WillBurrus.com

Have you ever searched for your own name on Gooogle? What came up? Were you surprised to see artifacts from attemtps at Social Networking, or pieces of old emails, or maybe even your address, phone number, or other personal pieces of information?

I have come to realization that we can no longer hide from Google. It has taken over, and it has indexed everything that it can find on our lives. For many, the results of a Google search are the first impression of you that a potential employer, business partner, friend or stalker may find. I know I have recently been hiring, and honestly I didn't read the resumes until I was walking to the meeting room, but you can believe I googled them before I got out of my seat! For business folks that do anything interactive, this is becoming the new barrier to entry. How can you be credible if you don't participate in the basics? For the rest of the world, this is quickly becoming the new cellphone.

I recently came to this realization, which is what prompted me to setup this blog and try to stick with it this time. (This is my third one :-)) I did a search for myself and it pulled up some info from Linked In, some references to ventures I have done, and of course, some references to my cousin, whom is the president of the American Postal Workers Union and has a similar name as mine. Two things struck me like a brick when I did this search:

1. I can no longer hide from the internet. It has indexed us all, and unfortunately , has a perfect memory.
2. I can, however, control what comes up on the first page when people search for me.

How? By participating. At some point, we are all going to be forced to drink the kool-aid, and build an online identity. Whether that is through blogging, Social media, or even just commenting and leaving reviews, More and more, you are being judged on how the internet presents you.

Scary huh? Trust me it is only going to get worse. The very definition of privacy has been rewritten and frankly, there is not much we can do to change it back. But you can take charge of it. My goal is simple. I want to own the first page of results in Google when you search for me. I also want to know what copy is coming up and make sure that it is reflective of where I am now, particularly from a professional perspective. I am even going to try to make it SEO friendly, so that I can use this to my advantage!

It's kind of like nurturing your Personal Brand!

To many of you, I know this is academic, but I have been a technologist for quite a while, building these very tools that are causing this paradigm shift in communication now, and I never bothered to embraced them. I didn't want to 'expose' myself like that. If I am feeling late to the game, then I have to imagine that there are quite a few more of you out there don't even know the game is on.

Consider this your wake up call.

I am documenting my immersion into this new web, networked age. Feel free to follow along and I will share what I learn.

digital life, personal brand

Congrats to AdClub Cincinnati for putting on a great Digital Non-Conference this weekend! This was my first non-technical conference so at the very least, the presentations were much prettier. A few speakers stand out in my mind:

Daphne Kwan, CEO of ExpoTV - This was a good discussion about Social Media's Influence on Buying. She was a great, engaging speaker with impressive credentials. She caught me squirming in my seat a few times wanting to hijack the conversation and take it to another level but didnt mind. Non-technical background, but in-depth understand of the new digital economy. I was particularly glad that she addressed a few key points that I have been trying to hammer home for a while now, namely that:

• Social media is Personal. But that is OK.
• Consumers have power like never before to influence brands, as evidenced by her company Expo TV. Brands need to respect this if they want to stay relevant.
• She cited a great example of the exponential audience factor (my words) in a case study of how Gillette setup a You Tube Channel to promote a Facebook widget.

Bob Gilbreath, CMO of Bridge Worldwide - The topic of this presentation, Marketing with Meaning: The Future of Digital Depends on Adding Value to Customers' Lives, was near and dear to my heart. There is nothing worse than gratuitous, noisy technology. I have been making a concerted effort lately to control the buzzword syndrome (ex. Throwing up a Facebook page for your brand with nothing useful on it) with so-so success. it was nice to see his take on this concept. Bridge actually brands applications, which I have always thought was a stellar idea. I can't help but wonder how many people really got this...

Tim Schigel, CEO of ShareThis.com - I am jealous of this guy because he has a great business idea in ShareThis, which is essentially AddThis on serious personalization steroids. He speaks like a techie, which of course is perfect to me, but has an awesome tool for marketers, in that he can sniff all kinds of metrics. I am going to sign up and try this thing out. I especially like the fact that his technology was USEFUL. Again, the Remote Control Factor. His presentation was of course, Sharing is Social.

Pete Blackshaw, EVP of Digital Strategic Services, Nielsen Online - This guy was a real joy to listen to and quite inspiring. His presentation, Loyalty Isn't Enough Anymore - Advocacy is Bigger Than Advertising, really underscored how much we are empowered by Social Media to make change, and how this is becoming the new norm. I'm not going to attempt to paraphrase his thoughts. If you get a chance to see him speak, do it. 

Best of all, I found another great use for Twitter, which is taking notes! I twittered through every single presentation, probably freaking out the speakers a bit...but hey, welcome to the new world! Check out my comments at http://twitter.com/willburrus around 11/14 & 15th. 

interactive marketing

I don't mean to sound adversarial but I heard something incredibly intriguing recently which underscored what I am realizing is an incredible paradigm shift in the technology world. Either that, or I have been living in a small box of technology for the last few years.

Recently I was pitching a pretty comprehensive web solution for a client. It wasn't a cheap solution, but it was well worth the investment. The client was quite impressed with the process that would have been used to qualify the budget that they were about to spend on this web project and suggested that their IT staff should hear the pitch. Not surprisingly, an IT staff member looked at the proposal, looked at the processes we were looking to execute to qualify the requirements, and then looked at the sticker and promptly freaked out. His observation was that a simple website didnt need any of this planning and analysis crap and that all they really needed was a nice design and some coding to get up and running (I'm paraphrasing, here.)

