Remember Your Personal Brand

There is some really great posts out there on how to enhance your personal brand, but what if you don’t want to blog or even have a website?  Is this just purely a mistake in today’s world when you are a consultant working for yourself?  At one point I probably would have said undeniably, “YES!”.  But I’ve changed my mind a bit talking with a good friend who has a successful consulting business in the DC area.  She knows that:

• managing a website and/or a blog is simply not productive for her business;
• her business comes from personal contacts and old school networking;
• the day after folks meet her they don’t look for a blog or a website, but they DO Google to get information about her;
• many people in her network know her maiden name, but she is using her new extended married name for her business;
• Add to the dilemma that she is known in the circles by her maiden name, but has used her newly married name for her business;

So what advice would you give my friend to make sure that when folks Google her name after a meeting what they find is pertinent, but don’t push her to do the, what is now traditional, website/blog?  These were some of my recommendations:

1) LinkedIn: Get on LinkedIn NOW.  I also suggested that she use her full name with LinkedIn in her profile, but to be sure to include her maiden name in the bio. But LinkedIn is not simply a rol-a-dex, you need to engage with the groups on LinkedIn that are applicable, ask questions, post responses, etc.  The more activity you do within LInkedIn the more Google juice you’ll get…for all of your names.

2) Facebook: This can be tricky, of course, but if you use it correctly your Facebook profile can be a very powerful tool to show your network a bit of your personal side.  Facebook also shows up very high in searches, so if you are trying to push something not so satiable down in searches this is a good place to start.  Just be careful.

3) Press Releases: Get your company, and your name, out on the wires.  This is an extremely effective way to have people who are looking for you to see that you are professional and successful.

4) Wikipedia: Not everyone is elegible for Wikipedia, but my friend certainly is, she’s done some pretty cool things in her career with names you would all recognize.  Get yourself on Wikipedia or listed as a resource under other entries with a link to your LinkedIn account

5) Other Social Media Activities that are NOT Blogging: Twitter, Utterz, del.icio.us, StumbleUpon, etc.

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