Personal Branding Websites

LinkedIn profile? Check. Facebook profile? Check. Gmail Account? Check. But, what about a website over which you have complete creative control? A page to declare your home on the internet? That takes some proactive effort. I write this article having just completed a personal branding website, philipithomas.com.  The goal of such a site is establishing your own identity on the internet. How do you know if you have succeeded? A simple Google search of your name will tell you whether the internet recognizes your site and identity as influential. However, a personal branding website can serve many more roles. With a domain and some hosting space, you have the power to design a site that acts as a business card, a social network portal and a hub for effective communication.

Google is analogous to the phone book of the internet- if you want to learn about a person or find them online, you search their name. Currently, searching my name brings up a photographer in Texas. One of my main goals for my personal branding website is to claim the top spot in a search of “Philip I. Thomas” as my own. With increasing frequency, employers, friends and potential business partners are googling your name to learn about you. Having control of what they find is one of the most effective assets of a personal branding site. With your own website, you can control the look, feel and information on such a site. Think of it as an advertisement for yourself. You can talk about your accomplishments, state your goals and give people a way to contact you.

Business cards should serve not only as a list of data, but should also serve as a link to further information about you. Having a website of your own to place on a business card allows you turn the small piece of paper into a wealth of knowledge for interested contacts. Hence, having a personal site and giving it a prominent role on your business card can ensure professional connections and increase the likelihood of follow-up communication. Some people print the URL of a LinkedIn profile on their business card, but such a profile is bland and ubiquitous. By securing the domain [yourname].com or [yourname].info, you can reference a creative website that portrays you in a unique manner. When looking at how to truly become modern, what if your website was your business card? Above I have a concept for a brand new style of business card- a link to your online identity. With the increased prevalence of smart phones with internet access, simply making your business card a URL can allow friends, business contacts and otheres to access more detailed and interactive information about you quickly and easily.

A person often has many different online pages representing them, such at a blog, a Facebook page, a Twitter profile and a LinkedIn page. Having a personal branding website allows you to consolidate these identities and to increase traffic to the various sites. Some people have links to all of their sites on every single page they control. If your facebook profile has links to multiple pages, you can replace such lists with a link to your personal branding site, from where you can maintain a comprehensive list of your active social networking profiles. That way, if a friend wants to find you on Facebok or Twitter, all you have to give them is your URL.

Are you operating off of an antiquated @aol.com address? What about an @gmail.com address? Unfortunately, such email addresses  are too common and lend nothing to your professionalism. They can even show that a person does not invest much time into their image. If you have ever purchased personalized return address stickers or have had personalized stationery printed, then converting your email address to the domain bearing your name is the digital equivalent. Doing this does not even require a hosting plan- all that is needed is a domain name purchase. If you dearly love your Gmail interface, fear not. Google Apps is a wonderful system that allows you to set up email addresses at a domain that you hold. You retain all of Gmail’s features and, with the standard edition of the service, the service remains free.

Securing the domain of [yourname].com or [yourname].info can establish a digital identity, consolidate your social networking sites and allot you a professional means of communication. A personal branding website is relatively inexpensive to setup, but it allows you to create a modern platform effectively communicating with people, both actively and passively, in this digital age. Vanity phone numbers, pedantic business cards and personalized letterheads are becoming outdated. The place for your effort is an online identity in the form of a personal branding website.