Why Should You Brand Yourself On The Internet?
Personal Branding. What is it? Why Would I Want it?
It sounds complicated, but it is not. It is just a way for you to get your name, your brand out on the internet so that the search engines like Google, MSN, Yahoo and all the others will pull up your personal site when someone enters your name in a search field.
Why is this important? Good question. Here is just a few reasons.
1. Perhaps you have a home based business and you want your prospective partners to find you easily when the only thing they remember is your name. They lost all the emails you sent them but voila, they remember your name. They go to one of the search engines, enter your name, and your site is pulled up on the internet.
2. Your friends can do the same, and when you want to send them to your site to see all the family pictures, you can simple tell them, just go to MyName.com and see all the latest family pictures.
3. You want a way to tell someone all about you without having to recite it to each person who wants to know more about you. Again, you just send them to your personal website: MyName.com
4. You want to have your prospective partners go to your Company Replicated web site but the URL (web site address is too long and complicated) again it is easier to send them to http://MyName.com which you have set up to redirect (forward) to your company site. You can even mask it to never change the URL that they see when they get to your site. It will not show YourName.YourCompanyName.xxx/UserID102904.asp?Theme4 and so on. You get the picture.
5. You want to have an email address that matches your Name, to look more professional, like YourFirstName@MyName.xxx or perhaps you want to take it a step further and get another domain name to host your site or point to your company site such as WhereProfessionalSalesPeopleCanMakeMillions.xxx ot what have you. I.E. you can point your Personal Branded domain name to http://MyName.com to WhereProfessionalSalesPeopleCanMakeMillions.xxx (leaving it unmasked so that domain name it points to will show in the URL window, and actually host your web site there.
Now you have a choice of sending people to either domain name, depending on whether or not your are advertising or talking to a friend, where you might prefer to send them to your Personal Name domain. You get the idea. It simple gives you more flexibility, and you can change the forwarding any time you chose to.
"OK" you say. That all sound great but what if I know nothing about making all this happen and do not know what to do in setting all this up.
Gotcha. We were all at this stage a one time. Here is all you need and have to do, and Only Do Once.
1. Go to http://GoBuddyHosting.com and order at wholesale a Personal Domain Name, and perhaps an Advertising Domain Name for sending people to your business web site. (feel free to shop around but I doubt you will find better overall deals, as I set up this company just to serve my associates and not to make income from it. I wanted to practice writing and submitting articles so that is why I am letting others know of this. When you see the prices you will understand)
2. Purchase an email account and a hosting account and to put up a web site get the "Website Tonight" tool if you are not familiar with HTML editors or FTPing your pages up to the hosting account server.
You now have the best of all worlds and can do anything online that you want either personally or business wise and look very professional doing it. Also, with your email account you can use it WEB BASED or set up your email client such as OUTLOOK, Outlook Express and many other to get to your domain email account and pick up your mail so you
a. don't have to login somewhere else to get your email, and
b. if you are using this for business you will never have to worry about emails being delivered to you (as can happen when you use free email accounts with the major ISPs, and you can reply back with your email client to all emails. It also helps you keep your Personal verses Business emails separated and organized.
"WOW" you say. "Sounds complicated as all get out. I doubt that I could do all that." Rest assured it is not really all that confusing after your first set up, and becoming familiar with the jargon. However I will say this. If you have any difficulty in any area, LIVE Customer Support is only a Phone Call Away, and they will lead you through it or even DO it for you.
Now, having said all that, can you see some of the reasons for Personal Branding? Do a search on some of your friends or business associates Names and you will see that Personal Branding is the happening thing and can be extremely useful to you both personally and professionally.
Please feel free post any questions you may have, and I will try to help you. If you want to see an example of Personal Branding just go here: http://JerryPurchase.com I think you will get the idea and see the benefits.
Happy surfing, and sharing with your friends and associates.
PS Since the prices are so low, you should get all the popular extensions for your Domain Name I.E. .com, .net, .org, .biz, .info, etc. especially if you get a business domain name. "Why". Because that will eliminate the possible of anyone else invading your domain by buying an extension you didn't and trying to compete with you and take your traffic.