Do you own the domain name for your name? For example, I own mikemaddaloni.com and own a few names with just my last name, Maddaloni, as the dot-com name is owned by someone else.

Owning the domain name may seem vain, but it is an important component of your personal brand. What you say – personal brand? Yes, just as a company brands itself and its products and services, individuals should do the same. If you think about it, if you are a jobseeker or have your own business, you are doing this to a certain extent. By developing a personal brand you are making a constant and consistent effort to market and promote yourself.

Recently I have seen several references to personal branding, including this article on a brand trainer in Forbes as well as Chicago networking guru Jason Jacobsohn who has been writing and speaking about it. A service from a Chicago company called Naymz allows you to develop an online profile and a link to it will appear as a Google text ad – try Googling me and you will see it.

So what do you with your personal domain name? You can create a personal Web site and use it for your email. If you are not ready for a Web site yet, you could forward Web traffic to another Web page, such as your blog or LinkedIn profile.

Business • Domain Names • (7) Comments • Permalink

Recently I received an email survey from an organization from whom I have purchased their product before, and upon completing the survey I purchased more from them. However I would bet that was not their intention with sending the survey.

Thousand Hills Coffee is a brand of Rwandan coffee where part of the proceeds benefit school projects in the land where the coffee originates. I know the president of the company, and I like coffee, so I have been a customer. When I received a marketing survey from them, I completed it and then realized I hadn’t ordered from them in a while. That issue was remedied with another order placed and I was enjoying the coffee a few days later.

This got me thinking – as I market my company, maybe I should be thinking about reminding my existing customers rather than selling to them?

Business • (2) Comments • Permalink

This morning I participated in a dynamic discussion for the first meeting of likemind.chi. What is likemind you ask? I asked myself the same question when I heard about it, and this video by the founders of likemind explains it well.

And as I am the closest one to the meeting spot at Intelligencia Coffee on Randolph and Wabash, I was there late, however I was one of the last to leave. I met some interesting people and as we sipped our coffee, we exchanged ideas on branding, blogging and swag.

How I heard about this event is almost as interesting. The blog of one of my clients was mentioned on the PSFK blog. After finding this blog interesting, I started reading its feed and heard about Likemind, as it was started by one of the people of PSFK. A sequence of events that had a fantastic result.

And to think that people were meeting today all over the world with the same common goal.

Business • Technology • (4) Comments • Permalink

Tonight I am attending a meeting of the Circle of Progress. It evolved from a Chicago Meetup.com entrepreneur group, where the concept of attendees talking about what they did the last month and what you plan to do the next month became the focus of the meetings. Where many networking events for small business people tend to simply be card swap events, this meeting has depth to it that I have been seeking, and brings people back each month.

As I was thinking about my accomplishments and plans, I recalled this blog post about paying the price for success. It served as a check for my plans in the next 30 days and if they are directly related to the growth of my business. It is often easily to get wrapped up in something that is more time consuming that the reward for the time spent. Stepping back and taking a look at it in the context of the big picture is required. I view the Circle of Progress as one way to ensure I am doing all I can to grow my business.

Business • (0) Comments • Permalink

If you have ordered something online or posted a comment to a blog, you have seen captcha. It was originally developed as a method prevent robots from automatically submitting forms on a Web site by requiring a person to visually view text in an image and enter its value in the form, something a robot should not be able to do.

Where it has a noble purpose to prevent bogus information going to a Web site owner, it is a roadblock to someone who is visually impaired using a form. And as you can see from the example I grabbed from a Chicago-based Web site, it can be hard for those who do not have any visual impediments to decipher.

I made a decision to not use captcha on The Hot Iron or on Dunkirk Systems’ Web site. I do have logic in the forms to try to thwart bogus submissions, but they still get through. Comment moderation is enabled on this blog, requiring me to approve a message. Where this slows down legitimate comments from going live, not to mention more work on my part, it provides a better user experience for you the reader. This I value more than deleting a few offers for pills and watches.

As for the Web site I took this captcha example from... their privacy policy and Web site copy did not make it clear what was to be done with the information submitted using the form, so it was another strike against be using it.

Technology • (10) Comments • Permalink