For several years, we’ve been told that words are powerful, we’ve heard about the power of words when debating, when defending a cause, when presenting ourselves… The fact that words must be well chosen, well spelled and well exposed has never been challenged.

We attended to panoply of conferences and listened to a wide range of speeches and we noticed that eloquence lay in the words.

When we are in front of these smooth talkers, we feel whether inspiration or admiration or both because they reach the aim of catching our attention. They manipulate words and choose good sentences so as to transmit messages. Sometimes we don’t get the time to analyze the quality of their messages we just fall in the trap of the words’ power.

Today, we are attending to a new era regarding the importance of words. We can say that the more we become digitalized the more we lose the direct contact with people. We subscribe to a range of social and professional networks, we talk more to each other by phone, mail or chat and what is impressive is that quick reflex we have when we get in touch with any person we don’t know before. Usually we look for the name of this person on the net, we try to find his/her linkedIn or facebook’s profile and according to the results we find we build a sort of trust.

In this way, we’re seeking for what I call the “Trustful Digital Identity (TDI)“. What can build this faith on these people, we do not know, are, in fact, their positions, their origins, their activities and their aspirations. It’s a sort of words we have in mind that we search and verify if that person matches with them. The point here is that the internet profile represents this person and the words we often look for must be contained in this digital representation of who could be this individual.

Sometimes we may lose the chance to know some people or some opportunities because of these words the others have in mind. And of course everyone has or should have its own list of words that he may think useful to make people keen to get in touch with him. Here comes the power of keywords.
It’s not a question of speech, or sentences or verbal expression. It’s more a question of defining ourselves in a few relevant words that show authencity and prove that we match completely with the seekers’ expectations.

Let’s make it simple, we are members of linkedIn community and as we are a part of this wide network we can conclude that we are all looking for new opportunities and want to stay tuned. When I talk about opportunities it’s not necessarily jobs, it could be for entertainment or for social purposes… Whatever the goal is, people will use keywords to find you. Keep in mind that these keywords must be contained in your profile (summary, experiences, education…) and that they have to be relevant. Its efficiency lies in how much they are – don’t exceed five in my opinion – and resides also in the extent to which it introduces you and describes your objectives.

The question we may ask is how can we measure the effectiveness of our keywords and especially how could we verify that we are making them highlighted in our profile’s descriptions?
I think each one of us must think about this dilemma, I am not able to give the right solution but I can give the best one regarding what I know and what I usually do. Indeed, the efficiency of the keywords can be judged according to the different associations we can make with it. And to know how can we check the proficiency of these words in our digital profiles I opt for the word clouds and think it may be a good way to improve your TDI. For instance, I converted my profile summary from text to cloudy words through a website (www.wordle.net) and the results are demonstrated in the picture below.

Is it efficient for me? I think the answer is Yes. By combining the major words that appear in large font I can make associations such as: business management, business development, marketing, customer relationship, commercial information … and management skills.

Therefore, we notice that we could make numerous associations and we have a great chance that some of these associations comply with what the people may look for in our profiles. At the same time, these “key” words constitute the key to introduce ourselves and to describe our competencies and aims.

This is the magic of keywords and this is the power of words in the digital speech … the message should be short but highly courteous.

Now, it’s up to each one of us to build a relevant Trustful Digital Identity…