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Taking Control of Your Own Personal Brand, step 1

In our increasingly complex and fast-paced world, creating your own “personal’ or “corporate” brand has become more and more critical.  According to an article by Fast Company, taking control of your own personal brand is a critical priority:

It’s time for me — and you — to take a lesson from the big brands, a lesson that’s true for anyone who’s interested in what it takes to stand out and prosper in the new world of work.

Regardless of age, regardless of position, regardless of the business we happen to be in, all of us need to understand the importance of branding. We are CEOs of our own companies: Me Inc. To be in business today, our most important job is to be head marketer for the brand called You.

It’s that simple — and that hard. And that inescapable.

– The Brand Called You, Fast Company

So, understanding that both personal and corporate branding are critical tasks for all of us, how do we go about creating and maintaining a brand?

In this post, I want to suggest just one simple step, a first step we can all do to start taking control of our personal or corporate brands.

That task is simply to take control of your name.  Whether it is your own personal name or your corporate name – maintaining control over your name is critical.  I want to suggest two simple task you can do to help control your own name:

1.  Register your domain name – with every popular ending

Suppose your name is John Smith.  I would suggest immediately going to a domain name registrar (I use 000domains.com) and registering your name with as many possible endings as you can.  So, for our example, I would immediately purchase johnsmith.com, johnsmith,net, johnsmith.org, johnsmith.tv, johnsmith.me, johnsmith.mobi, johnsmith.biz.

While the domain names aren’t free (they run between $15 and $30 per year), it’s a lot cheaper to buy them ALL now than to try and buy them later from a reseller, or, worse yet, to try and repair the damage when someone buys the same name as you with a different ending and puts up an offensive web-site.

So, take the time and buy ALL your names now – by the way – I own designedbyeh.com, designedbyeh.net, designedbyeh.org, designedbyeh.biz, designedbyeh.tv, and designedbyeh.mobi.  Right now, all these domains simply re-direct to the same web-site: www.designedbyeh.com.

2.  Register your name on EVERY social networking site you can

Whether you use them or not, you should register your name on as many social networking sites as you can.  Now, before you start to freak out and think – “I don’t use these social sites – I don’t even know what they are.”  That’s not the point… YET.  The point here is to simply secure your name in as many places as you possibly can.  And, it’s not as hard as you might think.

I suggest two services to help you with this:

1. NameChk – www.namechk.comThis site is simple to use.  Simply enter your desired name (username) into the text box at the top of the page and click on the “CHK” button.  The site will automatically check if this name is available on 145 social sites and let you know the results.

   For example, here’s a screenshot of the results when I did a Name Check for “ehdesign”:

   
   The red sites are sites where I have already registered “ehdesign”, while the green sites are sites where it is still available.  As you can see from the screenshot, I have already registered the name on many of the sites.  A few are typically reported incorrect (about 6 were on this example).  But, a service like this provides a GREAT starting place.  Just reserving your name, so that no one else does, is a GREAT way to be ready for personal or corporate branding.

2. KnowEm – www.knowem.com

   KnowEm can be a lot more advanced – it will look through more sites – grouped by cateogries such as entertainment, business, blogging, etc. – AND even register your name for you (although you have to pay for this service – usually around $100).

So, are you in control of your own personal or corporate brand?  If not, maybe these two step are two easy steps to get you started.  While there’s a LOT more you could do with your own personal brand – including adding real content to all the site you registered in step 2 above – these two steps are a great starting point.

Ready to go deeper?  Want to know more?  Want to find out other ways EH Design & Consulting can help you? Contact us today for more inforamtion!

Two Simple Business Uses For Twitter

I’ll admit it, I love twitter.  I look at my twitter feed many times every day.  But, I’ll also admit it – it can be hard to find any real value in twitter!

When people find out I’m “into” twitter, some common questions come up:

• Why would anyone care what I had for breakfast? – Assuming that the only thing posted on twitter is useless information
• Is there any real value in twitter?

For me and for my business, the answer is a resounding YES to the second question.  I believe that there is indeed real value in twitter.

Today, I wanted to share just two very simple uses for twitter that I think you and your business use.

1.  Use Twitter To Drive Traffic To Your Site

Here is a graph of some of the recent traffic to my blog (as recorded by the FREE stats program: Google Analytics):

Notice the ups and downs on the graph?  Of course, they are impossible to miss.  The obvious question, when looking at this graph is “What caused the spikes”?

The answer: TWITTER!

Each of the spikes in traffic represent a day (or some times a couple of days) where I sent out just one tweet about a new blog post I had.  As a result of the single tweet (and a few kind re-tweet), my traffic for that day made a significant increase.

That’s a GREAT use for twitter!

Of course, any business or person has to be careful about always being self-serving.  If all you ever do on twitter is send out tweets hoping to lure people back to your own web site, then people will stop listening (following you).  But, if you tweet other useful information AND you tweet links to your own site, then people will visit.  If the content is interesting – they will come back!

I would suggest that this use makes it absolutely essential that your business has a blog.  Your business blog needs to be updated regularly (I’m shooting for once a week on my own – a new goal).  And, your business blog needs to have interesting content.  If you have a blog, and if you post regularly, and if you post about interesting content… then sending out regular tweets that link back to your blog WILL increase your traffic (and have some good effect on your Search Engine placement as well).

This alone should make twitter worth looking into.

2.  Use Twitter to Find People Talking About Your Business In Your Area

Wether or not you are on twitter, others are.  And, they are talking about all kinds of things.  Chances are they are talking about your business.  Wouldn’t  it be nice if there was a simple way to know every time someone within a 50 mile radius (or whatever area you work in) was asking questions about your business?  You could jump in, offer answers, offer resources, even offer a sale! Wouldn’t that be a great tool?

Of course, the tool absolutely does exist and it is called… twitter.  It’s a simple little feature built into twitter called TWITTER SEARCH.  Visit search.twitter.com and click on the “ADVANCED SEARCH” link on the right side of the search box.

In the Advanced Search area you can do some amazing things!  The thing we are focused on right now is search by PLACES.

Let’s make up a company.  Suppose you own ANTIQUES R US, located in Atlanta, GA.  And, you would like more people to know about your business.  So, what do you do?  Well, one great option is to use the Advanced Twitter Search to look for anyone talking about Antiques within 50 miles of Atlanta, GA.  Here’s what the Advanced Search might look like:

You can see here that ANTIQUES R US is update to search twitter for the word “Antiques” within a 50 mile radius of Atlanta, GA.  What would ANTIQUES R US find?  A lot.  Below are just two tweets form the last couple of days that may have been interesting to ANTIQUES R US:

Here is some who had the day to herself and visited one of ANTIQUES R US competitors – the Lakewood Antiques Market.  What if ANTIQUES R US had responded to her and said something like: “Glad you loved Lakewood.  If you liked them, you might enjoy us as well – mention this tweet for 10% off”.  Who knows, maybe the person would have showed up

Here’s another:

This person is looking for an Antiques place to visit in the Savannah area.  What is ANTIQUES R US had responded with a couple of excellent restaurants (close to the store, of course) and a personal invitation to visit the store?

Again, the conversation is already happening.  I promise – people are really talking about your business.  The question is whether or not you are going to join the conversation!

Advanced Twitter Search – by location – my second favorite use for  twitter.

Want to know more?  Have your own favorite uses for twitter?  Leave a comment and share your thought.  Or, contact EH Design & Consulting today, and we can talk about all the ways  Social Media can help your business!