Thursday, May 17, 2012
Personal Brand
Pam brought up an interesting point earlier that you are your own personal brand no matter what. While I do agree that we are selling ourselves all the time in this fast paced world, I think the biggest brand you can have is your Google search of your own name. That makes my personal brand and everything published about me that much more damaging or rewarding for that brand because I am the only Aaron Gankofskie in the United States and there are only 15 Gankofskies in the United States. But I ask you this, what is your brand cover? How many articles do you find not about you personally when you search on Google? This residual noise can distort and cover things deep in your search results that you might not want people find. Its a good thing that I don't have anything to hide online because I cannot hide anything.
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This reminds me of why I had to create my linkedin.com profile as Dr. Karen Mishra. It might sound arrogant, but when I went to create one, someone already took Karen Mishra. She is actually Kiran Mishra (which is the typical Indian spelling), and was a grad student in the UK when I was a grad student at UNC-Chapel Hill, but changed her name to be spelled like mine--I suspect because my name showed up higher in a google search. When I realized this, I felt like my identity had been hijacked. I have even received mail and email that was supposed to be for her and had to contact her to get it to her. Talk about weird.
ReplyDeleteGreat point. It is scary to think that my "online" brand consists of myspace (what a joke, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and the work I do for my daughter's PTA. That is what you see if you google Candance Goins. I need to work on getting more of a career oreiented digital brand for myself!
ReplyDeleteYeah, this is concerning, I have to agree. I've tried to keep my online persona professional and like Aaron, I have an unusual name, especially my maiden name of Keller-Gusman was very rare and most of the results were actually related to me.
ReplyDeleteThankfully, I don't have anything to hide, but I find it a little creepy that just by knowing my full name, anyone can find 1) where I work, and worse, 2) where I live.
For my blogs, I keep it just to my first name for a tiny bit of privacy protection.
I keep my twitter timeline public, but keep it professional and my Google+ account I use mostly for work. I selected the optoin with my personal Facebook account do _not_ show up in google search results.
While I am not sure if this is a good or bad thing, but the Pittsburg Penguins (Hockey) have a player named Matt Cooke. Typically, most of the Google searches bring up some information about him. You would have to search for me using my name and some other known information about me, like where I work, in order for me to show up on a Google search.
ReplyDeleteI just Googled myself and my work website came up with my bio page! Other than that nothing came up but that 20 other Jennifer Atchison's are on Linked In. Its crazy what can be out there and I probably should do a deeper search but I'm not sure that I want to!
ReplyDeleteI have googled myself a few times too, nothing too interesting just linkedin, some work related stuff and a facebook reference for the name Pam Burr, but the account wasn't me. Unlike Aaron, I am not very unique there are a lot of Pam Burrs out there...maybe after I change my name Pam Bartholomew will be more unique among results.
ReplyDelete-Pam Burr
I thought with a somewhat unusual name that it would be difficult to find any information about me. I guess since I am the IV it makes it a litte easier to find information about my dad, grandfather, and great grandfather, but determining which one of us it is could be rather difficult, unless you know our ages. Problem is there are many more Yarnalls around than I suspected, even one in the city I live in and another at my company. I was hoping some perks would come from this but so far I have only had people mistaking me for them and receiving mail and emails intended for them.
ReplyDeleteI think I got some Yarnalls in my house's crawlspace.
DeleteDarn Matt, I was hoping you were the hockey player. Guess my initiating a conversation with you won't get me any good hockey tickets after all.
ReplyDeleteHey Tyler, I'd like to score some tickets myself.
DeleteI went to elementary/middle school with a kid name Matt Cooke in Chapel Hill. I bet no one has met another Claren....
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