How Popular is Your Name in the Search Engines?
Have you searched for your own name lately? Do you know not only how many times you are listed? When searching, you also want see listings of others who share your name.
Why is this important? Because when you are marketing online, you need to know what kind of competition there is to dominate your market using your own name. For example, when I search for "Jim Hutchinson" on Google, there are 48,100 results. Bing shows 16,800. Yahoo! shows 17,100. Not all of those are mine.
Yes it helps that I own JimHutchinson.com and that is on the first page, but it also helps that I use my own name in multiple social networking circles. Each time you post a message or article, search engines like Google, Yahoo! and Bing index it to use that information in their Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs).
You get the same, similar or better results by being social and posting information using your name. You do not even have to use your name in the posts because it will already be there. If you social networking account is in your name instead of an alias or company name, you will brand yourself. If you provide your author profile when posting blog articles, you will brand yourself there too.
You want to brand yourself so people will recognize you as a leader in your field and look to you when they need answers. You could of course, brand a company name instead, but in social circles, that is not personal. Many of your posts on Facebook will be personal in nature to communicate with your family, friends and associates.
A company identity will post mostly business-oriented messages. A personal identity will post both business and personal messages. Separating the two is not very easy when branding yourself instead of a company, but you can tie the two together by mixing your messages. When you do that, people will get to know a bit about you and what you offer. That can be a good mix.
On the other hand, branding yourself by posting strictly business information will get boring to your followers. Mix it up by using your name in your profile and blend your company name and products in for a good recipe.
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Jim Hutchinson
Website Managers, LLC
Website Management and Hosting since 1998
http://www.WebsiteManagers.net
