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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Did you realise that today is International Women’s Day?

I’ll be celebrating by hosting a panel on the subject of “Women in Technology” and a session about using social media to create, publish and market your book at Creative Camp, taking place in Kilkenny.

I’ve also been invited by Frank Fullard, CEO of the Mayo County Enterprise Board to facilitate a workshop for female business leaders in celebration of International Women’s Day 2008.

The event will take place at Knockranny House Hotel, Westport on Tuesday 11 March 2008 starting at 7pm with refreshments and networking at the end of the workshop at 10pm.

WORKSHOP OUTLINE

Personal branding is a revolution in the way we manage our careers or businesses.  It’s a way of clarifying and communicating what makes you different and special and using those qualities to separate from yourself from your peers so that you can greatly expand your success. 

At the end of the workshop the will have developed a personal action plan for further nurturing your personal brand so that in 2008 you’ll be able to enjoy even greater professional success.

In this interactive workshop, we will be covering:

• An Introduction To Personal Branding – the origins of personal branding and why it is relevant for our success in the 21st century
• Defining The Essence of Your Personal Brand – the steps we must take to define out personal brand
• Expressing Our Personal Brand – how do we make sure that everything we do is on-brand and consistent with our vision
• Getting Known Now – how do we create our personal marketing plan based around the 3 keys to building connections - we will look at these three strategies both through traditional and new media
• Action planning - developing your personal branding action plan.

HOW TO BOOK YOUR PLACE

You can book your place to attend the “Personal Branding Masterclass” here. I do hope you can join me the other female entrepreneurs. And if you are planning to atten, don’t hesitate to email me or post your questions here about how to nurture your personal brand - just add your questions to th comments section.

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For some time I’ve been wanting to do a major overhaul of my visual identity online.

So this year I am planning to develop a number of my personal website and business blog sites and try to bring them back to the core of my personal brand.

I would always recommend that you start with looking at the corporate identity of your business and work from there, but since my personal brand is so intertwined with the corporate identity of my business and the fact that most people come to know me through “Biz Growth News”, I made a decision to start with a redesign of this site.

Given that I teach others about branding and social media marketing, I have been accutely aware that I’ve needed a major face lift - in fact you could say an extreme make-over online.

I’ll share more once the new blog design is in place on the reasons I made the decisions I have about the elements of the blog as they consitute for me key elements of best practice in business blogging for professional services firms - I’ll probably so this through a teleseminar for my “Biz Growth Community”.

But for now I’d love to share a sneak peak at how the new banner for Biz Growth News is shaping up.

Believe me I have been one of the most challenging clients my designer has had to work with as I have a clear sense of what I was looking for and in fact there is more design that has gone into the relative simplicity of the the new business blog site than for a complex design.

So here it is … what do you think?

I hope to have the new blog in place in March do do watch out for the make over!

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As you will know I rarely mention on “Biz Growth News” specific successes I have enjoyed for fear of being seen to brag.

However I felt I just had to share something I found out today as for me it’s a great example of the power of business blogging.

If you have heard me speak at live events, on podcasts or teleseminars about developing your personal brand online, you will know about my story and why I started business blogging. In summary, when I established my own business I realised that I needed to ensure that I got found online for my own name as few people would recall the name of my new micro business.

Within a month of my corporate website being launched, my now good friend Jessica Bowman told me the bad news - that my corporate website was built in the most search unfriendly way - with flash and frames.

I had paid several thousands of euro’s for the website and to my dismay the web-development team were not prepared to make any changes as they delared that I had signed off on the design. Yes I may have signed off on the design, but I did ask for it to be search engine friendly which it wasn’t. Boy how much I learnt about building your personal brand online through that one costly mistake!

And so my first steps into social media were taken, starting my business blog in June of 2005.

One of the first things I had come to realise is that while you may think my name is unusual, online it isn’t as I am competing with the Hindu deity Lord Krishna who had been online far longer than me with over 11 million entries for the name Krishna. (Note: I was gifted my name by my parents as both my paternal grandparents were called Krishna so I did not assume this name.)

But how would I ever get found online?

I suspected I had a chance of getting to the first page of Google for my own name is someone typed in “Krishna De” if I implemented key online personal branding strategies as we covered in a recent podcast.

But to get onto the first page of Google for people typing in the word or name Krishna with no speech marks around it, well that seemed unlikely unless I changed my name!

So over time, I have steadfastly added content to “Biz Growth News” about building your corporate brand, your employer brand, your internal brand, your personal brand and offered my experience in the worlds of traditional and social media marketing.

I eventually raised my profile on line and you could find me at the top of the page for “Krishna De” in the Google search results here in Ireland.

And every few months I admit that I egosurfed to check whether I was even getting to the first 10 pages of Google search results for the search on the name Krishna (Note: I deliberately searched for my name without speech marks as many people don’t add those when searching).

Well with a little time on my hands today, I decided to check the online digital footprint for my name.

And what did I find?

Yes I’ve made it to the first page of Google for the name Krishna - with no speech marks around it. I am in the top 10 searches out of 11,300,000 for the name Krishna - all thanks to my articles and content here at “Biz Growth News” and to you the community here for linking back to articles and for your feedback on the articles.

So I hope you will understand why I needed to share this good news. I hope I have encouraged you if you think it will be impossible to get onto the first page of Google if your name is shared among other people more “famous” or “infamous”than you and you are not an expert at search engine marketing.

After all, I had to “compete” in Google with a god whose name is recognised right across the globe!

And of you are interested to know more about my thoughts and experience on how to avoid the “12 biggest mistakes we can make when nurturing our personal brand online“, make sure you check out the details of a forthcoming seminar I am leading as part of the Social Media Telesummit later this month - check here for the special arrangements I have made for you as a member of my “Biz Growth” community.

And watch out for notification later this week for a post about this weeks podcast with my fellow Podcast Sisters is available as we are talking about “So I’ve got a blog - now what?” which if you are interested in business blogging you might find of interest - I’m off to record it in an hour’s time.

And if you are still not sure about the right strategy for you in building your personal brand online, post your questions here in the comments section or here and I will ensure I will address your questions in future articles and podcasts.

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