I love googling myself.
I do it about once a month, entering my name in google to see how often I show up. I’m right near the top of the results, with a lot of results. Yes, I know that this is self-centered and egotistical… But everyone has done it at some point or another. I do it not just for self-gratification, but also out of enlightened self-interest: as someone who may need to be looking for a new job someday, I want to make sure that future employers who look me up don’t see anything that could impact my career prospects.
I’ve written about online reputation protection before, and I won’t rehash those thoughts here. This post is about making yourself findable on the Internet. If you aren’t you need to be. Why? A big reason is referenced above – potential employers use Google. If you are applying for a tech job, and you don’t have a significant web presence, that ‘no results found’ may hurt your prospects.
Have a presence in social media. Join Twitter, Quora, LinkedIn, and as many of the networking sites as you can… Yes, even Facebook (though I’m not a fan). Pick one or two to focus your time on. Contribute as much or as little as you can, but the engagement is key. The more you engage, the better your chance of increasing your visibility.
Start a blog. Get a free WordPress or Blogger account and start writing. Yes, even if you aren’t a writer, put something up. Make it a quick bio, or a summary of your resume, or just use your blog to link to stories that interest you. But create a “footprint” on the net that you can call your own.
Use your real name. Google’s new social media network Google+ got a of flack recently by requiring users use their real names, and many felt that was a bad idea. While I’m not debating that point, the key to being found is to not go by a pen name but to go by your given name. If you want to be anonymous, then call yourself ‘fuzzynomnom132’.
Finally, be prolific. “Feed the beast.” One of my favorite sites is Lileks.com, the web presence of author and humorist James Lileks. He adds content to his blog all the time – in fact, look at his output and compare it to my own throughput and I feel like an amateur. The more content, the more pages that search engines index, and thus the more hits. Yes, there are ways you can tweak your site to optimize it for search engines, but in the end content is king: make more of it and you chances of being discovered because if it increases.
(And a quick tip: political rants in ALL CAPS with prodigious cursing? May not be the best way to make a first impression with people who find you on the ‘net. Just saying…)