I've been thinking a lot lately about the concept of web presence - the fact that I (among many others) have some sort of presence on blogs, facebook, twitter, del.i.cious, and more recently posterous and allcallings, to name a few. Plenty of people have legitimate concerns about privacy and safety of information... Personally, I think it'd be kind of fun to create a personal, virtual treasure hunt! Scatter clues about myself across different web platforms, as well as a few I divulge only in person, and give out prizes to the winners! Perhaps if I ever get desperately bored...
What intrigues me most about this scattering of information is that each of this platforms is at least a little bit different from all the rest, and so it seems like each one would have a unique take on how to best leverage your influence. A basic example - you generally can't tell a very good story in 140 characters, the current message limit on Twitter. However, people have more control on Twitter over when and from whom they receive and send updates than they do on Facebook. So how can each platform be used to best convey a product, a thought, or even a personality?
I'm really pretty clueless, but I realized today that I've already made a pretty fatal mistake... I basically have different user names for every site I'm on. Facebook uses my name. Twitter is a sports/guitar combo. Blogger consists of favorite lyrics. Del.i.cious is the best yet - the result of one of those random, 'we're sorry, your name is already in use. Please choose something far less cool' name generators. Nobody is going to bother with digging through all of the junk on the site to figure out if jrtol41 and hairyhobbitfeet are, indeed, the same person.
The Personal Branding Blog talks a lot about the concept of seeing yourself as a brand and what you can do to help sell it. I admittedly haven't spent a whole lot of time there, but I'm pretty fascinated by the idea... it seems to be the key to freelance work, start-up companies, even your individual career within an organization of any size. How well can you sell yourself? How well do you know your product? Strengths, weaknesses, battery life... And, like with any sales pitch, it always pays to be short and to the point. Get the best information across in the shortest time necessary.
Knowing that my web presence is a very small and rather insignificant part of who I am, it still seems like a good place to start. My own personal brand. 1 label, concise yet powerful and personal.
I'm open to suggestions....
I'd ask if you anticipate your web presence growing (in either span or importance). If you don't, why bother managing it?
ReplyDeleteIf you do, you probably want something that is personally identifiable to those in the know, but still offers some anonymity. That's why I decided to go with scottjisaok over some of my other, more established screen names.