I honestly wasn’t sure of what the post title should have been here since I thought more than a few times my angle of approach for this.

Essentially, the point of this post is to encourage people to maintain consistency of their “image” and messaging online, whatever that may be, since it’s far too easy to get caught in the lie that you don’t really know what you’re doing.

And it’s not that the goal is to look like you’ve got it all together; just try to make sure it all gets aligned properly.

For example, I use (sparingly) LinkedIN, a professional social network that, among other things, highlights how gosh-darn awesome you are. It’s a virtual-resume of sorts.

As you can see above, this particular person is the CEO of two companies and the CFO of another. That’s all fine and dandy, but the problem is that the first website link that he has listed goes to his MySpace page.

I think you get the “problem” here, right? I’m not against MySpace, but culturally that site shouldn’t be the first link for a CEO of a business. It just doesn’t translate very well.

This is a kind reminder to keep your messaging and your presentation online consistent with who you are and how you want to ultimately be seen. Don’t muddy the water when it’s easy to make it clear.