Do You Know Who is Viewing Your Personal Brand?
October 2nd, 2007 (2:00pm) Judi Sohn 9 Comments
by Dan Schawbel
While brushing your teeth or driving to work, do you know who is watching you? These days, anything is possible, due to the rise of social networking sites, blogs, forums and the focus on Google as a Personal Branding search engine. Employers and friends alike tend to Google your name to verify your identity and background. Even public relation firms focus on spreading messages through these networks, aside from their usual media pitch activities.
At any point in time, you could be subject to a Personal Brand disaster, where your name is associated with a negative connotation. The problem is that, you don’t know who is viewing your profile and which social networking site they are using. The more you spread your brand through these sites, the more you have to keep track of and moderate. If you don’t keep them current, it may appear that you are either younger or less experienced than you actually are.
Those that want to build their Personal Brands online and communicate their value proposition to the word will have to manage their reputation either weekly or daily.
Here are some tips on how to protect yourself:
1. Set a Google alert to your name, so that each day you will receive an email with the latest blog entries attached to your name.
2. Concentrate your Personal Branding efforts on a select few networks, such as Facebook, LinkedIn and your blog. These tend to have the highest installed bases, so they are more worthwhile.
3. Communicate to some of your most trusted friends, to make sure they are watching your reputation as well.
4. Google your name periodically to ensure that your information is kept up-to-date and accurate.
5. Set complex passwords so that you’re accounts do not suffer identity theft.
It’s important to note that as you build your brand and reputation, you take significant time to ensure integrity and accuracy. You never want to Google your name and find that you are misrepresented by a blogger or a comment on your Facebook wall. As you become a web worker, you want to establish a daily means of checking your status. There are way too many people that lose opportunities from what employers have seen online, so take the next step and start protecting your Personal Brand!
Dan Schawbel is owner of the Personal Branding Blog and publisher of the Personal Branding Magazine.
9 Comments Post your own comment
Anthony Russo says: October 2nd, 2007 6:17pm
I search my name through Google and Yahoo and don’t even come up. Apparantly trhere is an actor or director named Anthony Russo that takes up the first 2 pages on a search and my LinkedIn page or info about me never makes it, Oh well, I’m doomed to being unbranded, at least by a simple name search.
Anthony Russo
Great America Networks Conferencing
arusso@ganconference.com
http://www.ganconference.com
nika Boyce says: October 3rd, 2007 7:42am
There is only so much one can do when there is confusion in personal branding.
I had an interesting experience with this back in 1994. I had a new job and had been working there a couple of months and one morning went into work and things felt “different” with a couple of my co-workers. I shrugged it off until lunch time when one of them came up, with a twinkle in his eye, and asked if I was hiding anything. Thats a tough question to answer any time but at a new job with new people its even more difficult!
I replied that no I wasnt and what was he talking about? Seems that he found my name in the paper and I was headlining a lesbian comedy show. Turns out my alter-ego is a very successful lesbian comedian in that city (and across the US) but I had never known as thats not my community.
It was hard to convince him otherwise!
With people googling you and assuming their search is a good one, they make decisions that could be based on completely erroneous data!
There is nothing one can do to counter that.
If you google my name today, she dominates the results. Since I am a scientist, this is not too much of a problem (except for HNGs) in terms of my “brand” and my online presence is via a different name altogether so that brand is not diluted either.
I am just grateful she is not some sort of rightwing nut or some other embarrassing thing. I can imagine that could happen easily to any of us. There is still nothing you can do about that brand dilution.
Terry says: October 3rd, 2007 2:59pm
I’m a graphic designer by profession, and my portfolio website has always been terrygrifffindesign.com. Well once, a boss of mine found out–from a coworker whom I’d trusted with the information–that I maintain my own site. So he mistakenly went to “terrygriffin.com” instead, which turned out to be the portfolio site of an illustrator–a creative discipline related to my own–who had my same name!
Now, I was upset with the coworker for having blabbed my business, as it could have resulted in the boss taking issue with the fact that I freelance on the side. (At the time, I was new to freelancing and wasn’t sure what my employer’s policy was.) But there was a GOOD side and a BAD side that came of this…
Because my boss went to the wrong website, still thinking it was me–no one ever told him what my real URL was–he never found out about my freelancing. And I was more than happy to let him obliviously think that terrygriffin.com was actually me! (If he’d done a simple Google search, my cover would have been blown!)
Only problem was this: the Illustrator’s portfolio SUCKED!
Some years later, I would discover that the “other” Terry Griffin had disbanded his website and that the domain name had become available! So these days, I also own “terrygriffin.com.” For now, it redirects you to my main site…and that’s likely all it will ever do. But so help me God, as long as I remain Terry Griffin, no one else will ever again go to terrygriffin.com and see someone’s work besides mine!
Martin Wright says: October 4th, 2007 1:00pm
On your point about setting complex passwords, you could use PassPub to ensure that all your passwords are strong.
PassPub provides unique, strong passwords generated over a secure connection. There are many password formats including mnemonic and keyboard combinations.
Hope this is a useful privacy tool.
Martin Wright
PassPub – Strong Passwords, Uniquely Generated
PassPub Blog
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