ReadWriteWeb

In the late 90s, Tom Peters famously declared that we were all CEOs of our personal brands. In Fast Company he wrote:

"Regardless of age, regardless of position, regardless of the business we happen to be in, all of us need to understand the importance of branding. We are CEOs of our own companies: Me Inc. To be in business today, our most important job is to be head marketer for the brand called You. It's that simple - and that hard. And that inescapable."

This is even more true for professionals today and no group more so than entrepreneurs. When you talk to investors, partners, customers and most potential new team members one of the first thing all of them are going to do is get a sense for who you are and what you've done. When you first start a company, the corporate brand hasn't yet developed a reputation or any customer momentum, so most early-stage companies leverage the brands of the individuals involved for credibility. If you don't believe me, think how many times have you described a startup to someone by first describing the background or people involved? Therefore, for those of you planning to be serial entrepreneurs your personal brand is an invaluable asset.

Yesterday, I wrote about the things you can do to prepare your startup's website pre-launch. But your online presence doesn't solely exist on and shouldn't solely rely on your company website. And it's incredibly valuable that just as you work on it, that you work to develop an online presence for you, the entrepreneur.

Case in point: the relaunch this past week of SpeakerText, whose CEO Matt Mireles I had a chance to talk to. Looking back at the first mention of SpeakerText on ReadWriteWeb in January, that story begins, "You've probably never heard of Matt Mireles." But now, despite a back-to-the-drawing-board period for SpeakerText where the company itself was pretty quiet, if you're active in entrepreneurial circles online, you're much more likely to have heard of Mireles. He blogs and comments. He's active on Twitter and on Hacker News.

As the social Web expands, it becomes continually easier for large corporations to communicate with their customers wherever they spend their time online. Facebook and Twitter have attracted big brands because that's where the customers are, but failing to use these services to their own unique potential is just as easy as setting up an account. Some new stats released by digital agency 360i second this notion - showing that brands on Twitter are failing to truly grasp the essence of the popular micro-blogging service.

Although securing and promoting your company's brand is an important step when starting a business, and although protecting that brand can be an ongoing concern, the question of what it means to associate a person with a company brand is a lot more complicated - a fact made obvious in light of Tiger Wood's sex scandals. The companies that featured Woods in their advertising had sought to latch onto Tiger-Woods-as-a-brand - an image crafted to suggest his tenacity, reliability, skill, and success.

According to a new study by Milan-based consultancy firm Lundquist, Apple has the best Wikipedia entry among Fortune Global 500 companies. Lundquist ranked Wikipedia pages according to the quality of the data in the infobox, page features like links and citations and the quality and availability of page sections like company history and charts.

Today, 489 out of the Global 500 companies are featured on Wikipedia, though the majority of companies scored very low on Lundquist's scale. The average score was just 11 out of a possible 25 points. Apple's entry scored 22 points.

KnowEm allows individuals and brands to ensure that they have claimed their favorite username or their brand's name on over 350 social media services. Just type in your favorite username and KnowEm will check if it is still available on these sites.

Today, KnowEm announced the launch of a number of premium services aimed at small businesses and enterprises. For a one-time fee, KnowEm will create profiles for a brand or individual on over 150 social media sites. For a slightly higher fee, the company will also populate these profiles with your information.

A few weeks ago a company I work with lost an amazing opportunity. We gave them the idea to create one of the best brand blogs I've ever seen.

They said no. Instead, they decided to create a social media strategy that was boring and dictated by legalities. Just imagine a blog that doesn't allow customer comments. The campaign not only offered zero value to customers, but in the end it ignored them by turning the blog into a press release platform. Ultimately, the brand decided to trash the project and walk away from social media.