Digital Brand "Me"

Personal brand management is becoming more and more important as more and more of our lives end up online. LinkedIn, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, Twitter, are just a few of the places where snippets of our lives are shared, to a greater or lesser degree publically as we learn to lock down our profiles and get more choosy about what we share with who.

Most people have "googled" themselves at some point, and quite enlightening it is too to see how many alter-ego's you have and what they do. The entertaining bit becomes when you start thinking about the personal and professional implications of what those people are doing online and how that may impact you in cases of mistaken identity. I have a Google Alert set up on my name so I can keep track of that stuff. I also advocate using Pipl - which does interesting deep searches and fishes out data way beyond stuff Google returns.

Anyone that hasn't secured their Facebook profile really should (settings menu / privacy settings), but I would also suggest that you dive in here early Saturday morning (in the UK) and stake your claim ASAP to a proper Facebook username string - so you can go from being www.facebook.com/profile.php?1221321456 to the rather more friendly www.facebook.com/usernameofyourchoice.

I'm forecasting a landgrab. And advising my clients who are brand owners to try and prevent Facebook cybersquatting by registering their interest now. Once those names have gone, they've gone.

Don't tarry.