Owning your online personal brand identity

I just read a few different posts that speak pretty highly of the firstnamelastname.com personal brand identity. (I got a little bit smug...) Sure we'd all like to have firstname@lastname.com as an email address, but this often requires a rare single word .com domain, and these can be expensive. The key is to have an odd name--- oh wait, you've already been dealt your hand... What can you do as an average person to PROTECT your online identity? In my last post, I commmented on the disregard for trademark rights by a certain Canadian bank. If this were a domain issue, it would most certainly be in court already, but it was just keywords, so this level of brand theft hasn't yet elevated itself to the awareness level of the courts in Canada.The key is to make sure that when someone google's you, you are in control of what rises to the top of the SERP. If you google 'Andrew Kinnear' right now, you will likely get some results that point to this blog, or my LinkedIn profile, or maybe a facebook 'public' profile badge. All of these things come up because I am aware of my public brand and I manage it. I make sure that various social networks link back to the blog, which in turn links out to various profiles. I blog (for various reasons, but also) to create fresh content that is indexed, along with my name, ensuring my position in a SERP.Do employers or potential employers google someone before they're hired? Industry experts say yes. Do admissions personnel at prestigious schools check people out before the final 'o.k.'? You bet.So what do you need to do to get the ball rolling? Easy-- register your name at any registrar (mydomain.com, godaddy.com, etc). Use Google Apps and Google's free Gmail interface to give yourself email on the domain. firstname@firstnamelastname.com is what I use and it seems to work. Make some 'aliases' too, if you're worried about spam (ex. comments@firstnamelastname.com or catchall@firstnamelastname.com) this way when the spammers start hammering you because you've had your address scraped from a comment somewhere, you can turn it off without ruining your profile.Get a free website-- oh say from?? Google?! Either a blog or a site will do, but a blog is easier to set up, manage, and update. This site uses blogger and a custom template I found somewhere.If you're lucky, you can start to get in the search engine's 'good books' and pop to the top of the results page when your new boss decides to google you. If you're unlucky, then someone else will control your personal brand, and who knows what will happen...If you're someone like the CEO of Telus, a major telco in Canada, then you're pretty pissed off that a pro-union, pro-consumer, semi-hate-group has a hard-on for you AND owns yourname.com: Darren Entwistle, CEO of Telus, doesn't own his personal brand, and even long after he's no longer the CEO, that messaging will still haunt his career.Just think-- what if I ever write a book? Run for office? Get famous? Now's the time to start some simple brand maintenance.