Personal Brand - Strategy on Search Engines Thursday, June 11, 2009

I'm sure anyone using the Internet must have done a search for their name on Google or any search. Not only you, some of your friends and potential employers might also have done the same. May be you did not know it. But if you do not show up on Google, you don't exist, you could lose a business deal or you may turn off your friend. May be that is why I write this post on how to optimize search results for your name as a query. Check this out, Google for nivash kumar, 9/10 results are pages that I've created for myself (as on 12th June). Here are ten steps that I would suggest to build your personal brand.

10. Buy a domain name which is exactly your name - If its already used, get a closer one which contains your full name and create few pages, to include information about you, display your portfolio or write your missions statement, who you are. Set up a blog at yourname.com/blog

follow the step 9 also in setting up the same. This could be your best personal brand strategy.

9. Create your own blog - Have a title which is more unique or that suits you. Like what I have is "curious mind" and put your name in the blog's title. This is very important for search engines to pick up. If you have a popular nick name, include that also in your blog's title.

8. Linkedin Profile - Linkedin.com is world's top social network for professionals. You just need a free account for displaying your profile. I found linkedin very well organized for a personal profile.

7. Twitter profile - If' you've read this post till this, you must be having a twitter account and create an account with your own name. Like what I did, my public twitter page is

twitter.com/nivashkumar , you can be certain that this page will show up on top ten results of a search for your name on Google, so on other searches also. If you are accessing twitter from desktop clients or mobile, both twitter.com/yourname and m.twitter.com/yourname will be created and may turn up on search results.

8. Create your Google Profile - google.com/profiles This can be your profile across all google services like Google groups and so on. This could also be made public for search engines to pick up.

7. Facebook profile - Make your facebook profile public so that it is visible to search engines. Facebook has got a good page rank, so facebook.com/people/yourname is likely to hit the top ten search results of your name.

6. Xing.com - You can also add one more result to top ten of your name by creating a profile at xing.com and making it public.

5. Online forums - Fill the page for your profile with relevant information on any online forum that you use. Make sure you link the pages you created above with it. At least two of the pages created above.

4. Do comment on popluar blogs with your name - This will also get listed on search results, include your blog url for the web site in the comment form.

3. Join a wiki site like wikihow.com where you will get a user page and this is yet another page for yourself on search results. Note: Trying this on wikipedia does not work because the user pages of wikipedia are not indexed by search engines. Possibly due to the high page rank of wikipedia not to be taken advantage by spammers.

2. Most importantly, if you are filling a form of your profile on a site mentioned above link your other pages with it. E.g link your web site and blog on linkedin profile and xing profile.

1. Get Creative. This is where its open ended. You can try a lot of options, there are plenty of sites on the Internet. Include important information like your photograph, location and stuff that can identify you uniquely.

By doing the steps above, you are almost certain that 2 or 3 pages of what show above will turn up on the search results on a search for your name. If your name is more unique, then possibly all the pages will show up on search results like what happened for me.

I found a new site recently called yasni.com which is effective to look up people on web. It is a vertical search for people I would say.

Also read Personal Branding Blog, by Dan

Twitter - Adding followers of a person to your friends list and follow all of them Friday, June 5, 2009

I've been playing around with one of Twitter API implemetation Twitter4j which is awesome and I could do a lot of things with it. Here is one of my implementation to automate adding friends to yourself with a Java program. Make sure you have twitter4j in your build path before trying this program.

Here is how it works,

1. Select a twitter user

2. Fetch the list of his followers

3. Add them as your friends

4. Follow all of them

Java source

package com.twittervis.core;

import java.util.List;

import twitter4j.Twitter;

import twitter4j.User;

class GetFollowers {

public static void main(String[] args) {

//Create twitter object with user name

Twitter twitter = new Twitter("your-twitter-user-name", "password");

try {

//Get the list of the person wh

ose friends you want to add as your friend

List friends = twitter.getFollowers("selected-twitter-user");

for (int j = 0; j &gt friends.size();j++){

//convert twitter user id from int to String

String myString = Integer.toString(friends.get(j).getId());

//make each user of the list as your friend

//true is to follow the person, else only he is made friend

twitter.createFriendship(myString, true);

}

} catch (Exception e) {

e.printStackTrace();

}

}

}

Now, This program adds the followers of a particular user as your friends, and you'll be following them. I'm working on creating mashups with Twitter + Google App Engine(GAE)

Follow me on twitter @nivashkumar

Twitter SMS updates in India Friday, May 29, 2009

If you've tried to turn device updates in Twitter and if you are in India, you must have seen it does not work. I've worked around a way to do this. Its simple

Twitter + Google SMS channels = Twitter updates on Mobile

Here is how it works.

