Andrew Douglas B2B journalist, turned PR man, specializing in new media.

Treat your career like a business

Social media has give you the keys -- and the responsibility -- to manage your career. Your future hinges on your ability to build your personal brand.

Check out this piece of wisdom from Seth Godin, author of Tribes, on his blog:

Everyone is a journalist, of course, but just a few do it for a living. Everyone is a freelancer, or, at the very least, always looking for the next gig. Everyone with a credit card can do the purchasing, they just expense it.

If the only reason you're only wearing one hat is because you've always only worn one hat, that's not a good reason.

The previous generation got their 30-year pin and retired with a pension. That's not the world we live in now. I don't know many people my age -- other than bureaucrats and teachers -- who believe they'll be with their current employer until they retire.

A neighbour of ours wears multiple hats. He has a steady paycheck but he's not resting on his laurels. Stuart Robertson is a freelance web designer and consultant, the web manager for the University of Guelph and a member of the faculty in the Department of Media Studies at the University of Guelph-Humber. He's not moonlighting either. He's upfront with his employer about his other gigs.

Social media tools like Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook, and open-source blogging software like Wordpress, give you the ability to market yourself. What would you have done 10 years ago? I guess you could have tried to get published and then move to the speaking circuit but that was a tough, long road. Now social media tools allow anyone to build their personal brand. You can start with an audience of one and build it from there.

Since we've started blogging and tweeting, my wife Anne Douglas and I have picked up a paying speaking engagement. We're feeling inspired to try recording video for our blogs and investing even more money to drive traffic to our sites.

Granted, we're communications professionals and justify our obsession with new media as a way to learn the ropes for our clients. But if you believe Valarie Willis, guest blogger on TomPeters.com, everyone is going to have to get their hands dirty:

Even people inside organizations today should view their work and career as if they owned them. How differently would we act if we approached our work with an entrepreneurial spirit? Would you go after new skills, would you promote yourself more, would you find new projects to associate yourself with?

Talent is still key, work doesn't get done without the right talent in place. Today, however, the way organizations obtain the talent they need is changing. Talent will be brought in for projects, short and long term, and then released, and the cycle will start all over again.

I've been a pure entrepreneur relying on our small business to pay the mortgage. At other times I've been a wage slave, happy to have someone else worry about making sure salaries get paid. If Willis is right, the future might be more like the former, with "talent" being brought in on a case-by-case basis... or not.

So saddle up, it's time to treat your treat career like a business.