Develop a Strong Personal Brand Online – Part 2

June 2, 2008 · Comments

In the first part of my series on how to develop a strong personal brand online, I talked about the human elements of branding, and why you should consider building a strong personal brand. Let’s go into the technology of how this is accomplished.

The Technology of Brands

My friend and interactive media strategist Adam Broitman calls Google a “reputation management system.” I love it. Essentially, what Google knows is what’s true, as far as the uneducated are concerned. So, how does Google come to accept you as the authority on something? There are a few measurements to that at present.

  • Inbound links from other sources – if someone is linking to your website, you must have information of value, especially if that someone who’s doing the linking is important.
  • Outbound links to quality material – this is actually more for human love, but certainly helps prove that you’re a lively presence.
  • Readable, searchable pages – if Google can tell what you’re talking about at your website, you probably are trying to offer something to the world.
  • Constantly updating content – Google values freshness over staleness (don’t we all?)
  • Listed in directories – Google wants to know that you’ve submitted your site for inclusion in the more prominent search engines and website directories.
  • Mechanical quality – Google has a lot of other things it values, like well-written websites that follow standards, and it’s a little bit of learning to understand them all. Hubspot makes a free Website Grader tool that would help you understand a bit.

That’s what Google cares about, and that’s how a lot of people are searching for you. But we do this for humans, because humans are who make the decisions. So let’s look into what counts for your strong personal brand technologically, with humans in mind.

Start With a Home Base

First and foremost, build a site to call your own. I recommend a blog, because of a blog’s ability to command more attention from Google on one hand, and because you can use it to build your voice on the other. I recommend buying your own name as a domain ( here’s a list of domain registration coupon codes for GoDaddy.com). It might not be your home base or part of your largest plan, but buy it now while you can. And then, if you have another brand you want to promote as your BIG #1 brand, then buy that domain name, too, and put up a blog.

The aesthetics of your blog and your blog design are up to you. Pretty blogs don’t hurt people’s opinion of your work.

But we have to start thinking outside the blog, too. It’s not ALL about you. Or maybe it is, but it’s about how you get out and travel the web, too.

Build a Few Accounts

To participate on the web these days requires that you build some accounts at various web platforms. Here’s a quick list of sites and why you should have an account there:

  • Google Accounts – so you can use several dozen free applications by Google.
  • Yahoo! Accounts / Mail – so you can use several dozen free applications by Yahoo. (Also, take advantage of Yahoo’s OpenID account).
  • Digg – social news site.
  • StumbleUpon – social news site.
  • YouTube – video sharing site.
  • Flickr – video sharing site.
  • Upcoming.org – social events calendar.
  • Del.icio.us – social bookmarking.
  • PayPal – online money transfer.
  • eBay – auction site.
  • Amazon.com – shopping site.
  • This doesn’t fit anywhere else, but take a few pictures of your head to make avatars for accounts. Your company logo doesn’t cut it to me. I want a picture of your head, so that we can identify you at conferences and the like.


You might have some other “must have” accounts for my list. If so, let’s talk about it in the comments section, and maybe I’ll update with some of them.

Social Networks to Consider

There are plenty of communities online, and these all have social networks to empower them. I could list about a hundred places where you might choose to spend your time, but here are some real baseline social networks where your presence might help further develop your brand:

  • Twitter – if you don’t “get it” right away, that’s okay. The learning curve is about 30 days before you feel like it’s indispensable.
  • Facebook – I use Facebook as an outpost, where I build my profile, link back to my site, and give people a bit more understanding of who I am and what matters to me.
  • LinkedIn – This is a professional network. Don’t let the “looks like a resume” fool you. Write your profile as if a human will actually read it. Be interesting. And participate with the community, and you’ll develop more awareness and build a stronger future.
  • And a specialized network. If you have a niche or genre of interest, be sure to find a vibrant community to join that surrounds it. Love photography? Get into Flickr. Huge on music? Get into MuxTape or any million other cool music communities.

Coming Up Next

This is the end of part 2 of the series. Hopefully, you’ve got some suggestions to add to this section, as you clearly have some experience in how these technologies apply.

In the last part of the series, we’ll talk about how you might apply the human skill and the technology to your use of personal branding. This will have a mix of strategic and tactical points for you to consider, and hopefully, you’ll come away with some next steps to apply to your own personal brand.

How’s this working for you? What else do you need? Let’s talk about it in the comments.

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  • one thing that I don't quite understand is why google only indexes a certain amount of images from my blog and not others. Most of the traffic to my blog comes from people searching for things that my images contain (fine art), happening upon my images in their search and ending up at my site but it's the same four pages every time, pages from last year!

    Every single word in my blog links to those same images, even if I have images that are closer to the search term. it appears that google has branded me with the images it chose to index (and the 90% it didn't!).

    Does anyone know why Google chooses certain images on your blog/website to include in it's image search and not others?
    All of my pages index just about immediately but I can't get a new image to index no matter what I do. help Chris!
  • Hey Chris
    It's true, you are "what Google says we are". When i do a search for a business or a person, if they don't appear on that first page of Google, right or wrong i start to question their 'brand authority'. Your legitimacy these days is very tied into your Google rankings. There are only 2 ways onto that first page, buy your way on or through content and linking.
    David
  • Chris..nice, simple but powerful advice again. As we discussed, I would add scribd and slideshare to this list. For professionals, these are great places to share the content that we as professionals take for granted! Most of us are still causing death by powerpoint, and therefore slideshare is a great first place to upload a presso you are proud of! I see these are YouTube for grown ups (and those scared of video cameras!)..speak soon - look forward to the 3rd episode in the series!
  • Chris

    In a world where we truly are how we are found, your points really hit home!

