Make getting your online shit together one of your resolutions for 2012. Google shouldn’t stumble when people are looking for you … unless you don’t want them to find you. Then, do this:
Look, you’re the CMO. You don’t have time for the Google or the Facebook or the Twitter. You have time for reading the iCrossing Great Finds blog, that’s about it. And LinkedIn? You’re not unemployed. Come on.
However, effectively managing your online identity is good insurance against negative content surfacing in search results targeting your name. If somebody writes a blog post about how you “suck,” it sure would be nice for that not to show up on page one of Google. What then do you do?
Find a body double – somebody with your same name – and make him your Saddam Hussein-style body double on Google. If your body double is on Facebook, sign him up for Twitter. If he’s on LinkedIn, get him on Squidoo. Create a Wikipedia page for him. Hell, create a custom home page with an optimized domain name about how great this guy is. Optimize the shit out of everything. Build links like crazy. Buy some AdWords and some 300×250 displays. Create YouTube videos about how your body double is totally awesome, and curate a Tumblr blog of his favorite images. Consider releasing a sex tape. Negative press targeting you won’t have a chance.
Or you could actively manage your own search presence. But search is just a fad anyway. Real business is done on paper.
Paul’s traveling the country as a digital nomad. Keep track of him, his wife, and their minivan home on drivinginertia.com.










I was wrong: EVERYBODY* wants an iPhone 4S
Well, I was wrong. Pretty, pretty, pretty wrong. Turns out everybody* wants to buy a new iPhone, even people that just bought one, their grandmothers, their newborns … everybody*. And the oddest thing? People are damn jazzed to give Apple their money. I don’t understand this post from David over at 37 Signals:
What triggered this gushing? Apple’s quarterly profit results. He was just so happy they had made so much money. Which makes no sense if all you do is buy their products, but it makes all the sense in the world if you own their stock.
I still don’t understand Apple, I guess.
*Everybody except me, perhaps. I really, really dislike iTunes.