Just been playing around with a few things lately to try and do one simple thing. Brand everything I do on-line.
For a long time I have used a very similar user name for all of the different websites that I use. I’m sure most people do this; your “sign up” email address will normally match the user name you register when you head over to a new social network site. twitter.com/bob digg.com/bob etc etc.
For a long time I used “biscuit” which was great to start off with but lets be honest there is no way I would ever show up in a Google search with a user name like that. So I have been moving everything I do across to “smlp”.
My goal was to make it easier for people to find some of the crap that I put on the interweb. Basically I wanted to get things to the point of when you search from my avatar/name you would easily find some of the things that I do. Now there is no prize for doing this you understand, it was just to see if I could do it.
Turns out.. it was easy. I basically changed (where possible) my user name for sites that I’m registered to match my website address (i.e. smlp.co.uk or smlp) and I’m starting to re-register to all others using “smlp”.
Six of the top ten searches in Google now find my different networks and also just typing “smlp” into the address bar in most browsers take you here. Before I did this it was only one in ten on the search results and finding my site was a nightmare unless I pointed people straight here.
Basically I have set-up my own online brand.
or have I?
Let me know if you don’t think I have even come close to Branding my on-line stuff or if you think I’m just full of shit… I would love to hear from you in the comments below.
Also if anyone out there want to help me with a bit for wordpress theme editing…. I want to use a 3 column layout just @smlp me.