Social Media 101: Owning your name

This is an update to my post from earlier this month, “Do you own YOU?”

You have to own your name(?)

I argued in that post that everyone should own their own name.  Well I’ve given that some thought, and have decided that is not ultimately true.  And truth be told, I knew it when I was writing the linked post.  But I had decided that nothing is better than owning your own name through a URL and making that the basis of your online identity and brand.

Ok, so not your own name, a name

While I still argue that owning your own name is best, there is still a little wiggle room for an online persona that is not your actual name.  I know quite a few females that are nervous about their names being known on the Internet.  Additionally your name may be taken, and heaven help you if you are John Smith, right?  There can only be one John Smith online, so if you are John Smith number two or nervous about using your real name, you have a couple of options: make a name from your name, or create a unique name altogether.

By making a name from your name I mean you can be JohnS, JSmith, or SmittyJay.  Something memorable that works that nobody else has.

By creating a unique name altogether I’m saying you can be something completely unlike your own name.  Something like Perez Hilton, or Technosailor.

I’m still giving thought to having two names floating around in the Internet ether.  My instincts tell me not to, but logic tells me you should push your name.  For this example I’m going to use ProBlogger.net.  The author of ProBlogger is Darren Rowse, but I can never for the life of me remember his name.  I read his book, I read his blog all the time, to me, he is problogger.  His Twitter is @problogger, not his name, one of his other blogs, TwiTip.com has the statement, “TwiTip is edited by Darren Rowse from ProBlogger Blog Tips and is all about Twitter.”  As you can see from the statement on TwiTip, Darren knows he is more defined by the name of his blog than by his own name.  This is why my instinct tells me Darren should stick being problogger, and not confuse his brand by pushing his real name as well.

Staking your claim

The two items that are criticle for creating a persona these days are the domain name and the Twitter account.  If either are taken, keep looking.

Having said that, the one constant is the domain name, but something will replace Twitter eventually.  The .com is obviously best, but there are many options now, .me, .name, .us, .org, .net, and a few more I’m sure that aren’t coming to mind right now.

The worst thing you could do

Building your online presence around your company would be the worst thing you can do, in my humble opinion.  I gave some examples in the first post of people that have maintained their own identity even through several companies.  On top of that, a company might just be looking to hire based on the network they can bring with them.  If your network is tied to your old company,   you are pretty much hosed and have to mostly start over if you do move to another company.

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Thanks for stopping by!

--Jeremy Vaught

Tagged as: Darren Rowse, problogger, Social Media 101, twitter