Daniel Eizans: Content Strategist, Geek

How do you keep up with all of those different Web sites, and how do I build a web presence? It’s a question I often hear from friends, students and clients. I always respond to it the same way – Are you sure you want to be as transparent and public as I am? If the answer is yes, here’s my brief how-to on the best ways to stop being invisible online, through careful building of your personal brand and web presence.

Perhaps the most obvious would be to start snagging up your name on the popular social networking sites. If your exact name is available, get it. But if it’s not, I’ve found it helpful to stick to a similar user name or URL shortcode for EVERY service you use. Consistency is something search engines love. The more properties that you can duplicate your username or URL shortcode on, the easier you are to find. And if your last name isn’t quite as unique as “Eizans,” do the best you can to do a first last combo or a username that at least applies to you in some way. You’ll find that most of my property on the web is full first, full last (danieleizans).

Five sites you absolutely shouldn’t ignore include Facebook, Flickr, LinkedIn, Twitter and last, but certainly not the least important is building your own website on your own domain. Here’s a quick rundown on why these five things are important to being more visible on the web.

Personal Domain/Website: If your name is available as a dot com, grab it now! With your own web site, you can point it towards all of these other great properties and build your blog into it. If your name isn’t available, do your best to figure out something memorable that applies to you. Don’t get cute, unless you have a company that is tied to your name.

Once you begin adding content to the site, you’ll begin to rise in the search engine rankings, so long as your content is optimized correctly, have strong title tags, header information and include links in the body copy.

Building clean and optimized content is a whole other post I’ll probably get to later.

LinkedIn: If used correctly, your LinkedIn profile says everything about your professional reputation. It essentially serves as your amendable online resume, complete with instant access to your professional references. It’s also plugged in to job hunting tools and is highly functional and SEO friendly.

Since spending a good deal of time updating my resume, background and ACTIVELY asking for recommendations, I’ve gotten at least 1 to 2 job leads a week from my LinkedIn profile. Don’t settle for just listing the job title, fill out the descriptions. Sell yourself.

Flickr: If you have any skill with a camera, Flickr can be a great way to house your photos, tag them, optimize them and be sure they are providing traffic back to your web site. I use Flickr exclusively for all of my images on Diary of a Would-Be Chef and for a great deal of content that I’ve personally shot for this web site. It features an analytics suite that’s reasonably good at identifying where your traffic is coming from and if you choose to make your photos sharable and usable by other bloggers, you could get even more traffic back to your site depending on the publishing rights package you go with.

Several of my food photos are being used as stock art for other blogs, in blog headers and in recipe reprints. In exchange for that use, I require the blogger publishes my name and links directly back to my personal web site, and believe me, I get traffic from it. Flickr also allows you to add links to comments and HTML. Also, take advantage of tags and create one for your site that you’re using the photos on.

Facebook: This social networking giant is a bit of a no-brainer. But, in order to display your profile in the Google results, you will need to change your privacy settings. Sharing your other sites and just having your name attached to Facebook helps you to be more visible.

Twitter: Claim your username on Twitter (before someone else does) and make your bio about you, not just what you’re interested in. Admittedly, Twitter isn’t for everyone. It takes work to stay on top of who you follow and the topics you’re interested in. But having your username locked down isn’t a bad thing. And if you’re as busy as I am at times, you may find it much easier to provide quick updates through micro-blogging as opposed to taking the time to research and post a longer piece. At any rate, Twitter is growing like gangbusters right now and you should become acclimated with it sooner than later. Being on Twitter will only help your name get out there.

So that’s it. Those are the bare bones you need to get started. As you get those properties going, you can add others, like FriendFeed, Tumblr, etc., etc. Crawling out of the cave of invisibility isn’t terribly difficult, but it does take time and a real effort. Also, don’t forget that once you’re out, it’s impossible to crawl back in. So before you go crazy, make sure you don’t mind being found with a single keyword or two. You may regret it in the long run.

Photo Jonathan Phillip

More and more I see brand strategists and other thought leaders talking about the importance of having great content on their sites to improve traffic and drive consideration. I’m of the belief that simply isn’t enough. Yes, great content, keyword strings, sound coding and SEO are all really important for getting people to your site. But once they’ve made it to your property, read your pitch and have begun the consideration process, what are you doing to engage them?

And thus, we have to address the dreaded customer relationship marketing thingy. I’m not going to lie to you. I believe most companies flat out suck at this. You might have something that totally interests me. I love what I find on your Web site and you might give me a channel to talk about how much I love both those things, but if you don’t talk back to me and acknowledge the fact that I’ve actually taken the time to give you my feedback, I won’t interact with your site again or bother to respond to your survey etc. And it’s in that assurance that you’ll converse with me that perhaps the most important key to blogging comes out: Establishing Trust.

Unfortunately, there isn’t a top 10, top 5 or even a top 2 list of ways to guarantee that people visiting your site will trust you. It’s a subjective thing, and damn is it ever frustrating when you can’t establish it. Building Trust with readership takes time. You have to be absolutely congruent with what you’re writing about and when you do converse with readers/consumers, you have to be and portray yourself as a person of authenticity and character. Even more difficult is getting those readers to perceive you as such and then connect with it.

Yes, you’ll fail. You’ll piss some people off and yes, a lot of people simply may not enjoy the person who happens to be the voice for your product, service or brand. But if you’re not interacting with consumers to make the attempt to build trust, you’re falling into the old way of marketing… shouting from the rooftops until someone hears you, blind to the fact that you have absolutely no real control about what people perceive your brand to be without talking honestly with them about it. If you go that route, let me know how that works out for you.

Photo: Dora Pete

Back in October, Joe Jaffe (@jaffeejuice) wrote a case study for the US Postal Service’s Deliver Magazine. In the study he discusses a trend he sees coming by 2012 – the development of the “Chief Conversation Officer.”

Jaffe says the Chief Conversation Officer will replace the traditional Chief Marketing Officer, serving as the true conduit between corporation and consumer. These new executives will essentially bring all customer conversations under one roof. They’ll be able to bridge the gap between public relations and consumer outreach, creating true integration and conversation about the brand.

I believe that that time is coming much sooner than 2012 for some companies as some have already started to adopt some of the roles of the Chief Conversation Officer.

Take the Michigan based Biggby Coffee as a great example of a company already putting this into practice. The company’s CEO Robert Fish (@BiggbyBob), is an active Twitter user, blogger and advocate for his brand.

I know what you’re thinking. Every CEO is a brand advocate. But not every CEO takes the time to engage with consumers, bring their consumers into product focus groups and do his or her own PR. What Bob Fish does well is have actual conversations with the people who consume his coffee. He’s friendly, honest and above all, engaging.

He’s also very open to rewarding those who are considering his brand. Fish entices fringe adopters by encouraging them to get in discussions with others who drink Biggby Coffee, without alienating those who are already true Biggby believers. This fantastic fan base is a true army of brand loyalists who act as evangelists for the brand. And in today’s challenging business climate, when loyalty is a fleeting thing, Biggby is committed to conversations with its consumers. Biggby isn’t just monitoring what its customers are saying effective response and responsiveness. As Jaffe writes in his book, and as Biggby has put into practice, “every customer complaint, compliment, question or concern deserves and mandates our time, our effort, our investment.”

In 2009, as more companies take the plunge into social media, I’m sure we’ll see more brands start to take these sorts of steps. We can only hope they don’t use these tools as another means to simply shout their message. It’s not another tool for companies to use, it’s about conversations. What other companies do you know of that are already using Chief Conversation Officers? Comments appreciated.

Photo by: Nara Vieira da Silva Osga