If you're like many people, you have a little bit of yourself spread around in several different places on the web creating a very fragmented digital footprint. Odds are, each of your personal profiles are not as complete as they should be, your information is inconsistent and this lack of coordinated effort is suppressing your personal brand effectiveness and likely making for something less-than-optimal in terms of results when someone types your name into one of the many search engines.

1. Tom
McCollum
is
a
personal
brand
thought
leader
and
highly
regarded
auto
industry
innovator
and
CEO.
Tom
recently
co-­‐
founded
SCORESTRONG™,
a
new
First
Impression
Resource™
and
Personal
Brand
platform.
Advanced Personal Visibility 101– Are
You in Control?
Published by Tom McCollum 2013
Just because you have a LinkedIn profile doesn't mean your personal branding
efforts are complete, however, you're off to a great start! A great start because of
LinkedIn's membership base (approximately 200 million), visibility, ease-of-use
and maybe the most important reason: the embedded search features, which
allow for a myriad of ways for YOU to be found (or discovered). Having a
completed profile and professional headshot on LinkedIn is a giant step toward
communicating your brand. However, just because you built it doesn't mean they
will come...so what's next?
If you're like many people, you're also on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest,
Instagram and a handful of other networking related sites. You may not be as
active as some you know, but odds are you've at least set up a profile to see what
they're all about–right? Maybe you've even created a Klout account to measure
your "social influence" on a scale from 1-100. Have you uploaded your photo to
Gravatar and registered on Google Profiles to make yourself more "discoverable"
in the search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo? Have you ventured over to
GoDaddy and purchased your name as a dot com (or .net, .me, or all of the
available extensions)? Speaking of URL ownership, if you haven't done so
already, make certain you edit and claim your name on your LinkedIn URL while
its still available. Click on "Edit Profile" on your LinkedIn toolbar and just below
your picture you will see your LinkedIn address. Click "edit" next to your address
and look to the right side of the page and click on "Custom URL" and type in your
preferred name (without spaces). If it’s available your address will now be
linkedin.com/in/yourname instead of the long string of numbers you were
assigned by default. This will make you easier to search in LinkedIn and facilitate
better search engine results as you begin to coordinate your overall branding
efforts.
If you're like many people, you have a little bit of yourself spread around in
several different places on the web creating a very fragmented digital footprint.
Odds are, each of your personal profiles are not as complete as they should be,
1

2. Tom
McCollum
is
a
personal
brand
thought
leader
and
highly
regarded
auto
industry
innovator
and
CEO.
Tom
recently
co-­‐
founded
SCORESTRONG™,
a
new
First
Impression
Resource™
and
Personal
Brand
platform.
your information is inconsistent and this lack of coordinated effort is suppressing
your personal brand effectiveness and likely making for something less-than-
optimal in terms of results when someone types your name into one of the many
search engines. And more people than you might think are searching your name:
friends, co-workers, new acquaintances, business associates (before, during or
after the meeting), vendors, parents in your child's play group, a prospective or
current employer, a committee member, a recruiter, and so forth and so on–you
get the point, right? And given the evolving efficiency of the search engines and
particularly technology like Facebook's new Graph Search, people can find damn
near anything about you–most of which you control but some you don't unless
you take the necessary steps to opt out of public information aggregators like
Spokeo. The point is, YOU have to take control if you want to communicate an
effective personal brand.
So, with an ever-increasing digital footprint, how do you coordinate your overall
presence, move yourself up in the search engine standings and maximize your
personal branding efforts? The most efficient way to accomplish this is by using
one of several personal branding sites like BrandYourself, Qnary (pronounced
like Canary) or About, just to name what I consider to be the top three choices to
help coordinate and amplify your personal brand. These sites allow you to create
a comprehensive profile by either choosing to transfer information directly from
LinkedIn in the case of BrandYourself or just copying and pasting from your
already completed LinkedIn profile for the others. Once completed, each has the
appearance of a personalized website about you. If you happen to own your name
as a dot com, you can go to "Domain Management" on the GoDaddy site and
forward yourname.com directly to your site-of-choice address (ex: brand
yourself.com/yourname) or for a small annual fee Brand Yourself will mask your
personal URL and your Brand Yourself address will be yourname.com instead of
brand yourself.com/yourname. While it may sound more complicated than it is–
–it’s actually very simple. With yourname.com as your personalized website, you
can now add your URL on your LinkedIn page under "Contact Info", your
Facebook page under the "About" tab, Twitter, AARP, and just about any other
site where the profile page allows for a personal website.
2

3. Tom
McCollum
is
a
personal
brand
thought
leader
and
highly
regarded
auto
industry
innovator
and
CEO.
Tom
recently
co-­‐
founded
SCORESTRONG™,
a
new
First
Impression
Resource™
and
Personal
Brand
platform.
Here's the really cool part–the real purpose of these personal branding sites is to
link all of your online activities together under a hub and spoke type of approach
in order to maximize your visibility with the various search engines. It works
well...I've done it and so can you! Each of these sites allow you to link Facebook,
Twitter, LinkedIn, Gravatar, Wordpress, Klout, Instagram, press releases, and
just about anything else you can think of for the purpose of coordinating your
online presence and most important, optimizing YOU with the various search
engines. Remember; be consistent when completing profile information about
yourself. Be diligent in making certain you leave no stone unturned related to
your personal branding efforts and last, be patient as it takes several weeks to see
results in the various search engines. Your short-term objective should be to
appear on the first page when your name is entered into any of the search
engines. The ultimately objective of course is to find YOU in the number one
position on the first page of results! Hang in there...it can be done!
3