Clearly I need to work on the mediaChick brand (or do I?)

Like all self-respecting social media consulting professionals, I often vanity search. This is, of course, because a person's self-worth is directly tied to how many times their links appear on the first page of search results. (As I'm pretty sure I saw that fact stated on a slide in one of the bajillion SEO presentations I've seen on Slideshare, it must be true.)

So, here is what comes up when I search "i heart media" in The Googles:

First page, second link, there I am. Got myself tagged "journalism" you see. That's like, NEWS and stuff. Me likes it. When you think about "i heart media" you should be thinking about writing and information (with a healthy dollop of me-me-me thrown in for prosperity.) Veeery Goooood.

Now, here's what we get when The Googles search "mediaChick":

Yeah, that's right. P0rn. I know who's responsible for this tag (cough@lollyraecough) and it looks like it's been that way for a while. But does it hurt the "mediaChick brand"?

My personal digital identity is decidedly far-flung, ranging from straight talk to jive talk. I write in many places online and off about about love, technology, life, music, relationships and baking (among other things) using both good words and naughty words. And, more than once, I have been caught in delicious moments of both utmost professionalism and omgyoudidNOTjustsaythat. Sometimes at the same time.

In my Social Media in Real Life class yesterday I talked about having a "digital self" online, which is the whole of the little pieces of you found around the Internet that together represent an online version of your "real" self. For instance, on the Long Lunch PDX blog I try to write in an approachable way that puts readers with technology anxiety at ease. That's my digital persona there, as a social media teacher. You won't ever see me using the kinds of photos I've used here on this blog. You've seen worse, I think.

It's all there on the Internet, bits and bytes of my digital self, sprinkled amongst the pages. Just waiting for some jokester (watch your back @lollyrae) to tag mediaChick as xxx-rated.

Although, you know? Kind of feels like a challenge.

Let's go steady!