting."
As a professional working in the advertising/marketing world for over 9 yrs, I know how powerful a strong brand presence is. Though a brand …morecan easily fall flat if it lacks substance or if its brand promises aren't met. It's important to properly set-up expectations on both sides of the fence (candidate and employer), so-to-speak.
Are you sure you want to report as abuse?
by jlutat04.27.08 | 11:41 AMHow about offering this service to small businesses (in addition to teachers, and artists and all the others listed above) who would like to have a self service web presence too. The sky is the limit...all you need are attractive templates. You can categorize your template selections and service anyone/everyone who has a need.
Are you sure you want to report as abuse?
by SianMuir
04.07.08 | 10:02 PMI work closely with our career office so I know that this is a service that they would greatly appreciate! I don’t have any advice exactly -- rather some questions that you may want to consider (if you haven’t already)
1. How will you make money? Subscription? One-off fee? As we all know students are typically price conscious
2. Most students will need a lot of help building appropriate content (just ask any career counselor who has looked at a resume lately!). Can you provide that expertise and related to the above point can you make enough money to cover this cost? Are you going to monitor content? If not, how are you going to ensure a quality service?
3. Can you provide any value-added services such as potential employer introductions?
4. As any business knows, you can’t just build a site and get customers. I see that you will be providing ‘step-by-step actions to strengthen your brand on the web’ but will students be able to effectively execute this? Many businesses can’t! And if not, how will this impact the perceived value of your service?
5…more. What barriers do you have to stopping anyone from replicating your business -- particularly a tech-savvy student do-it-yourself type using wordpress for example?
6. Will you have enough variation of templates so it doesn’t look canned?
I think you have a great value proposition – good luck!!
Are you sure you want to report as abuse?
by Adreniline04.07.08 | 09:21 PMOne thing you may want to look into (if you don't want to charge money for it) - would to implement ads into all sites created from your site - in this way each site could potentially pay itself off (and the domain cost) over time.
To figure out how long before you'd break even, I don't know, but it's just a thought,
-Max
Are you sure you want to report as abuse?
04.04.08 | 06:29 PMIn response to theshadow27 -
We appreciate your feedback. However, consider this:
Brand-Yourself.com will have a domain name availability checker built into the checkout process, so users will be able to find the domain name they want before buying. It will provide alternative suggestions such as YourNameOnline.com or Your[ ]Name.com (including your middle initial) if "YourName.com" is already taken.
There are also other domains besides .com. Specifically, .name is growing in popularity and was specifically created for personal websites. For example, if petekistler.com is taken, it's likely that petekistler.name is not. Also, there are other domains like .net to choose from.
We highly stress the importance of an independent domain name separate from Brand-yourself.com in order for users to establish a stronger brand and greatly increase their online credibility. Although the free publicity from petekistler.brand-yourself.com would be nice, petekistler.com is the only true professional route to take.
Finally, I'm not qu…moreite sure where you got your domain name rates from, but in the U.S., domains cost $9 a year. And if you buy domains wholesale (in bulk), they get even cheaper.
Thanks again for the feedback, and thank you to everyone else who has posted.
We can't wait to get our business launched, but we need your support - so vote for Brand-Yourself.com!
Are you sure you want to report as abuse?
by theshadow2704.04.08 | 04:56 PMIt is going to be hard to guarantee everyone their own domain name (BillyFred.com, or what have you). You might want to get some simple, meaningful domain like beyourself.com, or beyou.com and give out BillyFred.beyou.com (as an example). Normal domains cost $20 or so per year to register, which might be a deterrent for students or grads.
Idea Description
Our mission is to allow students to create an online web presence that shows them in the best possible light, articulates their unique value to employers and builds a personal brand on the web.
We wanted a system that provides:
- Your own URL, such as [YourName].com
- Easy “What You See is What You Get” editing of website content
- A large selection of highly professional website themes
- Multimedia uploads and integration (text, images, audio and video)
- A Brand Management Dashboard that allows you to track your position on search engines and provides tools to improve your Google rank.
Since this system didn't exist, we built it. And now we're in love with it!
What will you do if you win $10,000 for this idea?
First and foremost we want to give back to the community by hosting a “Brand Fest” event, giving presentations to local small businesses and struggling entrepreneurs.
We want to further develop the Brand Management Dashboard, transforming it into a hub to manage your entire online presence. It will provide detailed statistics on your position in Google searches, your progress to date in improving your rank, and step-by-step actions to strengthen your brand on the web.
Next, we will talk to our current customers (and prospective users) about what features they’d like to see and hire a part-time developer to implement them.
You like it. You’re confused by it. You want to know more. Ask questions and post comments here.
Post a commentIn response to the comment by jghoward - that may be true but is every student close enough friends with one of the web developers to ask them to build a web site for them? If not, it would probably cost significantly more than this site is going to. I´ve done web development and could create a page for another alumn, but unless it was someone I was really close friends with, I certainly wouldn´t be doing it for free.
Sorry, but this isn't really necessary. At any college campus, there are scores of talented freelancers with Web skills that could do the same thing for fellow alumni. Students would be smart to give business to their peers.
This is awesome. It's professional and creative.
Respect my man, I knew you guys had it in you. Good luck!
AMAZING! i can't wait to use the site!
this sounds really cool!
i like it, good luck
Hopefully I'll learn how to spell independant sometime before then as well. ;)
I think that this is a great idea, and not just for students but for cottage industries, WAHM's, Artists, anyone indepedant and who may not have the skillset to market themselves as effectively as needed to compete in todays field. I hope you'll make it available to anyone who wants to use it, because I'll definitely sign up.
As i am a professional recently unemployed, I thought this would be a good way to market myself via the internet after an interview with potential employers. They could read about me in ways that i didn't articulate at my initial meeting. Interesting idea
sounds like a great lidea that could really help someone land a job
sounds like a great lidea that could really help someone land a job
Interesting idea! We should be in contact.
I think this is a great COMPLIMENT to a formal resume. Once they've sorted your resume into the "yes" file, rather than the "round file" (i.e. the trash can), you can direct them to your online profile in anticipation of the interview. At least, I think that's the best way to utilize this incredible idea.
I really like the idea, and actually it may compliment my regional college website idea quite nicely. The only question I have is will employers actually take the time to look through these? I heard on average an employer gives a resume 3 seconds of look over. Or is this sort of idea more typical of jobs that require more creativity and originality?
I really like this idea guys, good luck!!
yO mAnG, tHiS iDeA iS sIq. OfF tHe HeEzIe. I wAnT mE a WeB iDeNtItY.
Make It Happen, this idea makes all the world of sense, it's got my vote
Good Idea, good luck
this is a great idea, i could really use a service like this to promote myself