Building and maintaining your online presence can sound like a whole lot of work. No matter how important you may know it is for your career, who wants to spend several hours a day tinkering around on LinkedIn, trying to come up with blog posts, or tweeting until your fingers go numb? And really, who has the time?
Turns out, it doesn’t take nearly as much time as most people think. In fact, it only takes nine minutes a day.
When LinkedIn asked personal branding guru William Arruda how much time careerists should dedicate to putting themselves out there every day, he decided, after some research, that nine really was the magic number.
Why? Dedicating only nine minutes to your career and your professional goals means that you won’t lose focus or get overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of brand management. It’s easy to get sidetracked when you’re aiming to spend an hour—even 30 minutes—promoting yourself. Instead, choose to accomplish one task for your career every day. Plus, because it feels so attainable (come on, who doesn’t have nine minutes?), you’re more likely to actually do it.
What are some things you can do in nine minutes to boost your career? Here are some places to get started:
- Craft and send a great email to a contact you haven’t talk to in ages (or a brand new contact!).
- Join a LinkedIn group and write one thoughtful comment.
- Perfect your LinkedIn summary.
- Find and post an awesome article on LinkedIn, Twitter, or another social network.
- Connect with two or three people on LinkedIn.
This week, choose a time of day—maybe the last nine minutes of your workday or nine minutes during your afternoon slump—and dedicate yourself to spending it doing something to build up your career and personal brand. The results will add up more quickly than you think.