What's Your Name? An Excerpt

A draft from Effective Internet Presence, Now required for success in business and life, coming Jan 3rd, an absolutely free ebook.

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What's Your Name?

I, Ted Demopoulos, am lucky. So is Seth Godin. Ditto for Zaphod Beeblebrox, and Rumpelstiltskin.

If you google me, you find me. Yes, there are a couple of other people named “Ted Demopoulos” out there, and you won’t find them on the first 50 or so pages of search engine results.

Are YOU lucky? What if I google you? Is your name Jim Smith, or Bill Bailey, or Sue Jones?

Are there hundreds of you in the New York City phonebook, never mind on the Internet?

Worry not, Dear Jim/Bill/Sue, people CAN still find you (details coming up!), but I STRONGLY (hence the obnoxious all caps) recommend you make it easy on them.

Let’s say there were lots people named “Ted Demopoulos” out there, instead of just a very, very few. Well, I could legitimately use any of the following variants of my name everywhere it appears online, as well as offline: on my business cards, my resume, voice mail, in the phone directory, etc.

Ted J Demopoulos, Theo Demopoulos, Theodore Demopoulos
Theodoros Demopoulos (the traditional Greek spelling), Theodore James Demopoulos

Hmmm, there doesn’t seem to be a single reference to “Theodoros Demopoulos” on the Internet, but in my case “Ted Demopoulos” is unique enough.

Here is a concrete example. “David Scott” is a pretty bad name.  Google “David Scott,” and you’ll find the astronaut that walked on the moon, the six-time Ironman world champion, the congressman, two college professors, and two authors – and that’s only on the first page of Google results!

What’s a “David Scott” to do? Well, my friend David Scott decided to use his middle name and became “David Meerman Scott.” He is the only “David Meerman Scott” around, and he uses this full name online and professionally.

More examples:

·    George Bush, the US president guy, had a problem. There was a previous president with the same name, probably his uncle or cousin or some other relative. Suddenly, “George Bush” became “George W. Bush,” differentiating himself from all the other George Bushes who were president.

·    You also may have heard of the famous actor “Michael Fox.” He goes by “Michael J Fox.” Seems there is another actor, one no one has ever heard of, named “Michael Fox.”

You could even make up a middle name and just use it if you want to. This is perfectly legal in many countries, although I’m not a lawyer and you may want to check with one. Do you think comedian “Andrew Dice Clay” really was named “Dice” by his parents? I doubt it – google him if you really care.

You could even change your entire name! Although that’s somewhat extreme, many people do it. Actors in particular seem to although they often change from great names to generic common names, such as Muzyad Yakhoob who changed his name to the far more common Danny Thomas. Well, Muzyad made that change pre-Internet.

So if you’re Jim Smith, David Scott, or Bill Bailey or Sue Jones, whattayado?

·    Well, Jim Smith changed his name to “LL Cool J.”
·    David Scott became  “David Meerman Scott.”
·    Bill Bailey became “Axl Rose.”
·    Sue Jones? Well she did nothing, which is why you don’t know her, but rumors are she is about to marry Zaphod Beeblebrox and take his last name.

Comments and Feedback solicited!

Licensed under the Create Commons License,
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/

No commercial use or changes allowed.

Now Available, the whole ebook!:
Effective Internet Presence, Now required for success in business and life

Comments

[Nettie Hartsock]

Ted,
Interesting! I've never yet found another Nettie Hartsock on the Net!

I'm glad.:>)

Nettie

[ilaxi]

Yeah, I'd be lucky if u google me:-) people know me more on web than who I am in Real! My name, googling 'ilaxi' or even blossomsmile (my nickname) reveals a lot but esp. its wonderful using for own contents as we lose track of our own urls & posts - so it's like reference googling:-) Here's the Pew Internet survey report on name I jes put on my tech blog - http://kidsfstech.blogspot.com

cheers & happy holidays, merry xmas!

- ilaxi

[David Meerman Scott]

Hey Theodoros

Great post. Thanks for including my story.

By the way, the same rules apply for naming products, services, companies, books, and other things that you want to have a unique identity on the Web. For example, before I finalized any of my book titles, I made certain that the phrase was not being used on the Web. I think you did the same...

All the best for 2008.

[Reg of Elemental Truths]

Hey!
Is this your nice way of saying "Go Google Yourself!" ???

[Robert Porter]

Ah Theodore,

I alas, am one of those with a very very common name. In Raleigh, my home town, there are 3 people with my exact same name, Robert Bruce Porter, and another 5 with Robert B. Porter.

One point I would be interested in is if one did decide to come up with a "nom de web" how would one go about relinking previously published content to ones new webdentitity?

Is this topic perchance covered in more detail in the final version of your upcoming book?

Cheers,

Bob Porter, or perhaps, Bobarino Portifino?

[Ted Demopoulos, Blogging for Business]

Hi Nettie and Ilaxi,

Yes, you've got great Googleable names.

The new Pew Internet survey "Digital Footprints" is very much worth a read -- I quote some of the stats in the forthcoming Effective Internet Presence ebook.

[Ted Demopoulos, Blogging for Business]

David,

Great comment! Yes, product names and all other important names need to be unique too. There was an article in the Wall Street Journal recently about a couple that hired a branding agency to help name their child, and searchability on the Internet was a prime concern.

BTW, nice Wall Street Journal appearance.

[Ted Demopoulos, Blogging for Business]

Reg, Go Yahoo! yourself too :)

[George Jones]

Great info!

I alas have zero Internet presence, and eagerly await your ebook -- I've just joined your newsletter mailing list too.

I also have a common name. Maybe I'll use my college nickname as my middle name, "George Bull Dog Jones" or maybe "George BD Jones" as it seems a bit more professional.

[Ted Demopoulos, Blogging for Business]

Hi Bobarino Portifino,

If you radically change your name, say to 'Attila The Hun II' from 'Robert B. Porter' there is not much you can do other than add your previous name to the metatag 'keywords' of any blogs and Web sites you have, much like I include common misspellings of 'Demopoulos'. That will help a little.

If you just add a new middle name, like 'Robert Attila Porter' you have few problems as you are still a 'Robert Porter' and old Internet items will still show up in most Internet searches.

Now if I were "Robert Bruce Porter" I'd be tempted to just take over the many of the top search results by using the techniques in Effective Internet Presence along with some basic SEO.