So you have your own domain, now what?

Everyone should google themselves to find out what’s being said, written or posted with your name attached to it. If you’re Sam Smith, you better take a few days. For others, it may only take a few minutes or hours to sort through everything on the Internet that includes your name.

If you don’t see yournamehere.com, go get it. Registering a domain only costs a few dollars. Maybe $10-$40 depending on whether it’s a .com, .org, .ca, .tv, whatever. But you need it. No, you have to have it.

The internet address with your name is a valuable piece of web real estate, especially to you. As the world continues to move online (and we still have some moving to do), the domain name or url is worth having in your possession, if for nothing more to keep someone else from getting it.

I use GoDaddy to host my websites (despite their annoying and provocative ads) because they offer .tv domains. .tv is good for me because I work in tv. A dot-com address is much more valuable to you because dot-coms are what people are most familiar with.

yourname.com becomes your home. Use it in place of a business card. Use it instead of a resume. Use it to post pictures of your kids or your dog or your car or your turnip garden. But use it for something, you’re not paying for the registration for nothing. Right?

If you want to build a website you don’t have to know how to code or even know anything about html or http or even ctl-alt-del. Using services like WordPress.com which is free, or wordpress.org that gives you more control over what your site looks like and what you can do with it.

By forwarding your wordpress.com or blogger.com site to yourname.com, a few simple steps puts a somewhat professional website on your domain.

Another idea is to forward yourname.com to your Facebook or Tumblr page. That makes it easier to tell people how to get to those pages.

I use jameytucker.com as a catch-all site for the social media sites and websites that I own or maintain. Imagine how much simpler it is for people to remember jameytucker.com rather than facebook.com/jameytucker, or twitter.com/thetechguyontv

It’s not very difficult to set up either. Take a couple of hours to get familiar with wordpress (that’s what I use but there are others) and you’ll be up and running in no time.

I won’t be updating this page very often because I do all of that on a daily (even hourly) basis on Facebook and Twitter.

There are links on this website to my Facebook site, Facebook pages, my techguy.tv website and service and my two YouTube pages. You’ll also see links to LinkedIn, Tumblr and Vimeo sites.

Sure, I may occasionally post a video or blog post here, but primarily I just want to use this site to keep all of that stuff in one place.

Thanks for stopping by, next time I may have some pictures of my turnip garden.

At first it was just a blog. Then Facebook. Then Twitter. Tumblr, Pintrest, YouTube, Vimeo. I’ve signed up for others I can’t remember.

I’ve also opened social media sites for side projects. The Tech Guy segment franchise has its own website, Twitter, Youtube and Vimeo accounts. Add another Facebook page for WKRN and I have a dozen different needy outlets that, to be successful, have to be updated frequently.

That’s too many. I’ve spread myself too thin to have an impact or gain a following on any of these spaces. I’ve tried using Hootsuite where you can write one post and send it to all of the others. The problem with that is anyone who follows more than one of your accounts may start ignoring all of them.

I’ve come to realize that having all of these social channels is 1: a little arrogant and 2: impossible to do well.

So in the last week I’ve cleaned house. I’ve shutdown my @thetechguyontv twitter account. I’ve merged my jameytucker.tumblr.com page with my WKRN page, and devoted it to my work as a tv reporter. And lastly, I’ll put more energy into this blog (which used to get 2-5 posts a week, and had a certain level of followers). I’ll also keep plugging along on my business website.

That’s still a lot, and probably still a little arrogant.

But you can’t go to every party everyday and believe anyone will remember you were there.