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Today I met with a new client who consulted with me about how to build their new ecommerce business online.
Interestingly due to the fact that he has a website representing his personal brand online, he is number one in the search engines here in Ireland for key words relating to his expertise.
You see although he is currently in employment i.e. he is on the payroll of an organisation, he realised the value in promoting his experience and his portfolio of skills online – he is using his own name as the domain name for his current website.
One of the tips I always cover in my personal branding workshops and consultations is to ensure that you purchase your own domain name – even if you have no plan to use it at this time to host your own business blog, website or career portfolio.
Even if you are employed in a company, the chances are that you won’t be in their employ in 10 years or 20 years time – but the one thing that will be constant is the need to ensure that you continue to nurture your personal brand and reputation online as many people search for us prior to or after meeting us.
An example of when not purchasing your domain name is the recent case of Shel Israel, author and social media consultant.
Shel is one of the contributors at FastCompany.tv. He would not position himself as being an expert in video or film production, however the expectations of his interviews with guests seem not to have been met by his audience as you can see from the video here and the accompanying comments where there is concern being expressed over the production values of the video.
You can read more about the story here at the Blog Herald and at Shel Israel’s blog.
What resulted is that someone create a website as a parody of his interviews – and yes you guessed it – the domain name for the site is ShelIsrael.com. You see, Shel had not purchased his own domain name so it was freely available for someone else to purchase.
You could conside it a form of online identity theft.
I am sure that Shel is kicking himself now – though it does mean that he is getting many people talking about him online – perhaps not for reasons he anticipated or would like.
But let his case be a lesson for us all – if you don’t own your domain name – please buy it even if you have no plans to use it at this time. And if you love your children – buy their names as domain names too. They’ll thank you for it in a few years time.
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
Here’s an article about making sure that you have your own name as a domain name, published in the Wall Street Journal that I was quoted in called “You’re A Nobody Unless Your Name Googles Well”.
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April 8th, 2008 at 12:40 am
Krishna’s newarticle Personal Branding Online 101: Buy Your Own Name As A Domain Na.. http://tinyurl.com/5xefhd
April 11th, 2008 at 12:34 am
Krishna, Another lesson personal branding is how you are able to laugh at yourself. Unfortunately, Shel has turned what could have been a humorous situation into a personal branding mistake. The parody videos are very funny and Shel could handle things much better than he has.
April 24th, 2008 at 6:50 pm
[...] fact I always recommend that you purchase your own name as a domain name whether you are ready to start business blogging or buiding your personal brand [...]
April 24th, 2008 at 8:51 pm
[...] fact I always recommend that you purchase your own name as a domain name whether you are ready to start business blogging or buiding your personal brand [...]
June 20th, 2008 at 9:26 pm
[...] fact I always recommend that you purchase your own name as a domain name whether you are ready to start business blogging or buiding your personal brand [...]
November 2nd, 2008 at 2:37 pm
Nice post Krishna,
I bought my name as a domain name but my question would be should the title of the blog be your name as well?
For example, my blogs domain is http://LenRichardson.com . Would it be better to name the blog.. “Len Richardson” or something like “The Len Richardson Controversy” or “Len Speaks Out”.
I’m interested to hear what you and your readers have to say on this subject. I will welcome all input. I’ll be following.
Len
November 5th, 2008 at 4:07 pm
@Len – you are welcome. If you are a speaker or consultant I might use my name as a portal as I have done using the domain name for that site. I would then have a Wordpress.org blog hosted on the same site so that the updated content and incoming links help the site get found in the search engines.
In that case you could then purchase a domain name to point to the blog so you can read it out on the radio, if in a podcast interview or at a speaking event that than say yourname.com/blog.
Remember you can call your blog anything so it could be yourdomainname.com/news or yourdomainname.com/articles etc etc.
I bought and called my blog by a different name as no one can spell my name correct. So if you are going to tell someone how to find it it needs to be short and memorable and easy to spell!
I hope that helps.
July 30th, 2010 at 6:28 am
Good articles on Personal Branding: http://bit.ly/d9sQQs and http://bit.ly/czlflm