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Personal branding is the process whereby people and their careers are marked as brands.
Actionable tips to establish a web presence worthy of remark that gets you hired.
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also, for those of you who knows more about SEO. Does it lowers the searchability of my name? The blog is ran on a wordpress platform, and both domain right now should be able to be used interchangably...
You could always try and use JeannieChan.com as a hub of all of your businesses/ideas and to promote yourself and your own personal brand. And use CuriousMarketeer.com for a more specific purpose, which is a blog on marketing. Unless you are a heavy weight in the industry and people will recognise your name, this is a better way to go, at least to start with.
Sorry if I wasn't clear, Jeannie. Personally, I would use CuriousMarketeer.com for your current blog. And use JeannieChan.com as a platform, either now or later, as a personal branding site.
The new name certainly tells the world more about your focus/interest/profession. I think it is a good idea. I have two domain names too. The intention that each gives an idea of what I am writing about.
There would be SEO consequences (you'd be starting over from scratch), but as far as branding goes, the catchier title is stronger. Have you considered keeping your blog where it is and just changing the title?
It seems that your trying to redo your current blog by renaming it and changing the content slightly. That will definitely kill any SEO for your name unless you set up a 301 redirect from your current URL to your new one. Anyone looking for you will find yourname.com and be redirected to your new blog. So it works both ways in your favor if you're starting from scratch.
This is for everyone in every network but I don't really wanna spam everyone's email out so if you're diggin' it, spread the word. It costs a couple hundred dollars to come up to Toronto to attend the ultimate thinker's networking conference, check it out: http://www.ideacityonline.com/
Quick question to all you Brazen folks regarding Personal Branding.
The other day, I was speaking with a friend during a class and we discussed transparency in social media. He said that you should have your Facebook/Twitter accounts open for everyone to see. I, however, said that users have the right to choose what content they put up on social media sites.
So, my question: to have a successful personal brand, do you need to have complete transparency across different social media platforms?
You should have consistency, but different social media sites have different purposes and different expectations of transparency. Private twitter feeds miss the point, but with facebook it's expected that much of your content will be closed-loop. Those are two very specific examples, though. Generally, I'd want to make available as much of my relevant online content as possible.
I've wondered the same thing so I finally broke down and created a second, more professional Facebook account so the account I've had since my sophomore year in college doesn't reflect negatively on my personal brand. It has nothing to do with the content I post, but frankly, even at 24 years old, I still don't trust my friends not to publicly humiliate me via my Facebook wall...
@Zak- I have a private twitter feed to communicate with my best friends and tend to tweet about random/stupid things. Most of my content and messages, however, go through my public twitter feed. I try to show my personality plus my interests with the open feed.
@Ashley I think our strategies are similar. you have two facebooks... i have two twitter accounts. As for my facebook, I utilize the "list" function and assign specific permission for each friend list.
I did the list thing on Facebook for a while, but I'm in a unique situation right now with my job...I'm quietly looking for a new one but hopelessly "friends" with coworkers, clients, etc. My only way around it was a new account!
I have facebook, and linkedin set to the privacy levels dictated by my current employer. Mostly it will hide who they are, and my location. I've gotten in trouble in the past with transparency within social media from them.
I wouldn't consider my personal Facebook account part of a personal branding effort. To seriously create a personal brand, not just online impression management of things you might have said of photos that might have been tagged, start from scratch. Perhaps with FB, create a fan page around your work or like Ashley a new profile. Make sure you always point people to, or sync it with, the place where you have true control over your brand - a personal website/blog, thus creating consistency.
Transparency is in the eyes of the beholder. Your brand does not depend on whether or not you protect your tweets or make your Facebook private, it revolves around the fact that you deliver value to your readers/viewers in a consistent manner. That could mean 1 or 1,000,000 people depending on your goals and milestones.
I believe we should draw lines to protect not only ourselves but also people important to us, but lately looks like the trend is moving on to "publish everything first, then decide which to hide" - if that's the way, we need to adapt our thinking not only our behavior... from TechCrunch:
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/12/30/we-all-live-in-public/
The google stat seemed to spark quite a discussion about personal branding, and more specifically, personal SEO. Might be a good to open a thread where we share our own SEO tips. So I ask, how do you get your content to the top of google for your name? How do you overcome negative, irrelevant or other people's content show share your name?
