When is #1 not good enough…?
When its the rank of your profiles on Bing, but not Google. I’ve been at this personal branding effort for Gary Levine for over a week and had some ups and downs. I’ve spent a lot of time updating profiles and getting into the habit of putting my thoughts out here in blog-land.
I started out with no visibility on Google searches for my own name in the first three pages – except for my Gary Levine Google profiles. A few days later, my Facebook profile made it to the bottom of the first page. I was ecstatic.
My popularity was short-lived. I’ve fallen back into obscurity, although I do come up number one on Bing. So here’s a search engine I want to ignore, but its just endeared itself to me. I’ve noticed some customers and friends using it as their search engine. Is this just default settings from the factory or is there some intent?
Anyone finding Bing as good as the commercials? (By the way, are they using the same agency that does the Mac ads – has the same flavor of somehow showing its competitors as stodgy. I don’t buy it, but I’m not typical…).
I’m gonna look into that, but still gotta get back up on Google! Back to work… (oh wait, its Labor Day!)
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Tags: Bing, facebook, Gary Levine, Google
Day 3 – Gary Levine on page 1!
Wow, am I pumped! I just Googled “Gary Levine” and something besides my Google profiles is on page 1: My Facebook page! This is a great surprise.
After spending another day reading a few articles about this personal branding subject, I was beginning to worry. All the stuff I’ve seen so far is really good, but about the process of understanding and promoting yourself within the job market or corporate America. Clark Taylor sent me a few of them.
Here’s a decent (old) one from the magazine Fast Company called “The Brand Called You.” Useful, but not exciting reading. Clark also sent me “Extreme Personal Branding” from Business Week’s Business Exchange. Not as useful, but a quick and fun read about the effective personal branding of Diane de Poitiers in 12th Century England.
A few other remarkable things from the last 48 hours I want to mention:
16 people watched my inaugural video blog so far. I have good friends and family. Oh, and some porn producer became the first subscriber to my YouTube channel: www.YouTube.com/glevine99. Sorry, hope they aren’t expecting reciprocity!
I met with two prospective clients yesterday and was struck by a recurring theme: how many “experts” does it take to do a great job of marketing a business (or a person!) these days? How do you organize them and get them working together and how expensive does it need to be? Made me think about my WSI franchise and how I love being a generalist and working with a ton of other experts I can work with to make me look smarter than I am. Now I just have to convince those prospects…
All for today – got work to do!
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24 hours into the saga…,
Yesterday, I started a journey. Here I am, in the internet marketing business and when you search the internet for my name, there are dozens of other “Gary Levines” who appear on Google, LinkedIn and other sites, with my profiles just scattered here and there among them.
There’s Gary Levine who runs the underwater memorial park in Key Biscayne (yes, an underwater undertaker). There’s Gary Levine who makes custom knives. There’s even a Gary Levine who ran for office in Poughkeepsie, NY.
I’m sure they’re all great guys. But its time to get myself a little better known.
So I’ve sat with the experts and laid out a plan. I’ve updated 10 different online profiles since yesterday. Today, I started to take formal measures to apply the “best-practices” in linking and defining these various biographical points and measuring just how deep I am in these search results.
The big lessons of the day were how to get my name included in the link text for LinkedIn profiles and how to do this little thing as a video blog on my YouTube channel (http://www.youtube.com/glevine99).
Ultimately, so much of this depends on me overcoming my shyness and having something to say.
Otherwise, I’ll just always be “another Gary Levine.”
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Tags: Branding Yourself, Gary Levine, Internet Marketing, WSI
The online “branding thing”
So today is the first day I am methodically going about improving my online visibility as the brand “Gary Levine.” Ultimately, its for business. I want more of it, and one of the things I sell is online marketing. So people expect me to be an expert on internet marketing, social media, and all things internet.
And I am – to a degree, visible online. I hope much greater than the average boomer, although I find my peers are pretty “with it.”
And yet, there are all these other Gary Levines who come up ahead of me on Google, and I’m bound and determined to climb up the results list and get to the top. My Google Profiles are there on the first page, but on the bottom. I WANT TOPS!
So I’m going about this methodically. Today, I’m taking inventory of my profiles, updating them, and doing some posting. If you’re interested, as of today, my profiles consist of:
- Gary Levine on Facebook
- Gary Levine on my WSIWebmark.com site
- Gary Levine on LinkedIn
- Gary Levine on my personal Google account
- Gary Levine on my WSIWebmark.com Google account
And this is my first entry on my blog in forever. I’ve done a few business ones, but I’ve got to do more on this one and that one.
I know this isn’t enough. There will be some new profiles coming and a lot more posting on these, blogs and some group participation. I’m stepping up!
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Gary Levine
