500 million+ people have created Facebook accounts so there is a good chance you are one of them. If you have plenty of Facebook fans and friends you are in the business of building a personal brand.

But who’s brand are you really building?

Is it your brand or is it the Facebook brand you are building?

I would suggest it is the Facebook brand but maybe you don’t care as long as you are networking your brand via Facebook.

But who really owns your Facebook presence?

Well not you because facebook can delete your account any time they wish to and as far as personal risk management is concerned it’s not an acceptable risk for establishing a personal brand.

But ask yourself this:

If you owned your own domain name and established a blog or website to network your brand, who would own the brand?

You would.

It makes good sense to use your own domain name for personal branding. Your name as a domain should dominate the front page of Google when people search your name. You can use the blog to connect with people and you can link it to your Facebook pages with your domain being the central hub of your brand.

A domain name only costs around $10 year and web hosting around $15 month which is peanuts for the benefits they present.

So take charge of your personal brand and register your name as a domain and start building your blog.

Google have just launched Google Sidewiki which uses a browser sidebar to allow visitors to post and read comments about the web page  they are viewing.

Sounds like a great idea, people can visit your web site and leave comments to let those that follow see what they think about you, your opinions or even comment about the way you look.

Unfortunately comments left on sidewiki cannot be moderated, at least not by you which to my mind leaves the whole system open to abuse.

Let’s be honest the world is full of creepy people, deviats, those with malicious intent  and the downright insane but Google is giving those people the freedom to visit your website and leave comments that cannot be moderated by you.

Oh and I didn’t mention the spammers, I would suggest right now spammers who peddle porn, Viagra and the like are licking their lips at the possibilities sidewiki is presenting to them.

So how will sidewiki effect you?

Well if you have worked hard developing your online personal brand, Google have given anyone the ability to attach graffiti to your brand.

Here’s how it works.

1. Download the Google Toolbar (It works with IE and Firefox)

2. Make sure sidewiki is activated.

3. Visit any webpage.

4. Click open sidewiki

5. Post your comment.

Now anyone using the Google Toolbar can see what you have written, good or bad.

To my mind the whole system in it’s current format is open to abuse, web site owners cannot opt in or opt out of the system nor moderate the comments.

Right now I’m saying to myself  ”Google what are you thinking of.”  I’m sure they have a plan for sidewiki that will leave all parties happy but in it’s current format it’s wide open to abuse and will cause real stress for many business owners.

I think the Nationals will be too nervous about doing anything with the domain other than not hiding the fact they now control it.  They are also enjoying that the press are suggesting that the Labour Party didn’t register nathanrees.com.au because they are preparing to dump Nathan Rees as Premier.

This is  a powerful example of why it is important to own and control your own domain. If your name was to fall into the hands of someone who really wanted to harm your good name (your personal brand) they could easily do it.

Eventually you would uncover them for what they are but the damage would considerable whilst you did so.

The video below will demonstrate, that using the First Person Branding profile webpage builder, the most technically challenged can create a professional looking web presence in under three minutes from login to completion.

You’ll have the option of using your own personal email address.

For example if your name was John Doe and you owned the domain JohnDoe.com you could have the email address John@JohnDoe.com

This looks more professional than an ISP email address such as johndoe433@myisp.com which is what an ISP may provide you with.

But another benefit of having your own personal email address is it doesn’t matter if you change ISP’s or if your ISP goes broke because such circumstances will not effect your email address as you can quickly host it with a new ISP or web host.

Niether will you  need to contact all your friends and associates informing them of your new email because you would have an email address that never changes. If you think that ISP do not go out of business perform a Google search on a search phrase such as “my ISP went broke” and read some of the horror stories such an event creates.

If you currently have an ISP email address or a free email address such as Hotmail or Yahoo you should understand that you are not self reliant as far as control of your online email communications are concerned. It would be especially risky for you to be building and online personal or business brand using such email addresses.

That’s when another general truth my parents taught me kicked in “What goes round comes round.” That one took me awhile to understand but now I realise they were referring to karma or everything in life is cyclical and will eventually balance out.

Those maxims are even more relevant on the Internet as it quickly becomes a bigger part of our lives and introduces new ways for us to communicate and express our thoughts and opinions.

But one thing you may or may not be aware of is that once you express your thoughts or opinions on the Internet they will be archived forever, literally. This means that if you create a webpage, leave a comment on a blog, participate in a forum discussion, post to Facebook or Twitter, whatever you write leaves your control and enters into some server side database that you have no control over.

An example of a public archive is the Internet Archive’s Way Back Machine a project started in 1996 that now has over 150 Billion web pages archived and searchable. You can search the archive and view web pages published years back and may no longer be online, or that’s what the original publisher may think.

So in your quest to create your personal brand my parents maxims become even more important because what you publish will always be available to anyone who really wants to find it.

Remember your brand is what people do think about you and if you make a habit of expressing unsavoury opinions of people, karma will kick in and come back and bite you.  And always be aware of the Way Back Machine and such like because they are probably allies of karma.

He has spent the past 15 years perfecting the art of performance – first as an elite sportsperson and then transferring this knowledge and experience to forward thinking businesses, individuals, national athletes and sporting teams.

As the co founder of Australia’s current Fitness Business of the Year, The Telstra Australian Business of the Year Micro Cba and Canberra’s P.T Business of the Year the last two years running,  Scott has first hand experience into the demands and pressures of growing a business and keeping key personnel on target and on track.

So I believe it is good practice to set yourself up for anything to happen in the future , all good of course.This is where personally branding yourself will assist you in attracting the right results and place you in a stong position for whatever comes your way..

I was speaking to a friend today and that is exactly what has happened to her. She was pretty well set up in her career and was working for a large International Company in sales. Over the years she has worked hard to build her skills and is now an excellent trainor and Team leader.

In the Company she was well respected and had a good reputation so she saw no reason to give any thought to her reputation outside of the compnay.

branding is a key to future success

Everything that she did was only reflected in the Company that she worked for and the one she assumed she would be with for a long time to come.

With the sudden change in the International economic climate this future plan dissolved very quickly leaving her with a clean slate to start all over again.

If she had been branding herself as a separate entity from the Company she worked in she would now have a great asset to assist her in moving to a new position or starting her own consulting company.

All the experience and training that she had acquired would have been reflected in her blogs etc and she would have built her own credentials .

Instead she walked out with a reference ,experience and needed to start applying for positons and preparing a cv.

T0 start a branding/blog website and begin to Brand herself at this time was too late for her current interviews or plans.

The important aspect of blogging and branding is that it needs to be accumulative over a period of time and there is no way of short cutting this.

So, to insure future results it makes sense to me that no matter where a person works they would be better to have a  Branding tool that is totally separate from where they currently work or contract to.