Own your name. The first strategy is to own your name. Go to a domain registrar such as GoDaddy (www.godaddy.com) or Register (www.register.com), and for less than $10.00, register a domain in your name—www.yourname.com. Note: your name may already be registered, particularly if you have a common name. If this is true in your case, try registering a domain with your middle name or middle initial. Once you have a "your name" domain, you can build a web site, establish an online career portfolio, or create a blog, all of which will be easily searchable by your name.

Refine and expand your online networking. Having an extensive list of professional contacts is a well-established job search and career management strategy. Moving your contact list online, establishing a visible (searchable) professional profile, and expanding your network are important OIO strategies. The larger and more established networking sites makes this quick and inexpensive. In fact, most are free. Today, some of the best web sites for professionals are LinkedIn (www.linkedin.com) and Zoominfo (www.zoominfo.com). Facebook (www.facebook.com) and MySpace (www.myspace.com) are also moving toward providing a more professional presence. Once you have registered on these web sites, develop a robust and professional profile. Your online profile is every bit as important as your paper resume in today's world—perhaps more so. Also, look for helpful tools that will identify how you are connected to jobs in which you are interested, and how to quickly upload and link to contacts in your contact management software.

Upgrade your resume to the online world. Posting your text resume online at major job sites is still important, but it is no longer sufficient for a good OIO strategy. Internet technology enables your career management strategy to include a visual and engaging portfolio about your career. This portfolio includes and supplements your printed resume. A comprehensive web portfolio can include your work history (including links to the companies for which you've worked), significant career achievements, links to articles, presentations, case studies, recommendations, references, awards, and so on. Also, by using graphics, video, and audio, your portfolio will become a more engaging representation of your skills, experience, and work history. Check out VisualCV (www.visualcv.com) for an excellent online portfolio web site.

Write your way to the top. In the online world, an individual has to establish a virtual self and a home base from which to connect to others. Either a blog or a web site is the most powerful vehicle to develop a recognizable personality, and it provides a home base from which you can initiate your connections. Profiles on social networking web sites can also achieve this goal. However, social networking web sites are getting very crowded, so it is difficult to stand out. Once you establish a web site or a blog, it must be constantly updated (Google likes fresh, new information). Blogs and web sites with stale, outdated information won't do much for your online identity.

Keep your online identity clean. A 2008 ExecuNet survey found that 35 percent of recruiters had ruled out job candidates based on what they found on a Google search. Be constantly vigilant about what you do that may end up online, and about what you actually do online. Recently, an executive was visiting his son at college. He was walking by a frat house and impulsively drank a beer from a beer bong (a long tube with a funnel at one end and the drinker at the other end). One week later, his beer bong picture appeared online, and it eventually came back to haunt him. Once a picture gets loose on the Internet, it is virtually impossible to remove it. In today's camera-on-every-phone society, one constantly has to be cautious. Similarly, think of the possible repercussions of articles you write, e-mails you send, blogs to which you contribute, and newsgroups in which you participate. Anything you write online becomes permanent, and when someone searches your name, this information will be found.

Track your OIO strategy. A simple, quick, and free way to evaluate your OIO strategy is to set up a Google alert to notify you each time your name is found on the Internet (www.google. com/alerts). Simply list your name in an alert, and Google will send you an e-mail message when it finds your name online. How often are you found today? Over time, are you being found more often? When you Google yourself, how high up in the listings are you found? Does your OIO move you up in those listings? These are effective methods to monitor and measure your own OIO.