The Four Tools Required for an Online Personality

I deleted my Plaxo account today. I don’t think I’ll look back. I only ever logged in to accept con­nec­tions to peo­ple who I was prob­a­bly already con­nected to on LinkedIn or Face­book. Recently, I got a mes­sage from some­one say­ing they saw my update on Plaxo (I guess it linked from Twit­ter), and I real­ized I really didn’t need another place where peo­ple could learn about me. Each of these sites takes time and effort to man­age, and I want to make sure I con­trol the mes­sage that is “me.”

I’ve seen friends get more involved in blog­ging as a way to have a cre­ative out­let, or a jour­nal of their ideas. I also have friends who are writ­ing books and mak­ing movies and see their online per­son­al­ity as being impor­tant to their over­all suc­cess. These friends look to me for ideas. Where online do they need to be? What should they be doing? Why?

Well, when you’re sell­ing some­thing — the goal is to get your vis­i­tor to click on the “buy” but­ton. All online activ­ity should drive peo­ple to that but­ton. If only life were always that easy. As a pro­fes­sional, well, we’re try­ing to sell our­selves. The face I put online, is how peo­ple will know me. And, either I’ll con­trol that mes­sage, or some­one else will.

That said, here are the four tools that I’m choos­ing to rep­re­sent me, and how I approach using them:

1. Face­book. I’m not kid­ding, if I don’t like you, I won’t con­nect to you on Face­book. For what­ever rea­son, I view Face­book as more per­sonal, and a place where I want to share more per­son­ally. Peo­ple who see me on Face­book have got to under­stand, they’re going to be exposed to my very off-beat view of life.
2. LinkedIn. LinkedIn offers the fan­tas­tic fea­ture of being able to find peo­ple within your net­work, and get intro­duc­tions. Every pro­fes­sional should be there, and should con­nect to their friends and col­leagues. I’ve taken the habit of writ­ing rec­om­men­da­tions for peo­ple whom I know well enough to do so, as we con­nect. Usu­ally, that gets them to write one back for me… and if noth­ing else, it’s a nice ego boost.
3. Twit­ter. I’ve got­ten to meet more peo­ple through Twit­ter than any other venue in my career, and I’m glad to have done so. I like the bal­ance of use­ful and benign infor­ma­tion, it gives con­text about the per­son. I fol­low peo­ple to hear what they say, and occas­sion­ally just to see if they’re inter­est­ing. You’ll get to know what’s on my mind, with a bit of emo­tion, though I try to keep a mix of mostly pro­fes­sional com­ments, with some per­sonal ones. I do have Twit­ter con­nected to my Face­book sta­tus, how­ever, I will often update my Face­book sta­tus directly with a per­sonal update that I don’t feel belongs on Twit­ter. Also, I like my friend Sal’s idea of look­ing at people’s twit­ter favorites to get to know more about their per­son­al­ity.
4. This here blog. It’s new. I’m hav­ing fun. I need to make more time to write, but I’ve been blog­ging for two years over at Progress, and I like it. I wanted a place to express myself cre­atively, with per­son­al­ity, and with broader reach (OK, and a sharper edge) than I could on Progress’ site. I hope to write about lead­er­ship, the athlete’s mind, and all other sorts of stuff besides tech­nol­ogy. I hope it will also serve as a record of my achieve­ments, more than a resume, even an online one could.

Together, these four tools cre­ate online-David. Not nearly as good look­ing, but hope­fully as enter­tain­ing as the real thing.

And, as for can­cel­ing Plaxo. It added noth­ing to the mix. In the past, it was a good way to act as a hub for all my con­tacts, updat­ing my address book as peo­ple update their con­tact infor­ma­tion. But, that just wasn’t enough. It’s easy enough to find, and more impor­tantly stay in touch with any­one using the tools I’ve cho­sen above.

Let me leave you with this ques­tion for those of you skep­ti­cal about the need to con­trol your online per­sona. What do you think any inter­viewer will do before set­ting up an inter­view? Pos­si­bly, before they even make it through your resume?

That’s right. They’re going to google you.

Do you want some­one else con­trol­ling the message?

PS This post was, in part, inspired by Nick Moscato at Progress dur­ing a con­ver­sa­tion we had two weeks ago. Thanks Nick! It’s not the first time you’ve inspired me, though per­haps the first time I’ve blogged about it.

Update 25 Mar 2009: There’s a lot of this idea going on… google is your new busi­ness card, and your blog is your resume. Check out “Resumes are dead. Social Media is your new Resume” post. Also, there have been quite a few tweets on the topic, a recent one here by Brad, a recruiter.