Even if you’re secure in your job and have no plans of changing, don’t underestimate the importance of setting up and maintaining effective means for professional communication—think beyond the email account your job provides. It makes sense to build your own personal brand no matter who you work for.
Even if you own your own business, you may also want to set up a free webmail account for your personal use if you prefer more privacy—just in case your business emails are ever revealed through legal proceedings. Work email is almost always the property of the business, so create an account where you can present yourself professionally and a have a higher expectation of privacy. It’s still email after all, and therefore not private unless encrypted—but it would be your account and therefore none of your boss’ or employee’s business.
If you currently use email provided by your home Internet service provider, and already have a work account, you can still benefit from setting up an email account on a domain purchased for professional use. Instead of using jo@myhomeISP.com I could set up an email on my name-as-domain, for example jo@jogolden.com.
If purchasing a domain is not right for your situation just yet, not to worry. You still can and should avoid using the email account you get from your home Internet service provider as your professional account. Set up a free web-based email account (like Gmail, here are some reasons why) in some version of your own name if possible, and then use it professionally in addition to your existing work email. You can forward your web-based email to an account you already pick up with your desktop client (like Outlook, Entourage, Thunderbird, etc.).
If you will only have one account, you can configure most desktop email clients to pick it up using POP or IMAP protocols, then you can deal with email whether you’re on or offline. We suggest choosing a web-based email system like Gmail—one that provides you with lots of storage where you can leave your emails on their server as a backup. You also can access your webmail account from any computer (always take precautions to protect your privacy on unknown or unsecured networks and machines).
What other steps do you take to preserve your personal identity and develop a stronger professional web presence?
Originally published in our newsletter Digital Survival for Business™.
“It makes sense to build your own personal brand no matter who you work for.” Such good and timely advice! I wish I had realized that sooner, but I feel I’ve made up for lost time. I was lucky.
In this job market, with employees being eyeballed as costly overhead, a job and a paycheck can disappear and you may not see it coming. Even if you feel your job is fairly secure, having your personal brand in place can work for you in so many ways when you are forced to make a change.
One thing I do to keep my personal brand in tact is that I do use different email addresses to ensure that my personal brand doesn’t blend with anything I choose to keep private. All of my correspondence is distinctly separate and I never mix them. It’s not too clunky once you get used to it. I manage them with Outlook.
I feel now that I’ve established and will continue to develop my own brand of resourceful-preneurship, I’m more secure than ever that I will be able to continue earning a living. Pretty powerful, don’t you think? Thanks again for the post. I look forward to reading more. Best regards, Sonia
Sonia, thanks for stopping by, you are so right on! I appreciate your email tip and knowing some of your story. Keeping separate email accounts for professional and private is key!
It made me think of challenges we face these days when using social media professionally and more and more for jobsearch–it is sooooo important to keep social media professional because it is so public. Of course, what professional means can be very different in different fields, but that separation from private life gets blurry with social media. I will say all day long that any time spent thinking through and developing a strategy for a professional web presence is time well spent–then it’s just a matter of sticking to it! More on that in an upcoming post…
“I feel now that I’ve established and will continue to develop my own brand of resourceful-preneurship, I’m more secure than ever that I will be able to continue earning a living.”
Resourceful-preneurship is an awesome term and idea–I’ll be watching for your tweets and #smallbizchat to learn more anywhere else I should look?
best
Jo