"That is why I always say that websites should be owned my the marketing department and not the IT department." This was a comment from a marketing friend whom I was sharing my day with. Wow. I had to pause for a second. Was it my pride? Have I gone over to the dark side? Have the marketing folks hi-jacked my precious technology?

You see, I was that IT guy not too long ago. I built websites, used web services, marveled at the simplicity of the prototype library, scoffed at the Jesse James Garrett AJAX bandwagon with my buddies who were used to using the XMLHTTPObject in the Microsoft IE 5.0 DOM (though it wasn't nearly as useful as it is now, because nobody cared about javascript then...). I think Container Managed Persistence is brilliant. I still use NHibernate to this day. I am a software geek at heart, and I daily get at least 10 ideas on how to make the world a better place.

Now, I find myself in a world where I am seeing that websites really are more than "...a nice design and some coding...". They are for many the first point of contact for a brand. They really do make or break the potential of a relationship with a given consumer who stumbles upon the site. Now I'm conflicted. Maybe they do need to be owned by the marketing folks. In fact, knowing what I know now, I feel dumb for ever thinking that they didn't. But at the same time, I don't think I am ready to let that go. I don't know if I am ready to trust the website in the hands of marketing...

You see, it was people like me who 'invented' websites. And we didn't necessarily do so to sell stuff. We did it to make communcation easier. Just like Twitter, FaceBook, MySpace, and Google; All of these great inventions, that are now turning into nothing more than high tech billboards. We are in an age of hyper-information, and I am a bit freaked out. Why? Because we can communicate on many levels now, and more and more, the message is becoming buy this...buy that. Don't get me wrong, I understand that in order for these technologies to flourish they need a business model, but when you can tweet into my pocket in a moments notice, and I have to determine whether you are an everyday joe or an interactive strategist, I can't help but feel a bit exploited.

Things are a changing technologist friends. We truly are becoming a commodity. I used to draw a funny picture of a Hand holding the World with a Flea on it. The Hand was the Technologist, the World was Technology, and the Flea was the Marketer. The world is getting smaller, and the flea is getting fatter.

Don't believe me? Just look at the sheer volume of technology consulting now listing "Interactive Marketing" as one of their service offerings instead of web design.

But wait, there's more... 

interactive marketing

So, at the end of the day, your website, blog, online portfolio, e-commerce store, or whatever is only as good as it is easy to find on the internet. If you can't draw visitors to your internet place, you are severely decreasing your chance to capitalize on this new digital economy thing. Your ability to be easily found can be tuned up with 'SEO' or Search Engine Optimization. Now, one of the key tenants of SEO, is the ability to be found easily in what is called an 'organic search'. Simply put, this is the type of searching that most of us do: You go to Google, you type in a query, you get bombarded with information.

TIP: Everything on the internet currently comes down to one thing: 'Free' or 'Paid'. I suggest you go for the 'free' until we HAVE to go for the 'paid'. My goals is to immerse myself as deep as possible without having to pay anything.

So anyways, organic search is your friend if you have anything on the web, that is unless you don't really want to be found. Thinking about organic search, I came up with my first process steps for Digital Immersion:

• Host your own blog. This is your hub and no matter how many social networks you belong to, THIS will never fold on you and make you lose your information. This blog engine I am using is called BlogEngine.NET and it is sweet. The great thing about using a blog as your hub is that it allows you to syndicate your content easily into RSS feeds that others can subscribe to.
• Register your own name and point it at your blog. This is a bit of my own special sauce. If your goal is to immerse yourself into this digital economy, then you are essentially your own brand. Might as well start with your own name. 
• Make some posts about yourself with the same headings you would use on your resume. This way, when people (like potential employers, business people, etc. search for you, this stuff will come up in the results. You know thats good stuff. Just admit it. 

personal brand

I am ashamed to say that it took me so long to do this, considering that I built an app to encourage others to do so, but I have finally setup a Delicious.com account. I have been subscribed to other peoples feeds for quite a while now, but was too lazy to actually move my stuff out there. So, some of you from my technology life are thinking, "What took you so long?", but many from my interactive marketing life I am realizing don't even know what Delicious is.

Delicious is a social bookmarking tool. There are actually quite a few of these out there, but Delicious is the original. If you have one or more computers in your life, you most likely have run into the problem of "favorites" that are scattered amongst the different browsers that you use. If this is the case, then export them into a web-based bookmarking account and access them from anywhere. I won't dig into the social aspects. Who cares about that crap. At the end of the day, it's all about organizing all of your information.

Oh yeah, with respect to the digital immersion quest that I am on, Delicious conveniently has an iGoogle widget that allows you to coveniently access your bookmarks everytime you search!

digital life

Here are some projects that I have lead, architected, developed, planned, deployed, supported and/or inspired over the last 10 or so years, in no particular order:

• Freshside Grille.com - Long John Silvers
• Crave Is Calling.com - White Castle
• WhiteCastle.com
• Metabellum, Limited
• Strategic Asset Management, Intl.
• Tribulation.FM
• Audio S.O.B. Music Search
• Maintain Reynoldsburg
• Consensys Medical
• TapitEntertainment
• Chase.com
• Black Art Plus