Goto the a particular twitter user's home mine is

http://twitter.com/nivashkumar

You can click on the RSS feed button to get its URL address, as seen below


Subscribe to the person's updates, you will get a feed page as below

goto the address bar of this page and copy its URL. It looks something like this
http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/15071430.rss

Now visit Google SMS channels, from Google Labs, India
login with your google account

Click the link on the right side create your own channel

Fill in the form and select RSS/Atom feed and paste the URL of the feed




Now setup your mobile device in settings of sms channels with your mobile number.

Now you can receive updates from twitter on mobile.

A day at Mahathma Gandhi Ashram Sunday, May 24, 2009

Every year, my parents sponsor lunch to children at Mahatma Gandhi ashram, Anaimalai, on my birthday. I'm doing it from this year. This year I'm at home, decided to visit the place. It is clearly not a place of luxury, small buildings scattered all over the campus. It is a home for needy which includes orphaned children and elder citizens orphaned. The personnel called me this morning to wish for my birthday and asked me if I'm able to come and how many people will accompany me. The place is few kilometers outside a village, remained very silent and a windy place. The staff also told me that the children had gone for a vacation this summer and 15 people reside at this point of time. I found some children with a green khadi dress around that place. Just after I introduced myself to the serving people at reception. There was a guy who is second grade saying vanakkam(wishes). I was at the reception watching this place and this guy. His shirt was torn a little.

I saw this guy having a comb and trying to comb his hair for ten minutes, then i called him to speak. He introduced himself as Vivek and told where and how he is studying. I wanted to know his story of his life and how he was orphaned. Asked if he is the only child. He said he had a brother who is fourth grade also in the same place. then I asked your father? He replied, his dad had a fight with his mom and left her. his mom is in a village a little far away from there, may be because of poverty these brothers landed in here. How sad it is for a living father and mother to orphan their children.

It was 12 noon and there was a child who rang the bell for people to get ready for lunch. There was a dining hall which is an exhibition of mahatma's photographs. In focus was a photo of their God. All these kids and few elders assembled in the dining hall and I was also
there. they started with a prayer which they say for themselves and for the world. Then there was a prayer for having such a good day and thanking God for the food they've got. They also wished me for a prosperous life and thanked for the food. I was asked to serve food to them if I would like to and I served it to all of them. After serving I had my lunch with them. The same food, which is as good as it is at home. They seem to follow Gandhian values and principles.

One of the staff told me that they get sponsors for all days and there is also reserve money to keep it running at all times. Happy to hear there are people who sponsor regularly. I'm quite sure the staff are dedicated and responsible for one reason they've kept it running for over a decade and the process and accounts are transparent. I've decided to continue this for years to come. I'm confident these people will keep up their good work.

I left the place after lunch with the fact that, there are a lot people in need for whom I can offer help.

4 Changes since the last post Monday, May 11, 2009

This post comes into my blog after a long time since I was taking up professional training all this while. The last post of this blog belongs to a time when there was no economic downturn.

1.Economic downturn - All the world is speaking about it and so am I. It is a period of recession and economic falldown all over the world because it all started with Americans borrowing a lot of money from their banks. At this time I was lucky to enter a software company just before things went really wrong. I think I got a job, may be may be not I did. I have to wait to see what will happen.

2.Twitter- whenever I go online to read tech updates and news this site is all around and took the web by storm. No wonder I'm also on twitter today. follow me on twitter

twitter.com/nivashkumar

3.Politics - This is a country where only one thing is permanent and that is change. Its a thing that neither a person nor a survey can give an forecast. The debate today is will the largest party or the largest alliance be called by the president to power. Quite obvious largest alliance will only succeed even if the largest party was sworn into power.

4.Life - here I am having almost at the last mile of my undergraduation. Trying to connect the dots in mid-air which is nothing but dreams. I know for sure that the dots connect only backward.