15-for-15 Challenge04 - You are who Google says you are!

Posted by Lola on Wednesday, July 01, 2015 in Inspirational, What matters | 25 comments

Ever heard of that saying before or you don't believe it?

I recently attended a breakfast meeting where Clara Chinwe Okoro, the curator for CoolBrands in Nigeria hammered that exact thought and she also shared some powerful insights on 'personal brand building'.

Welcome to my fourth piece in the 15-for-15 Challenge themed woman; her body, soul and spirit. I am going to expand the sphere of my target audience however to include the menfolk (though I'm sure they've found the previous posts in this series interesting too *winks*) The aim is write a post that will improve a person's spiritual, physical and mental acuity.

Permit me to share a story with you. A few months into my MBA programme some industry experts came to give us one of those out-of-this-world pep talk that was to serve as an eye-opener into the real corporate world. The guest speaker went on about managing our individual reputation online, highlighting how a good online reputation affects people's perception of us and how impressions are formed based on that virtual contact. At the time LinkedIn was the major tool being marketed to us but beyond that platform other social networking tools were discussed. The presentation left me with a single thought, "what will people find about me when they google my name". This I am sure was the overarching objective on the part of the consultant, he aimed to provoke our senses to ask ourselves that all-important question and hey I did. I got on my laptop, googled my name and alas! I wasn't even found on the first page.

RULE NO 1.

Whatever you do ensure you remain visible on the FIRST PAGE!

For real, one does not simply go to page 2 to continue a search except such a person is involved in a detailed research work. That day I searched for my name I was completely unimpressed by the results that jumped out at me. I was not on the first page neither did my name reveal much on the other page which brings me to this other rule (I'll get to that in a bit). These days people, not restricted to employers of skills check you out first online before an actual meeting! Ask an HR expert he/she will tell you the same.


RULE NO 2.

Write your own story and I don't mean that figuratively.

Trust me when I say content is king. One of the searches I found of myself revealed I had a blogger account which was something that was created when I needed to comment on some interesting post I had earlier read but beyond that there was no activity whatsoever on that account. Empty blogspot account for someone who loves to write??? "Tufiakwa" (God-forbid) "kamari" (may it never happen). You know this is a case of the tailor's son wearing rags?

Trust yours truly, that was the propeller for me to start this blog. A new journey was defined and I chose to activate that account which had been dormant for over six months. The first post was put up in January 2014 and I haven't stopped since - well except when I need to take the occasional breaks due to one reason or the other ;-)

Here's the juicy/dicey part. When you google me what do you find? (Hold on before you rush off to take that test *tongue out* let's look at a sub-rule)

RULE NO 2.1.

- Your passion

- Your achievement

- Your vision

People must find these 3 things or a combination of them in any dimension. For instance searches of my name will reveal 75% of my passion and 25% split between the others (no one's assigning weights nor rating).

We agree we need to have an active reputation online. What sort of reputation do we want to build? A good one. How can that be created? Simple.

First you must define your personal brand. Who are you? What do you want associated with you? What's your niche? What angers you to a point of compassion? What are your values? Beliefs? The onus rests on YOU to define that. A lot of young fellows are doing great on the internet space these days; some as relationship catalysts, some as fitness experts. Consultants of all sorts making things happen. But hey, don't be sad the space isn't saturated yet. There is always room for you to exploit just define your personal brand.

Create content to support your personal brand. You remember those 3 things - passion, vision, accomplishment? Create a story around them. Like I earlier said the job can be done for you by a close friend, an acquaintance or a relation. I mean I know a young guy who is a relationship catalyst. This guy is super active on social media. He comes up with different poster designs every other week to push his twitter activities through BBM plus Whatsapp broadcasts and guess what? Someone does the designing for him. He only does the talking!

(That's no advert by the way). Point is you don't necessarily have to know how to articulate your vision/passion/achievement but allow the help of others and push this story on your LinkedIn profile - you should create one between. If you are still as young as I am and you intend to remain in the corporate world for a while even if you are a budding entrepreneur you need visibility online! I have a senior friend who jokingly told me I shouldn't date too many guys so that when he becomes president and asks me to join his cabinet no guy will come with some blackmailing stunt threatening to reveal all the eeeeevil I 'may' have done as a single young lady. This applies to the digital space as well, when your children come of age and read about you online, what will they find? The time to manage what is being seen or read about you is now because whatever people find about you defines who or what they think you are whether you like it or not.

Use Google as your wingman. Yeah you read that right. Make sure this content is found on Google. Link your pages, let there be easy access to you (not necessarily your privacy) but your identity. My Facebook page is linked to my blog and blog is linked to Instagram...just like that. You may not be able to afford paying for SEO services but if you own a business you may want to consider this (I'll let the experts tutor you on this one - calling on Peace Itimi).

So ladies and gent, that's my bit this week to you. Create an image that will positively impart your online reputation because...