Personal branding in four quick steps
What do you get when you Google yourself? Your prospective employer is doing this, are they seeing what you want them to see?
Your personal brand needs to be protected, as your corporate brand does. Unless your name is John Smith (sorry John), you can take four simple steps to ensure that it’s you (and not somebody claiming to be you) who appears on the first page of search results.
1. Run your name through UserNameCheck. If your name is available at the places you want to be visible (or at least be in control of, register. I went for the blogging platforms and the “bigger” social media sites.
2. Register your name as a domain name. Do what you will with it – your contact details, your resume, or just a blank holding page.
3. Put your CV on LinkedIn and VisualCV. I created my VisualCV yesterday and it’s already on the first page of Google.
4. Brand away. You now own considerable internet real-estate and will figure high in search results. You have more control over what goes up and what’s said about you (again, unless you’re John Smith, or Brad Pitt).
Not sure about branding? Then take baby steps. Start positive and build on it. “I’m John Smith and I’m a professional nice guy” is considerably better than “John Smith is my ex-husband and a total bastard”.
These steps won’t take more than an hour and they’re a reasonable safeguard if you’re worried about your online reputation. Somebody, somewhere, will thank me some day.
Matthew, thank-you for reminding people of the importance of registering their personal domain name – regardless of whether it will be used immediately. Unless you have an atypical name (like me), it’s important to get a solid, and easy to remember domain now, before it’s taken. The cost is minimal and the value to you and your personal brand is priceless. A few months ago I even registered my 2yr and 13yr old daughter’s names for future use. In the case of my girls, I opted to incorporate their first and middle names (ex: ameliamichelle.com) since they may go through a name change when married.
I also recently wrote a blog post expressing the value and versatility of owning a personal domain.
You can read it here: http://tastynectar.com/blog/2008/10/whats-in-a-domain-name-anyway/
[...] You’ve got a CV, and you’ve got a LinkedIn profile. Your LinkedIn profile will give you some visibility. [...]
[...] You’ve got a CV, and you’ve got a LinkedIn profile. Your LinkedIn profile will give you some visibility. [...]