As someone who is reading this blog, I think it is safe to say that you are a forward-thinking individual, who understands the importance of personal branding. It’s a fair guess that most of us, who have established a brand online have started since we have been out of college or have done so because our jobs have called for us to do so. Have you ever thought what it would have been like to start branding yourself online earlier?
Here are what I think are five compelling reasons why I think youth should establish their personal brand online:
1. Domain name
According to a Market Watch article, as of 2009 the Internet has surpassed a total of 193 Million domain names registered. With that stat being said, it is very important for youth to dip into the pool of names left and register the domain that matches their personal name at least. This way they don’t have to cobble together a URL, because nothing that resembles their name is available. Using their name as a URL is important for branding on a resume or for SEO (search engine optimization), which we will get into later.
2. Content Creation
Teaching your kids while they are young on how to create content on the web could advance them light years. The story from the proverbial book of “The Internet” is telling us that content consumption is moving from the TV to the Internet. Although the jury is out on whether content will completely move to the Internet, it appears that this is the trend. Knowing how to maneuver and establish themselves online could be the difference in whether your kids land career opportunities in the future. Obviously the content that a young person would create would ideally be targeted to their respective age group. The goal is not to teach them how create a huge audience, but to teach young people how to create relevant content to the audience they would want to focus on. Whether their audience is their friends from school or as small as their family, the experience they would gain would be very beneficial.
3. Good SEO out the gate
Google has made SEO (search engine optimization) a very important term on the Internet. Having a presence online early would allow search engines like Google, who crawl the Internet to find everything that exists, to populate the content that your child creates in its search engine results. Having an early start could be the difference between a young person with a common name like John Smith, having optimal search engine results online. Although you would have to maintain fresh content for these results to remain, a good linking structure on the website or blog would allow for decent results over a long period of time. To learn more about SEO, this article at searchengineland.com is a good start.
4. Seasoned Virtual Appearance
You may have aspirations for your child to become a million-dollar entrepreneur, however even if they become a worker-bee at a large organization, having tenure online can help. With a track record of providing content online, when the young person becomes an adult, people can see a past history of their contribution to a subject matter. Seeing an evolution in a young person can also show their potential, which is very important for employers.
5. Education Value
Creating a personal brand online through contributing content, allows a young person to prove that they can commit to something other than school. It could expand on their experiences whether social or educational. Additionally, when kids go off to college knowing how to create content online, they will have the edge of being able to express themselves via the Internet and will also have had the opportunity to establish a social network that could be valuable to them later on. Most importantly, they will have knowledge on how to use tools for content creation. Tools such as WordPress and Blogger for blog platforms, as well as social media tools like Twitter and Facebook that help them connect with other people and content creators online.
The Internet can be a scary place to let kids run wild and until they are mature enough to handle the responsibility, they may need a personal shepherd. If you are shepherding them along as they embark on this experience, you can curate their interaction and places they visit.
I feel whatever negatives exist for the personal branding of young people; the positives far outweigh any negatives that could pop up. A professor that I learned a great deal from, the late Professor Dr. Dale Haywood (creator of The Economics of Private Enterprise in a 12-cell Matrix) taught every student that they should create a Self-Designed Supplemental Curriculum (SDSC) and reach beyond our educational requirements. By encouraging young people to establish a presence online, it allows them to start training on how they want to present themselves to the world professionally, recreationally, or through creative contribution to the world. Personal Branding? For Kids? Yes.
Lawrence Riddick is a small business consultant and marketer at Clarity Consulting & Design and blogger at The Ideas That Stick.
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