AtlantTech reported today that Twitpay has raised an undisclosed round of funding.
Twitpay, the second Startup Weekend Atlanta company to secure seed captial (Skribit being the first), is a simple way to send payments via Twitter. The service is powered on the backend by Amazon Payments. Twitpay went live two weeks ago.
Somehow or the other I came to be known as a quasi-expert on personal branding. And with the unemployment rate topping 8% the pace of people coming to me and asking about personal branding has taken quite a spike in the past month of so. Surprisingly, all of the people that are doing so are currently gainfully employed (those that are not just want job leads, which is a bad strategy).
Also surprising is that they are really coming to ask me about online identity management, which is just one facet of a holistic personal branding effort. While I may save the broader personal branding discussion for a real expert or a later day, personal branding is essentially the way an individual communicates their unique promise in value in the same manner a company would. Online identity management focuses on creating a positive and distinguished Web presence of a person on the Internet.
Here are ten steps I recommend to manage your online identity.
1. Conduct An Vanity Search Audit
Have one of your friends do a vanity
search audit (Google, LIve & Yahoo!). I recently had a meeting with a young lady to discuss
managing her online brand. She was a little surprised I googled her
before our meeting. Even more surprised that I found one of her niche
social networking profiles with a reference to drinking and partying.
2. Clean Up Your Debris
If the audit uncovers anything unseemly, pick it up and discard it.
3. Control Your Social Network Audiences
Control is not a bad thing. Close down your more social social network profiles to your real friends. You don't want people that are searching for you as part of a background check to see comments from your college roommate on Facebook or MySpace. Maybe that is just me. Then again, maybe not.
4. Be You
Cleaning up your debris and making sure some potential hiring company or business partner does not have full access to all your social networks does not mean losing your personality and becoming some sterile drone (discretion is a good quality). Be nice, be helpful, demonstrate a little expertise, and above all be yourself. It is the only way that you can be consistent enough to create a brand of you.
5. Create Home Base
A place where you put all the stuff that you want people to find out about you. It can just be a collection of links to other places to find you on the Web, an online portfolio, a blog, or all of the above. You can do this on the cheap with tools such as blogger.com but you don't want a cheap personal brand and...
6. Home is Really Google
Jeremiah Owyang, a senior analyst at Forrester Research believes that a company's home page is really google.com. So is your personal home page. Professionals are googling you. Before they meet you. Before they interview you. As an example the number one keyword phrase driving traffic to FoG is "Lance Weatherby". It has the second keyword phrase beat by 100%
In his article Jeremiah points to some research that indicates the top three search results are clicked on 75% of the time. You want to own those SERPs (Search Engine Results Page) and if at all possible you want to dominate the entire default preference of 10 results. How can you do that?
7. Register a Personal Domain
I can not think of a single person that I know that has a personal domain that does not have the number one SERP on a vanity search. Fifty six percent of the people that search for you are going to click on that number one link. Own it and control you online identity destiny.
8. Customize Your LinkedIn Profile
LinkedIn is purely professional and can be effectively managed as a pillar of your online identity. Personalize your LinkedIn public profile to the form http://www.linkedin.com/in/lanceweatherby. It will return better search results. Instructions for doing so as well as other methods to promote your public profile are here. To expose your profile to anyone using LinkedIn go to the Edit Public Profile Settings and select Full View. Make your profile as complete as your resume.
9. Scribd It
Great place to post your bio, resume and other portfolio materials. Make sure the files you upload are saved with your full name in the file name. I put my resume up in January. It is currently the fifth SERP on my name.
10. Use Niche Social Media
You can use niche sites to fill out your top SERPS. ClaimID (which I really like a lot), Naymz, and Rapleaf are all online identity management services that could be utilized. If you are really active and social online a number of niche sites could fill this void. Flickr, Twitter, YouTube, you name it. Just be aware if it is searchable people will search and find it.
And everything else. To create a positive online identity that highlights your achievements and skills you must actively manage your Web presence. Hopefully these steps will get you moving down that road.
On Friday Patrick Clements tweeted out that I had linked to a presentation about personal marketing. He could not find it. Either could I. Made a comment to me that it was something edgy. The only thing I could think of was Marta Kagan's social media marketing deck.
But my Startups in 12 Quotes deck attracted a follower that had faved "how we all become ELVIS, a note on personal brands."
For the past two years I have given up some form of Internet technology for Lent.
Two years ago it was Google and Yahoo! I went back to them both for awhile. These days it seems like just about everybody has given up on Yahoo!. And the GOOG borg just keeps sucking us all in.
Last year I give up social networks. Never really went back to LinkedIn and Facebook. Twitter has become my social network of choice.
I have been contemplating what to do this year for some time. Give up Twitter. No way. Drives too much traffic. I thought of giving up follower scrutiny. Doing auto-follow. But that didn't feel right.
It seems I have started a bit of a trend in Atlanta with this giving up technology thing. Stephen Fleming announced he was giving up Twitter for Lent. Knox Massey said all social networks, blogs and limited email.
When others are zigging it's time to zag. I'm keeping my technology this year. All of it.
It's just past midnight. For Lent I am giving up staying up during the work week.
Let's see now that goes.
Update: Perhaps I did give up something technical for Lent. I killed www.weatherby.net. For the time being blog.weatherby is my home on the Internet. I also am giving up checking my lance@mindspring.com email address. Had it since 1995.
WebChallenge is a high-school level contest, where students are asked to use
free technologies and/or Open Source Software in order to improve their
community in some way.
