The First Step to Personal Branding

If your name is very uncommon, then this advice can wait. But, if your name is common; now is the time to take action.

When your LinkedIn profile truly does replace your resume, the question you'll be asked won't be; "Can you send me your resume?", but; "What's your LinkedIn profile address?"

I'll have to spell mine, but I'll only need to spell "vangameren".

The common part of a LinkedIn profile URL is; http://www.linkedin.com

The unique part of the address is, in my case; /in/vangameren.

Here's the kicker; by default, LinkedIn gives you a long alpha-numeric address like "/pub/7/b76/99a"

Who's going to remember that? And if you're name is Tim Smith and LinkedIn has almost 2,000 people registered with your name, how is anyone going to find you? the real you?

The answer? Get your unique public profile name now. The more common your name, the more urgent this is! The unique name you choose will be the identifier of your personal brand. This is the way you will want people to find you online.

Are you convinced? I am, so much so that I'm going to change mine. I thought it was great that I was able to be the first one to grab vangameren for my profile, but that's not how I want people to search for me. My name is so uncommon that I haven't yet run across another Rick VanGameren in the world. When people Google "rick vangameren", they find me. That's the name that makes sense for me to use everywhere I'm online, so - effective today, even though I've already given quite a few people the address of vangameren, I'm making the switch.

You can find me at http://www.linkedin.com/in/rickvangameren

Ok, now - how do we make the change?

Log in to LinkedIn and click on "Edit My Profile"
At the end of the "Public Profile" link, click on Edit
At the end of the "Your Public Profile URL", click on Edit
Type in the value, and click on Set Address (if the address is already taken, you will be notified with the message; "This URL is not currently available")

Now if you'll excuse me, I've got some updating to do (changing all my references from vangameren to rickvangameren).