Personal Branding Blog – Dan Schawbel

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Public search listings – past

I was going to blog about this a long time ago, but I found a recent post on the Inside Facebook blog that pushed me to do this one. What a lot of people don’t know is that when you search for someone’s name in Google, their Facebook page will most likely be in the top 10-20 results. Before today, clicking on someone’s Facebook profile result would give you their name, picture, network and avatars of five of their friends. My parents, when they are bored, use this to see who I’m friends with, but for you, employers and other observers may judge you based on the picture of your friends.

Public search listings – present

Right now, when you view someone’s Facebook page that you don’t know, you will get the below image, which consists of all the same options, with the addition of Fan Pages. From Facebook’s point-of-view, this will increase the PageRank of peoples profiles substantially, which drives more traffic to Facebook (selfish eh?). From the personal branding perspective, this means more of your brand will be revealed to the world, without your control.

Public search listings – future

Instead of developing a mock-up of what I think the future entails, I think it’s pretty obvious. Although, there are countless privacy setting on Facebook, your public search listing will start to unearth more of your private information, such as your friends’ names, email address, and websites. I don’t think you will be able to escape this, as Facebook has tremendous leverage over your data. One of my friends quit Facebook recently because people tagged her Halloween pictures, which were viewable to her coworkers.

5 ways you can protect your brand name on Facebook

1) Your picture. You need to ensure that your main picture represents you to the fullest. You won’t want to block this picture because it’s extremely important when branding yourself. Send your picture to your friends and parents before you even upload it. It has to be accepted by all walks of life.

2) Your wall. Your wall is a scary place because your friends can post videos, pictures and obscene comments on it. If you aren’t readily available to monitor your wall, then your best bet is to shut it down.

3) Your friends. Who you surround yourself depicts how people may judge you. If you’re friends have crazy pictures, then you may appear crazy, even though you aren’t.

4) Your pages. Now is probably the best time to stop just being a fan of some page because your friend recommended it to you. It’s time to consider being more selective because your pages are more visible.

5) Your network. If you join your companies network, then your coworkers will see everything you do. This could include your manager, director, VP or someone below you.