Personal Branding Blog – Dan Schawbel

Many of you are flustered with your web presence right now and are trying to make sense of it, as well as manage it. The problem is that it’s hard for people to understand your personal brand, when it’s scattered throughout the web.

A first impression on the web is equal to the website someone first enters to view your brand.

That first website becomes your personal brand to that visitor. A lot of people are putting up Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook logos on their blogs, in order to showcase their other web presences. There was never a service to unify your web presence, until now. The solution is Nombray, a new startup company, run by Chris Lunt, who I’ve spoken to on the phone once before.

Why is Nombray important?

1) It acts as a domain name check for your brand name.

You can type in your first and last name, as well as keywords into their search engine. The search results will be divided into two main categories, “available names on the web” and “not available (sorry!).” The type of results you will get will be the available and taken domain names, using your first and last name, and keywords you type in. The site will check with the registrar and return domains such as firstname.com, firstlastname.us, keyword-lastname.net, etc. If you choose to use this service, it will cost you $19.99 per year, and you get hosting with the domain.

I would recommend only purchasing .com’s and .net’s for whatever you can find for your brand name. For more information on how to select domain names, please see my complete guide. Whatever you do, do not use this service for a corporate website. It it purely meant for the individual brand.

2) It allows you to merge your web presence under your domain name.

Once you claim a domain name, it gives you a template you can use to showcase your online brand portfolio, including LinkedIn, Twitter, your blog and much more. Through this system, it’s very easy for someone to have a perfect understanding of who you are and what you do. It’s also beneficial for those who want to verify they have a consistent brand image, by going through each tab and ensuring images and information are identical. You can add any site you wish as a tab. Adding Facebook would not prove to be useful unless you made your profile completely public (see below).

Image from cnet.com

Who would I recommend this for?

The one group I would recommend this service for are the novices out there. If you are clueless on how to build a blog, a website or how to manage your social networks, this service provides an easy to use format, so you can start getting your name out there immediately. In the future, I could see this service being more important, as social networks open up and are less private. Also, as the number of social networks climbs, making sense of all of them and selecting which ones best represent your brand can be solved by this service.