Own yourself
About a year ago, someone gave me a very good piece of advice about branding yourself on the web: find a unique way to express your name and own it everywhere you can. "What a good idea," I thought to myself. Then I searched and learned that the URL http://debjjones.com was available, so I purchased it, and...nothing. I just held onto it for a long time, because I wasn't really sure what I wanted to do with it. But when LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter offered opportunities to have a username, guess what I picked? Go on and Google debjjones right now and see what you get... I'm not pretending to be an expert, but a year ago, you would have thought I was in the Google witness protection program. I was nowhere to be found.
In my case, I have an extremely common name, which is a disadvantage. I overcame that by coming up with a unique configuration that no one else was using (at least not on the Internet) which included my middle initial and no period. When I first did it, it seemed a little silly, but now I'm glad I did. A presence on Google fits my professional goals and paves the way toward more extensive PR and marketing activities. http://Twitter.com/debjjones is not in use right now, because I choose to promote my marketing activities; however, I did go ahead and get control of the username to protect my "brand."
Try it for yourself. http://www.Godaddy.com has a simple interface for checking on the availability of URLs. That's a great placed to start. If you find one that works for you, try to append it to your favorite social networking sites that allow you to select a username, such as http://facebook.com/debjjones, http://linkedin.com/debjjones, and http://twitter.com/debjjones .