    The rules of identity across a distributed web of self make it increasingly difficult for people to show who they really are (or who they want to be). It is really cool that you are helping shed light on the subject!

    Thanks for the shout out! I cannot wait until the next time we get to speak together (we have to set that up :) )

    Adam
  • Excellent information on the online aspects of personal branding. I have written a personal branding white paper that is more about your offline activities that may be of interest to you and your community.
  • I agree with your insights, developing a strong personal brand is vital. In fact, I'm working up a guide for the "about to graduate college" crowd right now on how to effectively brand and promote themselves.

    I got my job through social-media so I plan to share some of what I learned about that whole process and the balance between those crazy party pictures on Facebook, and a professional blog.

    Your series is spot on as far as advice goes on the starting steps to developing a personal brand, I wonder where this ends?

    (well ok, my belief is that we won't be talking about social-media much longer, no no, not like that, meaning it'll be ubiquitous and we'll talk about social-media and social-networks the same way we now talk about the Internet. It's everything and everywhere and it changed the way we live.)
  • Part 2 was exactly what I expected a spot on article on who we are in the internet world.

    After reading part 1 the other day I came across a video from Gary Vaynerchuk where he talked about personal branding and reputation in a world where businesses are becoming transparent. I highlighted in on my blog, not sure if you've seen it, but give it a look.

    Thanks a lot Chris! I look forward to seeing what other accounts people find useful. I had heard of scribd, but Luke Harvey-Palmer just introduced me to slideshare!
  • A great simple explanation of personal brand. It's amazing how many people don't understand the concept of branding, yet it affects them every day. Thanks for the education.
  • I really believe that being transparent is important. It improves so many elements of relationships. Theres less shocking surprises and more just gets dealt with and gets done.

    Id like to add Seesmic to the list. To those who dont know, Seesmic is a video conversation site, il start using it so everyone can laugh at my Scottish accent, but primarily because i will become visual to viewers and i like doing new things that sound uncomfortable to begin with, i think it will help me improve.

    Cheers Chris!
  • I'd love to talk about differentiation. When there are so many people talking about the same things these days, how do you stand out? How does your voice get heard?

    :)
  • I, personally, like the richness of options that Ning provides in creating a social network for your brand. It's a snap to add in videos, RSS feeds, pictures, events, etc. I've just started using it for my brand.
  • great stuff here. absolutely what i've been thinking of for the past few weeks. i've got lots of stuff under my 'internet persona' sean808080 but very little under my proper name sean henriques. i did this for deliberate reasons but now as i have offramped off the corporate path to raise a family i am rethinking that decision and whether it works for me today.

    your insights on this topic are giving me a lot of food for thought about merging the two and the benefits and drawbacks of doing this. no risk = no reward is what they said in mba school so....

    :-)
  • Rahaf has a great question, and I challenge you all to address it as you will.

    MY thought on differentiation, especially in the social media space is this: there are do-ers, and there are talkers, and I'm starting to sift through the folks I know have successfully executed even a wee bit of a social strategy. I'm starting to pay attention to the people who have their hands dirty, and who are moving on to even bigger challenges.

    Want an example? Jason Falls. If he says it works, it works. If he says, nothing came from it, I'd stop doing whatever he's talking about. Falls is real and has some real bosses.

    But that's in social media. What if you're in marketing or PR? Right now, there are some differentiators. If you can go into a client and do more than talk about what's powerful and transformative out there, if you have examples of work you've done, then you're further along in the game.

    Come to think of it, where isn't a do-er preferred?
  • Do'ers fall into the same category as the job search catch-22, in order for clients to let you experiment you have to show your stuff and in order for you to show your stuff clients have to let you experiment, lol.

    But maybe on my own site (which is currently being overhauled) i need to find a more effective way to show my experience. *cough cough* hey Chris, sounds like a just gave you part three. What's the most effective way to showcase your expertise? LInked in referrals? Case studies? Getting published or news paper clips? Video? What do clients want?
  • Illectro
    Muxtape is a poor choice for music branding because there's no real profile information on the site so you can't really link it to any of your other instances. Plus the fact that it's of questionable legality might not be the best thing for your image in some cases.

    Better choices would be imeem or last.fm, both have done their legal paperwork, and both are vastly more feature rich with proper profile pages. Both sites are also vastly more popular than muxtape which is still very small.
  • Hey, On Rahaf's point about differentiation, In social media, the people that are different are expressing wierd thoughts, doing strange things and are really just experimenting with everything they do/think. The safest thing you can do is to be risky.

    A good client, should be impressed by someone who thinks differently, the key to convincing them, is in providing logic and examples, with what you are saying.
  • hey chris
    i often feel like im am my own little social media experiment, injecting myself and my community with networks and applications to see which add value and which dont. im always looking for things that get the content out without abusing my users. amazing how many applications dont add any real value.
    ps great post!
  • Chris,

    I've been reading your stuff for a month now and find it to be great reading and terrific advice. The company I work for now is being acquired and my new coworkers "googled" me and asked some questions about what they found. The line between online and offline persona's is blurring fast and with the prices of gas rising I am sure it will blend even faster.

    My question is some people advocate the separation of a personal identity from that of a business one. Why did you choose not to separate them?
  • Great write-up. Thanks for simplifying the seemingly complicated technology part. I see this as being used not only for personal branding but also for establishing an authentic, unified and "human" presence online.
    p.s. the smiley at the bottom of your page is a nice touch!
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  • Online shopping is now a easy way of buying anything which they want by using the internet.so people want to know more about this.
    Its a nice post about the same thing.
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  • wow what a nice post about coupons and retail information.
    Its a very needed information because i need some coupons to buy somethings.
    Thanks
  • heidi lee
    what shell or program is best to puchase for starting a blog?
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