At brand-yourself here are the BASIC steps we advise people to take:
1)Choose the name u will SEO for. If you have a very common name or famous name, it might be difficult to rank high. Try using a middle initial or some variation. Then, use this name for everything
2) Buy your domain name. It's about 12 bucks a year, but it will outrank almost anything.
3)Build a personal site that includes everything about you and a bio. Write in the third person for keyword purposes
4)Publish content from that domain. This is the quickest way to fill google results. Don't need to blog every week, just a few articles here and there about your industry
5) Create more content & links. Links are very imp to google. Easiest way to point high powered links to your content is to join free directories and social profiles. Include a bio and be sure to interlink EVERYTHING. (examples are plaxo, naymz, ziggs, and many more)
6) Create press releases around your accomplishments: Want to create positive content that pushes other content down and creates links to your websites and profiles? Submit a press release to the dozens of free newswires out there about recent events. Graduated college, created a website, accepted a job? It can be about anything. Just remember to link back to your content
I've never heard of someone submit press releases to newswires to push down "neg" or even just not relevant search results before. Can you talk a little more ab this?
No problem. So basically most people have google results that are either not about them, irrelevant, or even negative. To combat that, you can create content, and try to get it to the top of google. You need positive content and powerful links. Press releases fit both needs. You can write positive info about yourself, and link to your other positive content. You can write a release about a recent accomplishment and submit it to free to online newswires.
Many newswires will allow you to submit personal releases:
PressAbout.com is one of them.
Here is a list of 20 free newswires. Not all of them will allow personal releases but a good amount of them will.
The best way really to be at the top of google is to write good content, among many other important things, content is key. That is why blogs are kings of goggle. Lots of content that people can use, and want to read. And since google indexes words, lots of good words help, of course in a meaningful arrangement :)
All this talk of googling yourself has got me thinking. Should you have a business name? For most people it might be a company name they create for themselves, but how about for an individual? Such as being known as Jenn, but your name is really Jennifer as an example. What should a person do in this situation when it comes to google results? Perhaps buy Jen and Jennifer related domains and redirect to one? Thoughts?
I like this question a lot! I don't think it matters too much. For example, I hate, hate my full name of Victoria because I think it's too pretentious, so I go by Vicki (on resume as well) which might be a little too playful but is quick to remember and snappy. There's always this study http://www.slate.com/id/2116449/ floating around Would love to know what others think.
Hey John - I'm buying 2 domain names for and redirecting one to the other for exactly that reason. My user name for many of my online profiles is mbreau so I am buying both mbreau.com and Melissabreau.com (as well as Jargonwriter.com, for my blog which is titled "jargon writer").
Thats funny because I just did the exact thing! I realized a domain pertaining to my name wasn't purchased. So I purchased it, and now its pointing to my portfolio website.
I read your link...what a cruel father...and its contraray to other research I've read about people with weird names are more likely to land in jail, or make less: http://www.quirkology.com/USA/Experiment_surname.shtml
End of the article spoke that it is not the name itself though :) good for a person named Loser.
Oh and for people who don't know. Google treats dashes (personal-branding) differently than underscores (personal_branding), which can really affect the search-ability of your website or name. For example if you are getting a twitter name, don't use an underscore between words, it won't help....
@John - how does google read - and _ differently? does one rank above the other or are they separate but equal?
Well if you just try a search of your name for instance, with a dash and with a underscore inbetween (melissa-breau, melissa_breau) you can see the difference. Basically Google treats dashes as a space between words, and underscores like a unique character. So hello_world, Googled, will look for the entire string of characters, instead of finding instances of hello and world separately.
On Negative Google Results: I agree with Kim. I think frankly replying to the negative results is the best option. I have clients that refuse to do this. For these corporate entities/individuals, I launch a campaign to move the negative results lower on the list of Google results by having them join as many high-ranking websites as possible (like Facebook, Twitter, & Linkedin)and filling those sources with optimized content.
How do you guys handle negative Google results? I'm a newspaper reporter and sometimes being a good newspaper reporter means (some of) the people you write about don't like you. I've recently had some negative backlash appear on personal blogs - which also appear when you Google me. Is there something I should do? Or just ignore it?
Hey Jill,
Social networking lead me to one of my fave OB-Gyns because of his internet presence. While most people wrote about how wonderful he was, what clinched the deal for me was that he would write these thoughtful responses to people who bitched him out. Rather than negative comments going unexplained, he would present his intention during the situation in a respectful way. Super impressive to me. Maybe try presenting a graceful and honest response to your criticisms will help.
