Earlier this year, I went over to brandyourself.com and made an account. BrandYourself is a company dedicated to helping you optimize your online presence, all so that you can be more easily found in the endlessness of the Internet. It’s a great premise, but does it really work?
Before we get into that, let me tell you a bit about how the site functions. After you make your account, you are asked to connect your websites and social media profiles to BrandYourself, and you are then presented with the first page or so of search results from when people search your name on Google. You identify which, if any, of those searches are about you, and then you get a score. Here’s my score from the first time around.
Having an understanding of how easily you can be found online is a great thing for people trying to get their name out there, and this isn’t even the best part. BrandYourself provides an individual analysis of all of the sites and profiles you connected, and it gives you detailed suggestions about how you can improve each of them to improve your presence. It also provides lots of details on any negative search results that come up or anything on your social media that might be damaging your reputation. Following all of their guidelines, you can set yourself up for online success. But, I do still have some issues with the site.
I went through all of their suggestions, and while many seemed very useful and practical, I disagreed with many others. For example, for my YouTube bio, I want something short and simple because I think it sounds better and I want to let my videos do the talking. BrandYourself suggested a very long bio in which I repeated my full name several times, and this was a recurring pattern for other bios and about pages.
While I’m sure this is a good idea in terms of SEO optimization, from a personal and human aspect, I felt that it was really lacking. It seemed awkward, and I have the same issue with many of the other improvements that they suggested. With that being said, I still think that the site had a very positive impact on my online presence. It made me think a lot about what I was communicating, and I became much more careful and thoughtful in my word choice.
After using BrandYourself, my online presence has definitely improved. I don’t think I will get much additional traffic because of the changes that I made, but for the people who do find their way to my stuff, I think they will have a much more positive experience.
Here is my updated score from after making my changes. It is only a small improvement, but it was an important one nonetheless. I don’t think BrandYourself will make you into an Internet guru, but it is a powerful tool that will only get better with time. So, if you are looking to make some big changes in the way the Internet world sees you, you know where to go.
Josh's Journey 