I can say your restaurant sucks, your shop smells and your wife is fat. It’s all right, because I’m anonymous.

Get it?  Anonymous or trolls as many like to call them have been an issue since the first forum was created.

Facebook and Twitter profiles should be required to comment. I want to know who you are. I want to engage in a conversation with you. Whether you agree or disagree with what I have said.

Let yourself be discovered… engage with people… be part of a community

Don’t be invisible just because you can.

Photo Courtesy of: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jakecaptive/

Do you control your brand? What do people find when they search for you? Have you had legal/negative press and now it's front and center on search results? If so, you have to take control of your brand. 

This applies to businesses and individuals, there is absolutely no excuse for ignorance on this subject. You need to know all the top search results and how they got there. In these times the first thing a person does when they meet someone new is Google them. 

Be prepared. 

Do you know how to control it? If you don't then you need to learn the proper steps to take. 

I have outlined the most essential ones. These are a must. 

Step 1: Social Media Sites

• Sign up to Facebook
• Fill out your Google Profile
• Professional Info Sites: LinkedIn, Fast Pitch 

Social media sites will let you connect with many friends and business contacts. You are controlling the information and this information will be analyzed by search engines to push the most relevant content to the front of search results. 

Step 2: Blog, MicroBlog, and the Inbetween

• Start a Blog, use either WordPress, TypePad, or Blogger
• Sign up to either Tumblr or Posterous
• Join Twitter

These services allow you to have various levels of engagement with the online world. You can be as brief as 140 characters or write till your fingers bleed on a blog post. Blogs get high search results because the search spiders look for fresh content, so anything that is new will have a higher chance of appearing before the older content that was there before. 

Step 3: Be Social and Explore

• Interact with other bloggers
• Have guest authors
• Spread your name on the web 
• Go to tweetups or meetups in your area

By being active and positive you will soon have links going to your site. This makes your site look more important to the search spiders and will give you better search results. Besides the search result attributes, you get to know more people who now are interested by what you have to say and are able to promote or spread your brand further organically. 

The steps above are very general and can be applied by both individuals and businesses. To go more in-depth I will post something directly for each side for further optimization. 

Please leave a comment and let me know what I missed or questions you might have. 

Most of you are reading this blog because of the picture I took of the US Airways Flight 1549. I want to thank you for still being interested in what I have to say.

Enough of that let's recap January.

Review of my 5 goals for 2009:

1) Sailing: I haven't done anything to accomplish this goal. I think April will be when I will start to find a place to get some lessons in Sarasota.

2) 500 K in Sales: We are on schedule and I will have to make an amendment; change sales to profit.

3) Keep my weight between 195-205: I am currently 205. I am not doing much weight training everything is cardio or body weight stuff. I am adding couple of sub goals:

• Start and Finish the 100 Push-up Program
• Do the P-90X Ab routine 3 times a week.

4) Write 100 Blog Posts: Getting there. Trying to be better.

5) Have over 1000 followers on Twitter (Accomplished):  Here's a tip on how to do this.

• Take a picture that is seen world wide. (i.e. be in the right place at the right time and post the picture unto TwitPic.)
• Since I have accomplished this goal I want to keep adding interesting, smart, motivated people to interact with.

There you have it. Seems like I'm doing pretty good so far. Let's see how February goes. Oh and here's my 6th and 7th goals for 2009.

6) Meet Richard Branson: If anyone has tips on how I can get this done I'm all ears. He's been one of my business hero's and it would be an incredible experience. Plus, I want to add something that is way out of the box and would seem far fetched at this point.

7) Finish these two courses on Academic Earth: This is a great site that has gotten me very excited about education and its potential on the web.

• Introduction to Copyright Law
• Physics I: Classical Mechanics

More posts to come,

Janis

I had to disagree, but I did see his point. I am not an expert in any field, but in the current environment of business that does not matter. What matters is the way that you present yourself at your current position in life, and how you use opportunities to further yourself. Of course, this means that you need to learn and quickly adapt to whatever is needed from you.

I see social networking as something that will build my network as well as my knowledge. In the past few months that I have been seriously following other peoples tweets and blog posts. I have learned of new technologies and better ways of doing certain things. From using eLance to using OtherInbox.com to free up my email. These are services that I learned of by using various social networks.

Another important factor is to surround myself with like minded individuals. I try be around people who “Think Big” in my personal life. And am trying to find the same type of people in my online life as well.

P.S.

But really it is my vanity in thinking that people all over the world would want to read what I think…