Plan ahead when developing your Personal Brand Name

Posted on September 25, 2009 by Wes Johnson

When you develop your Personal Brand, the Name you use is one of your most important assets.  Many people have unique names and have little competition for the use of their name. 

Wes Johnson is my name.  Both names, I have discovered, are pretty popular. If you’ve ever done a Google search on the name you’ll find there are a lot of Wes Johnsons.  In fact there are several notable public figures that share the name Wes Johnson.  Since they are in the news, have personal blogs, participate in forums, or have blogs written about them, it has been quite a challenge to be noticed.  In order to be noticed, sometimes you need to be different.

MrWes is my brand name.- A few years back even before I decided to start blogging, a neighbor of mine had started calling me Mr. Wes.  Over time other neighbors, friends and associates started calling me Mr. Wes too.  I really liked that nickname so I decided I would get the domain.  At first I went with the .com and then I decided I would get the .net domain as well.

Stake your claim  – Pick your brand name wisely then grab as much of the internet as you can.

Where to reserve your brand name:

The rest of the MrWes brand story.  Many years after I grabbed my brand name domains, I decided to start writing my blog.  Fortunately, I already had my domain and brand name picked.  So, that wasn’t a problem.  I tried using my brand name MrWes as a user name for forums that I frequented, that’s when I realized that other people were using my brand name for their user name.  Sometimes, I had to choose a variation on my brand name.  Then, I decided to lock up the .ORG just in case, but it had been taken.

Final thoughts – When you create your brand name, make sure you have a plan to stake your claim ASAP.  You don’t want to leave anything to chance.  You need to make sure your name is associated with your message.

Posted in Blog, Branding | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Short URL challenges

Posted on September 24, 2009 by Wes Johnson

I learned something new while I was teaching my Personal Marketing Workshop yesterday.  I learned that Short URLs, while being convenient, aren’t always a good thing.

Problem – As part of the prerequisites for the workshop, I have the students do some job research.  Many of the links I reference are very long.  In fact because they’re so long there are lots of opportunities to mistype the URLs.  So, I thought it would be nice if I shrank the URLs down to something short.  I used one of the popular web based URL shrinking applications.  It works in theory until you discover the short URL domain is blocked by the firewall.  This is especially frustrating when you’ve gone through the trouble of getting your domain approved by the IT department.  If only there was a way to shorten URLs using my own domain.

Solution – The problem of generating short URLs within a particular domain has been solved in the form of a WordPress Plug-in called Pretty Link. Blair Williams has created a tool for shrinking, tracking, and sharing URLs on the internet.  Pretty Link converts URLs into an Permalink address within the domain it runs on.  Pretty Link creates a random short link for you to use or you can override the suggestion and provide your own.  With this tool I was able the convert the short URLs that weren’t working to similar short URLs that utilize my domain.

Here is an example of some short URLs that were quickly converted to use my domain instead.

http://TwitPWR.com/ske converted to http://mrwes.net/ske
http://TwitPWR.com/skh converted to http://mrwes.net/skh
http://TwitPWR.com/skz converted to http://mrwes.net/skz

Resolution – The chances of the short URL working increases wherever my domain is allowed.  When the short URL is converted back to the original URL  it should work as long as it hasn’t been blocked by the firewall.

Added Benefits – Pretty Link provides these added benefits

  • It puts you in control over your links.
  • You don’t have to worry if the short URL provider will change the rules on you.
  • Your short URLs can be tracked, so you get to see if and when they’re being followed.

Flexibility – Pretty Link provides a lot of flexibility

  • You have several options on how you can create your short URL
  • Redirection types
    • 301 Permanent – not changing
    • 307 Temporary – changing
    • Pretty Bar – show Pretty bar above link
    • Cloak Redirection – hide your Target URL
    • Pixel Redirection – tracking purposes
  • Including URL Parameters
    • with parameters
    • without parameters
  • Pretty Bar Customization
    • Show Blog Title in Pretty Bar
    • Show Blog Description in Pretty Bar
    • Show Share links in Pretty Bar
    • Show Target URL in Pretty Bar
  • With the Pro Version

You might have noticed I’m a little excited about this Plugin.  I definitely recommend it to anyone who is using WordPress as their blogging platform.

Posted in Blog | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Social Media breaks down barriers

Posted on September 22, 2009 by Wes Johnson

Last week I listened to a great speech from Carlos Hernandez at iRM Consulting.  He shared his expertise with the audience at a Career Strategy Forum hosted by the Northern Silicon Valley Partnership. 

Building Networks utilizing Social Networking tools – Carlos talked about Web 2.0 and the importance of utilizing the technology for networking.  He mentioned several great ways to use social networking tools to build social networks.

