My experiences of the web, and of social networking in particular, combined with my natural inclination towards privacy have led me, in the past, to hide behind a corporate identity. In certain cases this is a good thing, since many people I deal with in business are more comfortable with a corporate identity and having employed a couple of people this year on short term contracts, it has made sense to describe what "we" can do. However, it is clear that a lot of what I do is me, indeed a friend of mine recently pointed out the obvious fact that I have no exit from the company as the company is, in effect, me. So I swallowed my dislike of being the focus of attention, and in an attempt to reach those who prefer more personal contact, I created my personal online brand.
How, you may ask? Well, I grabbed an online ID from Facebook to match my Blogger ID, my Twitter ID, and my chosen LinkedIn public profile URL. Then I chose a serious-looking photo of myself (note to self: look happier!), cropped it artistically (so I thought) to add an air of gravitas, and posted it to all my profiles. I then made sure I cross-link my profiles, using this blog as the centre of it all. I've used Twitterfeed to publish my blog updates to Twitter, and I've added the Blog Link application to my LinkedIn profile in order to publish my blog there. I've also had some mini cards printed, containing only my Twitter ID and my Gmail address, complete with pictures of me - actually, I might have gone over the top there.
Now I'm (stern looking) dlavery62 across the board, more or less. You can catch me on LinkedIn here , Facebook here, and Twitter here. I'm easier to find, with a consistent presentation, and now I await the wrath of the internet gremlins.
P.S. My corporate identity is still alive and well at smartworks-it.com.
P.P.S. I really must change that photo!
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