Making It Pay
By Ginger Davis Allman
www.thebluebottletree.com
Business Tips For The Jewelry Artist
Crafting your Online Presence
What does Google say about you and your business? If someone were to search for you or the
name of your business, would they be able to find
you and are you comfortable with what comes up
in those searches? Embarrassed about having our
picture taken or being hesitant to “toot our own
horn”, many of us tend to hide from the glaring
public eye of the internet. We use screen names.
We hide our location. We use goofy icons that have
nothing to do with our business. Not only does this
practice fail to keep us safe from harm, but it actually inhibits your business. To have successful online business, you need to make sure your online
presence says what you want it to say.
Uh-Oh. That’s Not What I Want People
to See!
A few years ago when Facebook had some privacy
issues, a good friend of mine closed his account.
And he stopped participating online. He thought
he was protecting his family from nosy people
knowing too much about him. He thought he was
protecting his young daughter. Unfortunately,
because his name is fairly unique and he had so
little activity online, a simple Google search told
me about his new job, his activities at church,
his daughter’s name, and where they lived. Anytime anything was written about him in the local
newspaper or in his church’s newsletter, the article appeared online. But what was really awful is
that his daughter’s name is exactly the same as a
somewhat unsavory character who was prolific
(and profane) on Twitter. And for a split second I
wondered if his now teen-aged daughter had an
unfortunate Twitter hobby.
Another friend of mine, a local businessman, has
8
artisanwhimsy.net
the same name as a brand of hosiery favored by
crossdressers and fetishists. Um...needless to say,
you don’t want anyone searching for you to come
up with such...interesting search results.
So how can you fix this? You need to ensure that
searches for you will find not only the right person,
but also give the impression that you want your
customers to see. Can you change Google? Actually, yes! It will take some time and some effort, but
it’s well worth it! The key is to flood the internet
with appropriate content that you have intentionally placed into circulation and carefully crafted
for its professional appearance. By the way, this is
not the same as Search Engine Optimization (SEO),
which is the practice of crafting your online content for high rankings in search results. I’ve never
heard anyone have a name for this practice, but I’ll
call it “Crafting Your Online Presence”.
Eliminate Old Data
First thing, do a Google search for your name in
quotes, “Mary Smith”. This gives only the results for
your full name and not all the pages which have
both Mary and Smith. See what you find. Is there
anything there that you don’t want your customers finding? In many cases you’ll find old profiles
you’ve forgotten about, maybe some family members have mentioned you on Facebook, or even
some local articles in your town’s newspaper. You
can’t really do anything about the news sources,
but you can delete comments and remove tags
on Facebook. You can log in and delete comments
on old forums, then delete the accounts. (Note:
Delete the comments FIRST, then the accounts or
you won’t be able to delete the comments!) Do the
same thing with your business name. Try to clean