I think one of the most notable things he mentioned for me was that Social Media breaks down age barriers or perceptions of people.  This is definitely something I plan to share with the people in my Social Networks.  During his speech he also discussed other strategies for increasing networking opportunities.  The final note of his speech was of course to remind everyone not to discount the importance of old fashioned face to face networking.

Posted in Blog | Tagged | Leave a comment

Resizing your image for social network profile

Posted on September 21, 2009 by Wes Johnson

Have you ever uploaded a picture for your social network profile only to discover it was resized on you?  The problem is not that it was resized, the problem is with the scale.  If the scaling isn’t proportional then that great picture might not be so flattering.  It will be like looking in one of those Distortion Mirrors in the Fun House.  It could distort the picture so much that it doesn’t represent the true you.

There are 3 options to resolve this issue:

  1. Offer your techie friend a coffee, Jolt or Rockstar in return for helping you scale your image to the right size.
  2. Resize and crop it yourself using a graphic program.
  3. Resize and crop it yourself using an online utility.

Option 1 should be relatively quick & painless.  They’ll ask you to send them an email with your picture enclosed.  They might ask you the following questions:

  • Which social network is this for?
  • What are the dimensions in pixels?
  • Which image format do you need?

Option 2 is not as simple, since you will be doing the work yourself.

  • Open your image file using a graphic program that will allow cropping and resizing images.  My favorite is Paint.NET, a free photoshop like program.
  • To keep the whole image
    • Select Image Resize
    • Make sure “Maintain aspect ratio” is checked.  This will ensure the width is proportional to the height.
    • Resize to the desired pixel size.
  • To keep part of the image
    • Change view from inches or centimeters to pixels
    • Use rectangle select tool to outline the area of your image you want to work with.  As you resize the rectangle, it should show the approximate size of your cropping area.
    • Crop selected area.  This might be an icon or a menu selection depending on the graphic program you’re using.
    • The cropped area might not be the perfect size yet.  Your width or height might be a few pixels too big.
    • Now you can resize the canvas.  Paint.NET has this option.
    • Turn off the aspect ratio.  We don’t want to distort the cropped area.
    • Adjust height or width to fit the exact pixel dimensions required for your profile.
    • Save the file using the dimensions as part of the name “myPic_50x50.jpg” or “myPic_50x50.gif”

Option 3 is probably the simplest method of all to resize your image for social networks.

  • Visit http://mypictr.com/ a web based social picture resizing application
  • In most cases it takes only 4 steps to create a resized picture that is customized to the desired social networking profile requirement.
    1. Browse and load the picture from your local hard drive.
    2. Select the desired social network.  This determines the required dimensions.  From what I could tell they have most of the networks I know about.  They also allow the user the manually set the dimensions.
    3. Select image view
      • Drag the floating visibility frame to your desired picture focus
      • NOTE: The darker area outside the box will not be part of the picture.
      • You can use the zoom to adjust the scale of the picture.  Zoom out to get more of the picture.  Zoom in to get less.
    4. Create the picture
      • Once the picture has been created, you can download it to your local hard drive or send it to yourself via email.

My personal choice was Option 3. Of course, I’m already that techie guy and the web application mypictr.com saved me a lot of extra work.

For those who aren’t techie people, just choose Option 1 and ask your techie friend to show you how they did it.  Then you’ll know how to do it the next time you need it.

Posted in Blog | Tagged , | 2 Comments

Farm Town / FarmVille news

Posted on September 19, 2009 by Wes Johnson

Here are some of the latest developments in our favorite Facebook farm applications.  I recently wrote a blog on Farm Town or FarmVille.  In the blog I mentioned that Farm Town had twice as many required clicks for harvesting.  It appears that Harvesting in Farm Town has improved.

Faster harvest option

Faster harvest option

Improved harvesting User Interface in Farm Town

They have added a Faster harvesting option.  In the past you would take 2 clicks for each field you wanted to harvest.  You would click to select the field, then you would click to sell or click to store the harvested crop.

Now, after you select a crop to harvest and a method (sell or store) you are presented with this dialog.  Asking if you want to use this option for the rest of the session.  This is already making the harvesting more fun.

One thing is still missing, you can’t queue up the harvesting.  You still have to do it one field at a time.  So, when you measure this against FarmVille, they both take approximately the same number of clicks.

FarmVille Hot Air Balloon

FarmVille Hot Air Balloon

Special Weekend Balloon Sale

While we were working one of the FarmVille properties there was a notice that said a Hot Air Balloon was available during the weekend.  We jumped right on that opportunity to have a really cool decoration for the farm.

Networking at it’s best

When there are features that have been added or special purchase items in your favorite application, it’s always nice to know that your friends are looking out for you and will let you know that these opportunities exist.  I’ve shared these with you, now share this information with your friends.

Happy Farming !!!

Posted in Blog, User Interface | Tagged , | Leave a comment