I like Kim's idea. The only other thing I can think of is promoting the "good" responses to the point where the bad ones fall much later in your search results.
I don't have experience with this myself but I too like Kim's response. People are allowed to have their opinions on your work and you can't really expect everything to be all good. What you can do is like she said, write thoughtful responses to people. Try and not get defensive with your comments. Maintain an open mind and be respectful of all comments whether their good or bad. Speak from experience and be genuine. You will gain respect no matter what your position is.
Replying to negative results is usually a good thing; however, one must take a step back and critique the validity of the negative blogs. Will acknowledgement simply increase the value of the writer's opinion or will it help clarify your stance? If the answer is the latter, by all mean, address and even reply to the person. If, however, it borders on pandering to a tantrum, ignore the person. In most lines of work there is no way to make everyone happy. Most people understand that.
Responding never hurts. As everyone said, pretending they don't exist is not an option. However, since you are a writer, it should not be hard to bury these results. Publish some content on a personal blog. If you don't already have a domain name for your name, buy one. This will outweigh almost anything in google, and publishing content from this domain will quickly fill results.
I used to Google myself a lot, but not I'm pretty sure that my online presence is predictable and doesn't change much. I think people who are new to personal branding get more of a kick out of it... hell, I still get a kick out of it!
KC, I don't think it's a stigma to Google yourself anymore which means people should theoretically not be afraid of admitting it anymore.
First of all, you HAVE to Google yourself. It's totally necessary if you're applying for work. Because they Google you and you need to be prepared. But after you've checked it out, then set up a Google alerts for your name so you don't get caught off guard.
Absolutely Marian. I find it surprising only 42% of employers have googled their name, but alarming considering 82% of recruiters do. You NEED to understand what you look like when someone searches for you. Setting up a google alert must makes sense
Justin is right. Owning your top google results are a hug part of personal branding and job search. We had someone tell us today that an employer Googled them and associated them with results that were not even about them. We were inspired to write a guide to help people quickly own their results. Let me know if you find it helpful http://su.pr/28QQo9
i'll admit that I google myself every few weeks. A great tool for owning your personal brand/image on google is the option to make a public profile. For a long time, I was hesitant to make one because I wanted to not draw attention to myself. Eventually, I figured that it was better to have an a hub where people could find my social media accounts/blog and thus have more control over my image.
Tangential, but one of the best things I've found to "fill" my google search is commenting on big name blogs (ie NYTimes blogs). Then, when someone searches for me, the NYTimes comes up.
I think googling yourself is fun; I'm proud of the fact that I fill over 3 google pages when you look up my name...
@Melissa, the NYT tip is aswesome!
Right now my web presence is pretty weak, and I'm working on that, but I share a name with former Canadian prime minister so that's the first thing that comes up when I google myself. I'm like on pg 3. Man... My parents should have named me jawackatima. No competition there! Lol
@Kim - Do you have a middle initial? If you share a name with someone who's big online (ie a major political figure) try building your presence by "altering" your online name. For example, ALWAYS using your middle initial. Or using only a first initial and not your 1st name (ie. K. Campbell) Finding a way to make your name unique takes a little bit of playing around but once you have something stick with it and you should have an easier time building an unique presence.
I agree, this number seems low. I think that an important part of personal branding is owning the top 3 spots in SERPs when your name is the search term.
I have created websites and "SEOed" my social media profiles to make sure this occurs.
I feel like that number is right on par, as that is almost 150million people, which is a lot! There are a few reasons for this:
1) People are just starting to embrace social media as a daily routine and don't know about SEO.
2) Big generational gap as Gen-Y/X would make up most of this statistic. The young and elderly will keep this % low because they have no need to maintain their image.
3)We may be in a recession but millions of people still have jobs and no need to control their rep.
Dan, I presented on social media in front of 50 HR/Legal Execs. in L.A. this week, and when asked how many Google potential candidates, only a few raised their hand. (true, they could have been sleeping through my presentation...) VERY hard to believe, like your stat.
That being said, since we live & breathe social media everyday we sometimes need to take a step back & realize that most Americans are way behind. In fact, the "Social Media Divide" is widening faster than the Digital Divide.
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I'm considering rebranding my blog. Previously was JeannieChan.com. I'm trying out CuriousMarketeer.com. I thought it'd allow me to continue to build the blog, while maintain flexibility for my name's domain name... good or bad move from a personal branding POV? thoughts?