Consistent and Professional Contact Information
Wednesday, June 3rd, 2009At one time your name and address were most likely limited to one of each. Today, or in the very near future you will have multiple names and addresses to contend with. For this reason, it is extremely important to establish consistent and professional contact information.
The first address you have, aside from your home address is most likely your email address and I recommend creating a “handle” that is professional and one which you will continue to use in the additional addresses that you will be creating. If you have a common name such as John Smith, you will need to be a little more creative in order to identify “you” and create a unique address. Get rid of fisherman@ or joker@ or drunk@ and create johnesmith@ or jesmith@ or johnedwardsmith@ or johnsmith3@ or jsmith3@. In order to avoid the potential for data entry errors with your email address test it out first. Write it down and key it in. Often times you will find email addresses that you find yourself guessing whether it consists of a dash, a dot or is it an underscore? Does it contain a number 1 or is it the letter i? Avoid any characters that could be questionable. A simple data entry error could mean a lost opportunity! Further, if you still have an old AOL or a Hotmail address, use them for your personal email and create a new @rogers, @gmail, @sympatico or @company name or your own name to establish a professional email address.
Further names and multiple url addresses could be related to any or all of the following sites, which are just to name a few: Facebook, Twitter, Naymz, Plaxo, Vimeo, Friendfeed, LinkedIn and VisualCV. All of these sites offer an opportunity to create your own online profile. Give consideration to the name which will be included in the url that is automatically generated with each new profile! Most sites generate a url consisting of the login name you choose when creating your account. Many generate a url ie: www.linkedin.com/in/john-smith3454h5yz, which you then have the option to customize. Take advantage of this and eliminate the slashes and dashes and numbers. You will still be limited to the availability of a name and a common name will need to be changed, as it was necessary to do so for your email address. It may not always be possible but make the effort to be as consistent as possible with your login names and url addresses. By doing this, it will make it much easier for you to maintain these sites in the future and it will increase your chances of being found. Consistency will reduce the risk of errors, lost searches and it will enhance your google ranking.
