Joan Smith

Ten Simple Tech Tips for Anyone Who Trades Off Their Name

As a speaker and formerly as a real estate sales person my name has always been one of my biggest assets. Now this is not because my name is particularly glamorous, certainly not because it’s easy to spell, but just simply because that’s how most people remember me.

I’ve always preferred that people remember me by my name because that is going to be the one constant through my life. I’ve worked for and owned different real estate agencies and have had several other companies myself – all with different names. If I was just known as that girl who worked for ABC company – ever time I changed companies, or started a new business I would have had to completely re-brand again.

In this day and age where so many of us change careers, companies and are serial entrepreneurs the only constant you can continually leverage is your name.

If you’re in a profession where your name is of huge importance consider the following tips to make sure you’re getting the most out of it.

1. Register www.yourname.com – ie: www.kirstydunphey.com

I recommend this for a multitude of reasons:

There are no restrictions on what you have to do or be to get a “.com”. In Australia to get a “com.au” it can be a little trickier (having to have a registered company name etc). Am I saying you shouldn’t also get a “.com.au” or “.co.nz” or whatever fits your locality? Absolutely not! Get them both if you like, but the “.com” is the easiest and cheapest and many people will simply try typing in “yourname.com” when guessing at your website.

If your main desire is to promote your company name, it’s a simple operation for your web designer to just redirect “yourname.com” to “yourcompany.com”

If You Are best known by your employer’s company name perhaps now is the time to start personally branding more. One of the first steps to doing this effectively is to get a great domain name and an equally good website. If you ever change companies – your personal website (and its traffic/clients) go with you.

When (not if) you crack the big time, some crafty bugger out there will register yourname.com and try and make you pay through the nose for it. Nip that idea in the bud right now! Alternatively – it’s a big world out there and someone else with your name could be getting ready to buy that site right now, beat them to it. It’s a cheap investment in your future.

2. Google your name

If your website doesn’t come up first then you’ve got some work to do on search engine optimisation. Ask your web designer for some assistance here. The other way to increase your rating is to get more links to your website (more on this later).

3. Google alert your name

Setting up a “google alert” on yourself is dead simple (just google it if you’re not sure how!) It’s a great way to track how and when your name is being used online. This gives you an opportunity to see what’s working, what’s not and who’s talking about you! It also allows you to thank those people sending traffic your way.

4. Google common misspellings of your name

If you google “kristy dumphy” or other misspelled variations of my name you’ll see that my website still comes up in the number one search position. This is done by having a small amount of invisible text on my website that the search engines pick up. I learnt the hard way that people can’t seem to get enough of calling me Christie, or Kirstie or Kristy and don’t even get me started on how hard Dunphey appears to be to spell! If this ever happens to you – definitely consider this strategy.

5. Have your email as: yourname@yourdomain.com ie: brett@brettjones.com

I can never understand people who have gone to all the trouble of purchasing a domain name and setting up a website – and then don’t continue that branding on their email address! For starters, having your website and email address so similar gives people one less thing to forget. Setting it up is also as easy as getting your internet hosting company to forward the pretty email (in my case: kirsty@kirstydunphey.com) to whatever your actual email address is, (in my case kdunphey@bigpond.com) and then setting Outlook or your mail program to use the pretty email as your “reply to” email.

6. Include your contact details and a sell line on your email signature

If I want to go to someone’s website the first place I’ll go to is the last email they sent me hoping to easily get the information from there. I recommend everyone working in business has an email signature file set up and puts all the information they want someone to easily find on that email signature. For you this might include phone, fax, postal address, email, website. For me it includes my email address and my company websites. On my emails I also put a tag line about new products and a sign up link to my weekly email (www.kirstydunphey.com/weekly.html). It’s a simple soft “sell line” – but it has resulted in lots of weekly email sign ups and product sales for us.

7. Set up an auto-responder

If you don’t check emails often and don’t have someone replying your behalf while you’re out, set up an auto-responder. One that works well for a lot of my real estate clients reads something like this: “Thank you for your email. In this business it’s rare that I’m at my desk – I’m out making sales. If you need me urgently please call on my mobile phone: 0411 xxx xxx or contact my assistant Ben on ben@joansmith.com. Otherwise I look forward to reading and replying to your email when I’m back at my desk. Best wishes, Joan Smith, ABC Realty” Now before I get a bunch of people emailing me to see my auto-responder, I don’t have one. Not all these tips are “must do”s for everyone and we don’t use an auto-responder as I have a great team who check my email while I’m away.

8. If you say you do something, do it!

Loss of credibility is the biggest way to lose the power of your name. I’ve twice emailed a guy whose whole point of difference is being amazingly approachable. He claims to reply to all emails and calls and yet, I’ve heard nothing from him! It makes it hard to fully take on board his message because he’s not walking his talk. If you say something on stage, in a sales presentation, in a book or an online article – it’s a promise that will detract from the power of your name if you don’t live up to it. Another book I’ve read recently encourages readers to email for specific value ads to be emailed to them (ebooks etc). I emailed, and got no reply! A further book encourages readers to email to test the “auto responder” on the author’s email. I emailed and there was no auto-responder (the first time). However – on the good side, when I emailed this person back a few weeks later to let them know there was no auto responder – I did get it (twice on the second email actually!)

9. Have someone on staff or available cheaply who knows how to program in html

Html is the basic language used to make websites. One of the first businesses I started when I was 15 was a website design company with a friend of mine. I knew nothing about making websites, but slowly learnt basic skills over time. To this day I have used these skills on a weekly basis in most of my businesses. I’m not suggesting that everyone go out and learn how to build websites, but if you have access to someone who can quickly and cost effectively make basic changes to your website the benefits can be huge. In our case – we can change our websites to set up specific ordering pages for our VIP customers at the drop of a hat. We’ve set up special download pages for other speakers when they’ve released books. In my real estate agency we had the best website in our area because we were able to incrementally improve it on a weekly basis.

10. Write an article and leverage it

The more websites that link to your website, the higher your ranking will be in search engines such as google. Writing an article on your area of expertise and putting it out in your newsletter, offering it to other people’s newsletters and listing it in online article directories where other people can benefit from it is a great way to increase your presence and the number of links to your website.

About the Author

Kirsty Dunphey is an author, speaker and entrepreneur who started her first business at 15, opened her own real estate agency at 21 and retired a self made multi-millionaire at 27. To sign up to Kirsty Dunphey’s weekly email, go to www.kirstydunphey.com

Episcopal Priest Rev. Joan Smith blessing the new office of Interfaith Paths to Peace