The concept of building and maintaining a personal brand became more popular with the boom of social media and search engines. All of a sudden, people meet you at an event and while you are speaking to them, they are Googling and checking you out on social media, which means there is no where to hide anymore, for real.
This is why I always advice people to be mindful of what they upload on social media, all in the name of freedom or excitement because it might come back to hurt you. I say this because even when you upload and delete, there might still be traces somewhere online. As a startup, especially, you should be careful of what you put online to protect your interest as well as that of your outfit online from day one. Many people wonder why they are refused Visa at say, the US embassy for instance. They for get that the embassy officials have access to tons of information about them online which they cross-check with the form they filled. Any item that does not tally automatically disqualifies them as they are seen as untruthful! You, therefore, need to be in control of yourself online.
Let me introduce to you 4 websites that can help you manage your personal brand and build your online reputation.
1. LinkedIn.com
Today, I am connected to roughly 20,000 LinkedIn directly, plus an extended connection of over 300,000 people – what this simply means for my online brand is that, every other day a minimum of 20 people stumble on my profile and spend a few seconds or minutes on it. If you search for me on LinkedIn, you will discover a profile that is well packaged and believable. This is exactly what I recommend you do with your own LinkedIn account too.
2. BrandYourself.com
The idea behind brandyourself is to help you take control of the search results people see when they run a search on you via Google or Bing. I remember a friend of mine who is a Senior Executive in a bank and anytime you Google his name, what you find is a story about EFCC and his name, but when you check the said article – it has nothing to do with him. It is probably a case of mistaken identity or bad SEO. brandyourself wiill help you to take care of a similar situation like this.
3. About.me
Another great website that allows you to create a personal homepage that becomes a central place of your social media properties like LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and even your blog. This is a cool tool that can get you on the first page of a search result because, the about.me domain is well recognized.
4. NameChk.com
The final website that can help you to develop and manage your personal brand is NameChk.com.
The reason why this tool is cool is that it can help you check if a particular username is still available on social networks. The fact is that you do not want to be using different usernames on different networks – it might be in your own interest to actually ensure you have a unified brand online.
There are certainly many other tools out there and we will like you to let the community in on some of these too that have worked for you. If you, however, start to use these four seriously, you will surely notice a huge difference in your personal brand online.
