Managing Your Digital Shadow

Personal Branding is not a new concept (see Tom Peters’ great primer called The Brand Called You). As personal identities move online, managing them becomes increasingly important. As online personal identities evolve they leave a trail called a Digital Shadow. Want to know what your Digital Shadow is? Google yourself. And you can be sure others are Googling you. Prospective employers, prospective employees and even first dates! With that in mind here are a few relatively simple lessons to managing your Digital Shadow.

1) Be aware of what’s our there. (Google yourself) Depending on how common your name is, other people may be mixed in with your results. Increasingly potential employers, and other people looking to check your references, turn to Google. It’s an honest representation of who you are much more than a closely tailored CV.

2) Reserve your digital touch points. Even if you don’t have the desire to micro-blog to Twitter or post photos to Flickr it’s important to reserve these names. You might know that the Twitter account with your name isn’t yours, but will others? Take this a step further and register your name as a domain even if you don’t think you’re going to need it. And while you’re registering domain names, get rid of that old Hotmail address you’ve been using forever (I’m talking to you cutesy54@hotmail.com!) and make use of a professional email address.

3) Use and standardize an avatar. Avatars are the logo of your digital brand. Whether you’re twittering, or commenting on a blog, it is important to have a uniform ‘face’ to your online persona. Standardize the photo you use for all online services, and don’t change it. While the effects of rebranding your digital persona are significantly less than rebranding your company, the principals are the same. People that you interact with on a daily or weekly basis, will not recognize your new avatar and it will take time to build that recognition up again. Register for Gravatar (a service that ties an avatar to your email address) and make sure that the same avatar is being used for your Twitter account, Flickr page etc. Take what you know about the importance of Brand Consistency and apply it to yourself.

4) Increase Search Engine Visibility. If you’re serious about developing a digital shadow and online visibility you need to be involved. This means creating and using as many digital touchpoints as you can. Become a thought leader in your industry and start publishing original content that people will want to read. (side note: starting a blog with content that people will want to read is very different from simply starting a blog). Start Twittering, posting pictures to Flickr, videos to Vimeo, bookmarks to del.icio.us and cross promote. Participate and interact with other twitter-ers and bloggers in your areas of interest and start conversations with them.

5) Set Facebook Privacy Settings. We’re all on Facebook, well most of us at least. But how many of you have altered the privacy settings on your account and locked it down? Familiarize yourself with the options under Settings -> Privacy. The major ones to check are the Public Search listing (Under Search Options) and making sure that Beacon Websites is checked (Under Applications). One final stop under section and you should be significantly more secure then before. (though with Facebook, nothing is entirely secure!) More information available on articles from Wired Magazine here and here.

Tags: blogging, Branding, facebook, google, Interactive, online, personal branding, twitter