Personal search engine optimsation for Information Architects
Searching the web for the people on the list of the 100 contributors to the upcoming 2008 IA Summit, I was struck that they fell into two very distinct camps - those that were managing their online presence, and those that weren't.
The other day I published links to blogs from around a third of the people featuring on the conference programme, which means that around two-thirds of the participants did not have one regularly updating canonical URL for me to link too.
Now, of course, I'm not suggesting that everybody should have a blog, but it is interesting that when you search for a lot of people active in the world of organising online information, they haven't organised their own online representations.
For some, the first results for their name links to catalogues of their books and papers residing on particular servers. For others, it is the vagaries of who is winning the search engine optimisation battle between Facebook and LinkedIn that gets to represent them via their social networking profile. Some lucky folks even have film directors and failed Miss World contestants coming up #1 for their name.
One of the things I like most about the Information Architecture world is the fact that it encompasses people from such a diverse range of backgrounds and professional interests. On the one hand there is the very rigourous and academic approach to the discipline. This involves copious amounts of research, peer-reviewed papers and academic validation.
On the other hand, there is a group who have come to the discipline having discovered it through the practicalities of working with the web.
I include myself very much in that camp - I started discovering problems and conundrums with the best ways to build usable websites, and then discovered to my joy that not only had lots of other people wrestled with the same issues, but they had given the problems names, and in many cases worked out brilliant ways to fix them.
I think, in part, the fact that only a third of the participants at the conference have their own personal site coming up at #1 when you search Google for their name shows this collision of two worlds.
It is inconceivable to me that I wouldn't try and control the appearance of my 'personal brand' in Google, as that is where my peer group, and hopefully potential clients, look for me. Equally, I guess, if my work revolved around the published papers of academia, I imagine my reputation and the ease of finding my work in those circles would be my primary concern.
Either way, I think perhaps next year I should pitch to do a half-day seminar at IA Summit 2009 on how to rank #1 for your name on Google!
Well, I would suggest that everybody - over a period of time - have a blog, or some sort of personal website. For career professionals (i.e., employees), its a place to post their resume, CV, etc.
For those of us in private practice or business owners, blogging and managing our personal brand web presence is essential to marketing ourselves.
Doing it within our ethical guidelines of our profession, though, is paramount. Of course, we cannot divulge private on-goings in our organizations or clients, but we can use such anecdotes in vague ways to make potent points.
~ Vikram
Indeed Vikram. Another thing I would do, if I was marketing a personal brand management agency, would be to leave slightly spammy comments trying to get my URL onto any blog page I'd noticed that used the phrase 'personal brand'. What would you think about tactics like that? Would they work, or do you think people would just snip out your URL and poke slight fun at you?
;-)