Recently I sat down with Evan Watson, VP of Sales and Chief Evangelist for Brand-Yourself.com to learn more about how this company is helping people better manage their online reputation. If you are interested in building an online presence (and these days, who isn’t?). be sure to check out their site.
1. What is Brand-Yourself.com?
Brand-Yourself.com is an award winning toolset that empowers you to promote yourself across the social web and diagnose, build, manage and monitor your entire online reputation from one central hub. Job applicants, professional service providers and small businesses use Brand-Yourself to create an online presence that wins them new jobs and clients. Brand-Yourself’s personal branding algorithm grades how effectively you are building your brand as you improve your visibility, credibility and involvement across the web.
2. How did you come up with the idea?
We started noticing that the way people find information and develop perceptions and opinions about one another had fundamentally shifted. 80 million people are Googled every day. Our reputations have always mattered but now that communication shifted so dramatically online most people don’t know how to effectively take advantage of that opportunity. We watched as our colleagues began losing (and winning) opportunities because of what was out there about them on the web. That is why we built a toolset that empowers the average Joe to become visible and connected online to win new jobs, clients and business.
3. What are the biggest online identity issues for entry-level professionals? For mid career professionals? For boomers?
Across the board, people from all generations tend to fall into one of three categories when they are inevitably searched on the web: The content is negative, the content is irrelevant, or nothing at all shows up. Many people jump to the conclusion that controlling your presence so that nothing negative comes up is enough, however, the biggest issue for most people is that they are nearly invisible on the web. These days, people expect to find you online, and when they don’t, they make the assumption that you have nothing worth finding. It is so important these days to differentiate yourself that the number one online identity issue is actually having no online identity at all.
4. What makes Brand-Yourself.com unique?
Brand-Yourself.com is unique because it is the first platform that combines all of the steps of creating an online presence in one central hub. Our process demystifies search engine optimization and social media promotion for the average person. A user is walked through our distinctive process: Build, Optimize, Promote, Monitor. Throughout that process, they are given the tools and education necessary to most efficiently create a strong personal brand on the web.
5. Any new features that will be released soon that you can share?
We are constantly releasing new functionality and new features. The most recent additions include a Google Grader tool which will give you a grade based on your personal Google results and track changes to your results as you use the system to improve that grade. Picture a personal stock ticker for your Google results. We will also be releasing a social media resume and a step-by-step wizard for our website builder so that you can easily create a personal professional website in under 20 minutes.
6. How can people find out more about you?
You can find out more information about Brand-Yourself at www.brand-yourself.com At the website you can try a free trial, get more in depth information on our system or use some of our free tools including the Google Grader and our ebook: From Tweet to Hired.
To learn more about how Career Solvers and Brand-Yourself.com are working together to help job seekers build a compelling online identity, check out our services here.