Research Before Going Digital
The web is a fecal place. The days of posting something from images, video and basic content then deleting it knowing no one will find it are looooong gone. Let’s all thank Google and their “cache” abilities. You might have posted a ‘tweet’ about a past employer only to find out that while looking for another job a future employer stumpled upon it. The principle is valid and honest – you need to research the web capabilities.
Google Yourself
Whether you know it or not you are on google, msn, yahoo, ask, etc – you might have joined myspace when it first got online only to have stopped two weeks later. Guess what, your content is there STILL! You need to make sure what ever you put up is going to be direct representation of you and your talents. There have been too many reports of college kids posting videos and images of them partying. Pretty harmless in nature but after they graduate what does that tell a future employee. Maybe that guy doing a keg stand is studying to become a kindergarden teacher? How about that young women making suggestive sexual gestures with other women looking to work in the marketing field?
Don’t forget to set up google alerts for different variations of your name as well.
Write About Yourself
That’s right – if you’re not online (your name or business) then make yourself known. Why? The basic reason is that one way or another you WILL be online but the question will be on whose terms? Start taking innovative put yourself in light that you want to be in. The last thing you’d want is to have someone write about you or tag you in an image that you don’t want to be tagged in.
Join Social Networks
It CAN be a chore if you make it but objective is simple. Just by writing about yourself is only half the equation. By joining these networks and having the same message across them then that will ensure that you or business will be first in search instead of anything negative. This will help boast you rating online quickly and easy.
Sync Those Networks
So you have a message you want to put “out there” and you’ve joined all these social networks – sync them. The last thing you’d want is to have all these networks under your umbrella and have no correlation between them. If you’re on myspace promote your twitter. If you’re on facebook then promote your blog. In the same sense make sure each and every network has the same name extension. If you search for “drivenmg” you’ll see my various networks I’ve been apart of from myspace to linkedin.
The bottom line is this: get your name – your brand out there before someone else does. If a blog is created every minute then how soon before someone writes about you or your brand? Get a head start and do it yourself but be smart and reasearch it before doing so. The last thing you want is to do all the work and not know how to utilize the content media networks.
