In the book, “All Marketers Are Liars: The Power of Telling Authentic Stories in a Low-Trust World,” author Seth Godin makes the point that all companies, brands, and products involve telling a story. Not only the stories the marketers are telling to get us to buy said products, but the stories we tell ourselves and those around us. Stories of what this product says about us, stories of the benefits of this product, stories of why this product was a better choice than others like it. You get the idea.
Stories are great, but here’s something to consider: what is YOUR story? Not your company’s story, or the story of that you own, but specifically your story. If someone were to try and figure out your story, how would they do it?
1.) Do you have a Facebook or MySpace page? What is on it? Is your online identity consistent with your “professional image?” Do you care?
2.) Are you on Twitter? Now there’s a real story! How would the narrative of your life read to an outsider?
3.) Go ahead, Google yourself! You know you want to. Heck, you probably already have. Are you represented? Represented well? What about on Google Images? Does your past come back to haunt you? How about someone with the same name as yours? There’s one page where Matt Gordon professes to be a “Dyslexic Agnostic Insomniac.” Definitely not me!
So there are three easy steps you can do right now to make sure your online branding is working for you, and not against you. But now that you’ve identified the story that you’re putting out there (inadvertently or not), what’s the next step?
Changing the story. Unfortunately, the nature of many websites is that once you’ve put it out there, it’s hard to reel it back in. But there are things you can do — at varying degrees of ease — to at least bury the parts of the story that are inconsistent with your professional image. Here are a few ideas to get you started:
1.) Do you have your own website? It can be a sort of clearinghouse for people to find the relevant online aspects of your life. Check out the home page for a guy named “Matt Gordon” for an example.
2.) Try a linking campaign to generate links to the more appropriate corners of the Internet with your name on them. You can comment on highly ranked blogs, forums, etc., and include links in your signature. Just make sure that the comments are intelligent and add something worthwhile to the conversation. An excellent place to do this is websites focused on your market.
3.) For ultimate branding, try making your own blog. There’s nothing that can get a message out better over the long-run than a well-optimized blog.
Hopefully, you will be inspired to investigate your own story and see what you can do about brushing it up! Do you have any other ideas on how to clean up your online image? Or maybe a story or two about the wisdom of doing so? Leave me a comment below!
