Janet Lee Johnson | The Art of Marketing

Building and monitoring your own personal brand online is something I’ve coached students, colleagues and CxO’s on for several years. I learned why it’s so necessary when I was at Marqui and responsible for their controversial “paybloggers” campaign.

My personal reputation and the company’s reputation were put to the test in a very public manner for a good two years. I’m happy to say mine has remained relatively buoyant and unscathed, but it has taken diligence - which is more than I can say for Marqui.

I’m reminded that I learned the hard way, in reading an article in Advertising Age last week by William Arruda and Kirsten Dixson called “How to build the ‘brand called you’ in an online era.”

They give some very useful tips as to how to build your personal brand online.

1) First you Google yourself and find out how visible you are. That’s step one for any brand - personal, product or company. Type your name (in quotes) in your favorite search engine: e.g. “Janet Johnson”

JJ says: A good ‘extra credit’ step would be to go to Technorati (a blog search engine) and do the same thing. You might be surprised at the additional information you might find.

2) What’s your “GQ?” (Google Quotient) You should know the answer to this - how do you rank in search results? The article offers the following rankings:

• Digitally disguised - there’s nothing about you on the web.
• Digitally dissed - there’s little about you on the web.
• Digitally disastrous - there’s plenty of information about you online, but it has little to do with what you think or want known about yourself professionally.
• Digitally dabbling - we’d find some on-brand information about you online.
• Digitally distinct - we’d find plenty on you, reinforcing your unique personal brand and promise of value.

3) Position yourself as you would a product. And then (more importantly) ask yourself - is what I’m about to post online in support of my personal brand position? If in doubt, don’t.

4) Build your brand. They recommend maintaining a blog, creating a professional web site and using online networking sites. In my opinion, if you create a profile on LinkedIN or Facebook, you’re off to a good start. Your participation online is a great differentiator for you. Start slowly if you must, but start today.

5) Be constant. (Their words, not mine - I’d say) Monitor your brand. As you work to build an online reputation, consistency is good, but awareness is key. Set up a persistent search on your name (with an RSS tool like Attensa - which will constantly monitor the web for mentions of any search keyword or phrase) so you’re notified instantly whenever someone says anything about you.

Awareness and brand are increasingly accessible online. You’ve opened yourself up to conversations, let them flow. But (as in the real world) your reputation will require the most diligence and care.

Set yourself up for success in the long run - join the conversation and monitor the conversation. And don’t put anything online you wouldn’t want your mother to read tomorrow morning.