I know, I know, it’s not spring yet – well, at least here in the northern hemisphere – so you may not be so inclined to heed to my suggestion now. Bookmark this post then so you could dig it out when bears come out of hibernation.
If you are up for consolidating your online presence, then follow my lead.
1. Track your email addresses
A while back, I’ve asked how many email addresses do you have. After re-reading that post, I’m happy to report that I am now down to 4 email addresses from the original 7. But I also realised that I didn’t include my work email before so that would bring me back to 5. I think most people these days will have at least 2 – a personal and a work address.
2. Do a blog inventory
I’ll be the first to admit that I own more than one blog. I have this one (April Journeys) and also blog at Let’s Go Dancing (which I have neglected in recent days, quite frankly). Moreover, I also contribute to multi-authored blogs such as Spotted by Locals London and Sayote Republic. One of my goals for 2011 is to unite my 2 personal blogs into one so watch out for that one.
3. Link your social networks
The advent of social networking enabled us to communicate to the same or even more people through ‘new’ and different ways. Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter are the most widely used amongst the ‘new’ ways. I highly recommend that you use the same email address for all your social networks so you could take advantage of the various analytics and metrics available on social network reach. If you are not at all into number crunching, then using the same email address to ‘anchor’ all your social networking accounts will make it easier to manage.
4. Build a single presence
Now that you’ve tracked all your email addresses, listed all your blogs and linked your social network profiles, wouldn’t it be nice to have a page somewhere where you could consolidate all these together like an electronic business card? You don’t need to create a new website. If you have one already, you may simply need to create new page linking all these together. Or you could take advantage of social aggregator services like UnHub, ProfileFly, SocialURL or about.me. Among the 4 mentioned, about.me provides the best visual presentation of yourself. Check out my page below to see an example.
My about.me page
So, what would doing all the above give you?
- a single URL with all your online profiles that you could put in your paper business card
- provide a single place for your followers and clients with information about you
- a starting page where you could maintain your online presence
Whether or not I have inspired you to take action now or bookmark this post to your new year’s resolution list, I’m sure you will agree that having a single point to manage your online profiles will do you more good than bad. When you have done so, come back to this post and place a link to your consolidated URL as a comment.
As this will be my last post for 2010, I’d like to wish everyone the best for incoming year!!!