For the Webchallenge 2009 contest, there are 4 main categories in which students can compete:
If you happen to know any Georgia high school students let them know about the program. If you actually happen to be a Georgia high school student, get a faculty/teacher sponsor to support your effort (not
necessarily technically, just for communication and organization), get a team. register, and get to it.
Forgive the indulgence of the Follower Tag Cloud post. The output of Twittersheep was just to artistic to muddy with mere words.
I found Twittersheep via my friend Tessa. Twittersheep is a Twitter visualization tool. It searches your list of Twitter followers and pulls together a tag cloud based on keywords in their profiles.
The big words in my followers tag cloud? Social media marketing
entrepreneur. It's kinda what I am. What I do. And what the people that follow
me do it seems.
Few people truly understand social media marketing. Marta Kagan does. If you want to understand it and know how to play the game, breeze through her presentation. Don't let the title scare you. It's good stuff. Don't believe me? Goog best social media marketing presentation and see what you find (Great to see Toby Bloomberg there as well!).
In the past couple of weeks a few thing have gotten me thinking more about social media marketing.
The first was a gaffe made by James Andrews, a Vice President, Director at Ketchum Interactive. He made a comment on twitter about Memphis, the home of FedEx, a major client of Ketchum. Well someone from FedEx read James' comment and got a little upset. Which led to some questioning and more questioning and even more questioning about Andrews' and Ketchum's knowledge of social media marketing.
The second was an article that David Eckoff pointed me to entitled "Social Media "Experts" are the Cancer of Twitter (and Must Be Stopped)." In the article author Michael Pinto refers to social media mavens as "zombies." Money quote: "Sometimes the social media and SEO zombies can mate to produce a marketing strategy monster, but most of these are harmless."
Now I have nothing against James Andrews or social media marketers in general. As a matter of fact one of the reasons that I started blogging was to learn more about how social media "works." And while I hesitate to call myself a social media marketing expert (if for no other reason that such positioning is off-strategy), when it comes to such things I know more then 99.999% of the people using the Internet.
And the biggest lesson that I took away from what has become known at the FedEx incident, is that just like in the real world when you go to give a speech, you need to know your audience and make sure you are speaking to them.
And you might want to have a simple strategy in place. Here's mine. For the blogs I control and the big three of social networking.
Corporate blog
I started and manage ATDC's corporate blog, PeachSeedz. While targeted towards entrepreneurs and the startup community, my assumption on anything that goes on PeachSeedz is that the president of Georgia Tech, a state legislator, or the governor of Geogia might read it. No politics here. Strictly business that fits within ATDC mission and advances it's reputation as a leading technology incubator.
Personal blog
On FoG I am a little looser. This is mine. I can pretty much say what I want. And I do. But I also do so with a mind that lots of people in my professional circles read what I have to say. Co-workers, entrepreneurs, employers, founders, investors, who knows. And my wife and kids too. And as the audience has grown I have found myself being more reserved in my comments while still maintaining an openness and my persona. Now over 3,000 people read FoG every month. I am mindful of that and write a bit differently then when the blog was much smaller.
Twitter
Twitter believe it or not is where I am most guarded of all. A tweet can go anywhere. And they do. I have no personal relationship with the vast, vast majority of people that follow me on twitter. On twitter you have to assume that your comment can be seen by anyone and act accordingly. My follow strategy is to only follow those that I really know or seem really smart. Works for me.
Facebook
I don't interact with Facebook much. My twitter stream is published there. I consider Facebook to be like a party. I only accept friend requests from those whom I either have or envision going to a party with. I ignore requests from business associates that want to friend me on Facebook. If they ask I request to connect on LinkedIn.
LinkedIn
Great tool for amassing your real life business connections. I have prettly completely created a professional profile. You should as well. But as others have written, it's not a butler. And it is a really, really bad way to communicate. Generally speaking people do not respond to LinkedIn requests (I have a 198 notifications in my "inbox"). If you want to connect to someone that one of your connections knows, send them a email or call.
I was breezing through the headlines in The Wall Street Journal this morning when I came across this: "Obama to Tap Tech Adviser as FCC Chief". As in Internet this got my attention and the more I read the more excited I got about the selection. Julius Genachowski is an excellent choice to lead the Federal Communications Commission.
First of all he has FCC and beltway experience. During the Clinton administration he served as General Counsel to the Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission. A little bit of a so what, but the guy knows his way around Washington.
Second of all when he left the FCC he went to work for Barry Diller at IAC/InterActiveCorp. He has been on the board of directors at Expedia, Hotels.com, The Motley Fool, Tickermaster, and Website Pros. My bet is Mr. Genachowski understands the Internet and the challenges facing Internet companies.
Third of all he is a Venture Capitalist at Rock Creek Ventures. A firm he co-founded.
Fourth of all his email address is in his profile on the Rock Creek Ventures site. There's some openness for you.
Fifth of all he gets early stage technology. In addition to Rock Creek Julius founded LaunchBox Digital, an seed stage investment firm based in Washington D.C. LaunchBox follows the Y-Combinator model.
Time will tell, but I think this guy understands technology and understands telecommunications. I can't think of a time when I have been more excited about a government appointment. Happy New Year!
Force of Good is licensed under a Creative Commons License. You are free to share, remix, and share alike with attribution.
DISCLAIMER
The opinions expressed here are mine and mine alone (with the exception of comments by others of course). They do not represent the opinion or position of any other person or entity. All postings adhere to my personal values.
