We live in a reputation economy. In a world where everyone can amplify their voice through social media and similar platforms, your reputation is one of your most valuable assets. In the reputation economy, the only thing worse than having a negative digital footprint is having no digital footprint because a lot of times your reputation is your resume.
Before I started Teched Up Teacher, when you Googled my name very little came up about me. The top returns when you Googled my name was Chris Aviles the doctor, Chris Aviles the photographer, and Chris Aviles the felon from Jersey City, which became quite a problem for me at times. Not much on me, Chris Aviles the teacher. Just a few newspaper articles from sporting events when I was in high school. Through this blog and the work I’ve done in education, I am now the top result when you Google Chris Aviles.
That’s important. How many times have parents, students, family, friends, and prospective employers probably Googled you? If someone Googles me, I want them to see all the good I’ve tried to do for the profession and my students. In turn, having a good reputation and positive digital footprint has probably opened doors for me that otherwise would have stayed closed if I was still the 37th most popular Chris Aviles in the world. I say all this to make clear the point, your online reputation is important and something you need to grow.
As a new father, I want to make sure I protect my son’s reputation until he is ready to take it over himself. Here are the 3 tech-savvy moves I made for my son before he was even born to help him get a jump start on his digital footprint.
Get their name as an email
When we settled on the name Oliver, the first thing I did was get my son’s name as a gmail account. I don’t know if Gmail will be the most popular email service of the future, but I know having your name as a clean email address without having to follow it up with your birthday or random numbers or letters at the end will never go out of style.
Get their name as a domain
Using his email address, I bought my son’s name as .com. For just $10 a year, I can make sure no one else can buy his name. Later, if he wants, he can build a website where he can compile all the work he is proud of to show colleges. As a college student, he can build out the website to show perspective employers what he has learned as a college student. Then, when he gets a job, maybe his site becomes a place to share his passions and showcase whatever he chooses to do with his life. Maybe he never uses it at all. That’s fine, too. By owning his name as a domain, at least I can give him the option to share what he wants with the world.
Save all those pictures for them
Oliver is only 14 months old. He isn’t using his website anytime soon. In the meantime, I created a Google Photos account where my wife, family members, and I can upload all the pictures and videos we take of him. This is great for family members who don’t get to see him often. That can head to his website and see the latest pictures of him. Eventually, when the time is right, We’ll turn over his Photos account over to him so he can both add to it and have an archive of all the pictures of him growing up.
These 3 tech-savvy moves you can make for your kids right now may pay dividends in the future as reputation and digital footprints becomes even more valuable.