If you envision being able to conduct business for yourself via the Internet. It is imperative that you develop your personal brand. This blog helps me to develop my personal brand, my e-mail address, twitter, Linked in, and all the other social media websites help as well. The Internet is an integral part of every one’s life today and in order to be recognized, you need to develop your brand online.
It starts with owning your name online. Sure there are millions of John Smith’s of the world, so if your parents named you that. Good luck trying to get your birth name as a domain name. Even my name John Van Wyk although relatively uncommon was taken by someone located in Canada. I did the next best thing, jvanwyk.com! Everyday I get e-mails from people regarding business and potential opportunities. How can I take them serious when the e-mail address is something like: Hotlips@, Chickenlady@, Masterblaster@, 2cute@ – get the idea?
One of the first domains I purchased online was www.jvanwyk.com I didn’t use it for a year. Wondering what I was going to do with it. Then I decided to begin building my personal brand and this blog helped me. It has enabled me to make business contacts and friends whom I would have never met before. James King from http://www.atmmultimedia.com/ has been a tremendous help to me. He like the others I have met are like minded people whom believe and strive for the same things I do each day.
Developing a personal brand online takes work to create and even more to maintain. This isn’t something that you can just setup and forget about. You need to work at it daily, maybe five minutes or five hours. You will reap what you sow! However, with all of these social networking sites I mention above, the basic fact is that you need to have passion and drive to see the projects through. Without it, you might as well not even start.
I am passionate about this blog, internet marketing and learning. I have a plan in place for leveraging my passion into something that can support the lifestyle I want to live. I make it a point to reivew my plan each day. Repetion breeds habit, and we all know that habits are hard to break. Life has a funny way of throwing you a curveball every now and again. The measure of your passion is tested each time that occurs.
So, go out and purchase your name as a domain name. Don’t only purchase your name, purchase your father’s, mother’s, wife, kids or boyfriend/girlfriends name (just think of all the satisfaction you would have if you owned your boyfriend or girlfriends name as a domain!) I highly recommend Go Daddy when purchasing your domain name. To help you, I created a seperate web page that can walk you through it. http://whohasmynameonline.com/ just click on any of the ads located on my webpages. When you do that, your helping me keep this blog going as well!
Let me know some of your personal branding ideas by leaving me a comment below. It will not only help me, but everyone else that visit’s my blog as well. I strongly believe in sharing my knowledge with any and all whom ask, I hope you do as well.
