My branding on Google

Ok, so I tried to do a Google search for my name. I know my spelling’s unusual (you can blame the Irish part of my ancestry for that), but the first thing it tries to give me is Steve Coleman. Nope, I’m not having that. You spell it Collman or not at all. I also had to narrow it down to pages from the UK, because there is apparently at least one Steve Collman in America.

Now, once I’d done that, the top search result is from facebook. Problem is, it’s not me; I intentionally don’t make my personal facebook page viewable because of privacy measures – I don’t want any old person having a look at my profile and seeing what information they can scam. I only make my information available to friends of mine, who I feel I can trust.

However, I’ve started to become available further down the page – the next few results are from LinkedIn, which I’ve set an account up on to try and make professional contacts. Only problem with this is, I don’t use it enough…Plus, there’s someone called Steve Collman-Hole there stealing all my thunder. Ok, well, he’s second on the list behind me, but for some reason he’s first on the list if I click to actually go into LinkedIn.

Looking further down the list, it seems there are several Steve (or Stephen, with this – my – spelling) Collmans in the UK. At least one of the hits is me, because I can see my job title of Community Outreach Librarian, but I’ve no idea who this guy on Twitter is. It’s not me, because I don’t use my Twitter account that much (ok, ok, at all. I know I should, but I’ve just got nothing to say).

It’s also just occurred to me, I’ve only just set up a professional Google+ account. Why is that not listed? It’s not listed in the first three pages. Does it not get a Google hit of its own?

I think I’m going to have to strengthen my online presence somehow. I’ve just got to figure out how first.