The Internet Holds Your Personal Brands’ Permanent Record
March 5, 2008 at 11:20 am | In People, Personal Branding, Reputation Management, SEO |Your brand cannot hide from Google (The Cover Story of Personal Branding Magazine last month). Every move you make online is kept in search engines and the only one’s that can be removed are those that you create yourself. Your blog, website, LinkedIn profile, Facebook profile, Twitter profile, Ning profile and a few others that rank high are in your control because you can take them down and they will be tossed out of Google (aka there will be no url for the crawlers). You CAN’T remove information that others post about you, even if it’s your own work that has been cited in a blog, published in an online resource or one of your comments from another blog. Of course, in certain situations you can ask an author to remove your name or article, but that doesn’t always work, especially in a content driven “World Content We
b.”
So where does this all go? When someone searches your name in a search engine, any website that lists your name will be queued up in the search, based on how well the site is optimized. Your goal is to have everything about you support your overall personal brand. You don’t want negative publicity, but you do want a lot of hits for your name, on the top resources. This doesn’t always happen and when you become a micro-celebrity of sorts, your goal may change. Your new goal will be having the first 3 pages speak highly of you or be informative in some form or another. Everything else will remain, in what I call your Personal Brand’s Permanent Record. It is the virtual and transparent you kept for life. If you compare this to the longevity of a blog, think of it as a journal. A journal that is kept in conjunction with how people feel about you, and how you feel about yourself. Remember that self-impression = perception (listen to my Boston College talk on this) when deciding and capitalizing on your brand.
Example: Heidi Fleiss
In the early 1990’s Heidi Fleiss held and created some of Hollywood’s most coveted and (envied) sexual secrets. Her knowledge and understanding of the male and female psyche was gained by becoming the most well-know Madam of all time. Her rise and fall captivated the world and sent shivers down the spine of all who participated and pardoned within her empire. After the smoke had cleared both the state and federal jury trials, Heidi served three years in Federal prison for tax evasion. Heidi, now lives in Crystal, Nevada where she is opening Heidi’s Stud Farm, The first luxury brothel where women can pick and choose the man of their dreams.
The green means a positive brand ranking, while the gray means neutral and red means negative.
Note: I had to edit her results because the images that showed up first were inappropriate for this blog.
Results Analyzed
- 1: Her official website.
- 2: Her wikipedia entry comes off clean in Google, just like all other terms, but if you read it, you will quickly pick up on the fact that she’s been arrested for illegal possession of drugs and driving under the influence.
- 3: “Heidi Fleiss grabbed headlines in the 1990s after she was arrested for running a high-priced prostitution ring serving Tinseltown’s rich and famous. Now, the former “Hollywood Madam” is capitalizing on her notoriety — legally.”
- 4: This is her new project where women can buy the men of their dreams. It’s legal in the state where she’s doing it, but it’s still absurd.
- 5: This one is tricky because it reviews her entire life, which is mostly about her crime spree. I’m leaning more to negative publicity for her brand on this one.
- 71: She was arrested on prescription drug possession charges and her mug shot photo was not a pretty picture.
- 72: Same as 71.
- 73: Same as 2.
- 74: When a personal brand aligns themself with a bad brand, it hurts their image as well. In this case it’s the ear bitting Mike Tyson.
Conclusion: Unless someone really wants to do a full throttle background check on your brand, they will not go past the first few pages. That is not to say that the rest is not fair game. Protect your brand by making the right moves over the duration of your life. Perform self-checks so you can be prepared and react.
Note: Your permanent record in this way is also a good thing because you can reflect on your life when you are older.
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Awesome points. This is why I always highly recommend starting a blog to my fellow gen-y professionals–even if it’s only a casual blog you update very occasionally. Things like a WordPress site, LinkedIn profile, and Twitter have EXTREMELY high Google Pagerank, and YOU get to control what Google says about you!
Tim Ferriss did a great piece on these themes a while back called “Tips for Personal Branding in the Digital Age: Google Insurance, Cache-flow, and More…”:
Comment by codymckibb — March 5, 2008 #
Sorry try that again: “Tips for Personal Branding in the Digital Age: Google Insurance, Cache-flow, and More…”
Thanks for the great advice on Google juice! =)
Comment by codymckibb — March 5, 2008 #
Great advice and a very practical goal for any professional living and breathing in the Google age. I agree with Cody too, you can’t hide from Google so you might as well step up and claim your online image.
Comment by Benjamin Boudreau — March 5, 2008 #
@ Benjamin & Cody - I find that a lot of students still use “I don’t know how to create a blog” as an excuse. I tend to recommend WordPress.com and other hosting services that are free, in order for them to practice. They come with templates that make web development easy.
Comment by Dan Schawbel — March 5, 2008 #
Hi,
We would like to know if you could write a blog review for our website http://www.brochuremonster.com on your blog personalbrandingblog.wordpress.com.
If yes, please let us know your rates. We are ready to offer free product samples for testing if required.
Best Regards,
John Davis
Comment by John Davis — March 5, 2008 #
Nice post, and quite topical for me.
After submitting a large proposal one week I realized that I was becoming googleable, as well as my old blog (which was a little messy, and had me ranting about things), so I decided to work on my brand, as you speak of in this post.
Generally I don’t treat my blog like I need or assume massive traffic (though it’s nice), but it’s as practice for me, as well as a living resume for those who care to look. So yea, thanks, now I know more about its effect on searches.
Comment by t h rive — March 5, 2008 #
@Thrive - the more active you are online, the more you need to Google yourself to ensure your standing/ranking.
Comment by Dan Schawbel — March 6, 2008 #
I appreciate the post, though it gave me a bit of a “Big Brother is watching” feel.
I just googled my name and for the first time it wasn’t about T.H. Lawrence (his nickname was Ned). The second hit was my blog, which gave me a good feeling.
I think there is a need for congruence throughout one’s digital footprint, but I don’t know if I agree with negative publicity=bad publicity.
Comment by Ned — March 6, 2008 #
Dan-
Great article and some awesome examples of the perils of personal branding online. I have found a very cool tool - link is listed in website portion of comments - that has helped me both gain front page ranking (often top ranking) and have a “one-page-find-me-all” that co-ordinates the things that are found.
I want to thank Dan for taking the time to examine a lot of relevant issues and always providing great reference as well. Pleasure to read this blog.
Comment by Andy Greider — March 6, 2008 #
Dan,thanks for the information.It was short and to the point.It was real down to earth.
- garry b
Comment by garry — March 7, 2008 #
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