An Exercise: Personal Branding

If you, a loyal LWL reader, were waiting for just the right moment to ask me about how to control search engines’ results for your name, your earnest and eager hesitation can now come to an end. To make things simpler for everyone who wants to know, here are the top five things I think you should do to optimize the management of your online reputation:

1. Personalize your domain. My first several websites were on Geocities, believe it or not. My next few sites after that were on other people’s servers: my local ISP in Maryland and then NYU’s. But by summer 2000, I already owned a domain. If you don’t have at least one domain yet, that means you’re a full nine years behind me. And if you’re only going to reserve one domain, shouldn’t it one that expresses exactly who and what you are? YourName.com will one day be priceless, so stop hesitating and buy it while it still has a price.
2. Join everything. If you’re already on Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, LinkedIn, and all the other popular social networks (excuse me, social utilities), you’ve already started. But everything means everything. If you are Yossi Cohen or Sanjay Patel, do you really think it’s wise to let all the other Yossi Cohens and Sanjay Patels stake a claim to having that prized username on tomorrow’s Next Big Thing? Didn’t think so.
3. Create content. Anyone who says that content isn’t the most important thing is clueless. A regular stream of high quality content is the first, last and best way of getting recognized by search engines. If you’re going to do only one thing to control the way your name appears online, sign your name up for a blog and start writing in it. By the way, text is essential because the search engines read it easiest, but Google also loves images (make sure you optimize your alt tags) and video (embed it from Youtube).
4. Share. Just like in life, on the web you can go on indefinitely in your own little world, but you probably won’t amount to much until you have a community. You must participate in the discussions around you. Comment on other people’s sites with tasteful and unobtrusive links back to your own. Use social networks and your blog to let people know what you’re reading, listening to, watching and thinking about. Sharing also has the benefit of being an excellent stand-in for original content, for those people who feel like they don’t have a lot to say.
5. Relax. One day is all it takes to ruin a person’s reputation. But neither Rome nor the web were built in a day, and a person’s tarnished name can’t be restored in that time either. Search engines index content at their own pace, not at anyone else’s, so it might take a while before they pick up your content and it might take considerably longer until they reach all of it. Take a deep breath and wait it out!