Many of you have spent time in the past several years creating a LinkedIN profile, building a Blog, creating a Twitter bio, friending on Facebook, etc. This has fractured your brand to various sites all over the web. There’s the Facebook you, the YouTube you and the Twitter you, etc. Each person who connects with you via one of these sites, sees only one facet of the gem that is your brand. This has made it challenging to provide the complete story about who you are and what you do.
Enter personal portals.
Personal portals, such as about.me and flavors.me are a new category of online tools that allows you to link all the different facets of your brand in one place. They let you create one customizable web page that connects all your profiles from various social networks. This allows you to develop a custom design using your personal brand identity system (color, fonts, images, etc.) to serve as your personal home page.
For many, these “hub yous” will replace the need to have a personal web site. It will become the one place you reference on your resume or in proposals, etc. The plethora of personal portals portends the end of personal brand schizophrenia.
More on this trend > http://budurl.com/personalportals
I launched this Blog with one objective - to provide unique insights and practical advice for using the power of personal branding to achieve your goals. It’s dedicated to those who want to be wildly successful by maximizing what makes them unique, relevant and compelling.
William:
Thank you for sharing all of these trends with us. This trend on personal portals is fascinating and I am really looking forward to seeing how they evolve. It is so important for job seekers and small business owners to have a consistent brand message. It is so difficult to do this with all of the different tools that are available.
Randi
This brings up an excellent point. Many job seekers do focus on social networking and completely disregard connecting them for a more cohesive online presence. A personal portal is a wonderful way to connect your personal online brand. Adding services like the free SearchMe Button and link from Vizibility (www.vizibility.com) to your personal portal can put you in control of what potential employers see when they stumble across your little piece of the internet.
William- I definitely agree. This is a great way to manage your personal brand online! Having so many different profiles can become a bit confusing. Users should also remember to have similar information that flows throughout their social networking profiles. This will make them even more cohesive and identifiable.