So you searched yourself and now what do you do?

So now that you have searched yourself on the internet and found out about your online brand, what can you do if you are not happy with what you have discovered?

If you found pictures or postings about you that you do not like, check out your privacy settings on social websites.  Are you getting tagged when you do not want to be tagged?  Are you in a picture that is not flattering?  You may not be able to clear it all up, but you can do a couple things to help.

First, change your settings to control what is posted about you and who can search for you.

Second, ask people to remove unflattering items. This does not mean that they completely gone but it will make it harder to find.

Third, start writing reviews of products and books that you like (or do not like) as these things will show up in a search as well.

Fourth, blog or post about things you like.  These are all searchable and the more positive items you have the better.

Do you have other ideas that work in cleaning up your online brand image?

Please share them here...

Working on your brand

When the news about Hostess going out of business came out and people panicked when they realized that Twinkies might fade into nostalgia.  I stopped and thought for a bit about the power of brands and how much emotion a name or a logo can stir up in people's mind and trigger action. In this case, the action was hundreds of people rushing to the store to buy all the Hostess products they could find.

So as I tossed my Twinkie wrapper into the trash can, (I actually missed the shot, but that is another story) I was thinking about how brands have the ability to trigger an emotional reaction.

How can you work on your personal brand to elicit reactions from people? Reactions both positive and negative but passionate ones that create dialogue and possibly even inspiration and action.

I was having a conversation that other day with a co-worker about brand image and we talked for a while about our personal brand and how we can help make our stronger brand by working on our online appearance.  (I hope I didn't lose you with that exciting sentence.)  I really take a few minutes to look you will get a great understanding how you appear on the internet.  This will really make you think about your personal brand. Is it a brand that someone would want to buy?  Does your brand create action or elicit a passionate response?

Take a minute to google or search yourself online.  What did you find? Hopefully all good and positive stuff.  But if you found things you do not like what can you do?  We can talk about that next time.

Until then, I would love to hear your point of view...