Looking your best on the internet isn’t as hard as most people make it out to be. Yet for some reason most people fail to grasp even the most fundamental aspects of business hygiene on the internet. Did you know that there still are people out there who use a @aol.com e-mail address on technical job applications? Not that there is anything wrong with an Aol.com address, but it’s like showing up to a Porshe meeting in a beat up Geo Metro; the chances are you won’t even get in.
Whether you are applying for a job, writing articles or just being an employee it is essential for your internet hygiene that you have an appropriate e-mail address. You’re e-mail address is like the suit you wear. Going to a meeting dressed incorrectly is a death sentence. Likewise, a poor choice of e-mail address will hamper your business efforts.
Don’t think an e-mail address is ‘just’ an e-mail address. It says a lot about you. Much like the car you drive, the house you live in and the cloths you wear. Looks are important, no matter what anyone says. We all know “don’t judge a book by it’s cover”, yet we all judge on first impressions (aka, by our looks).
For business this is important as a good address sets the tone for you. If, for example, you are starting a business and want clients to invest with you it would not look good if you sent your mail from ‘fluffykitten123@hotmail.com’. It is very unprofessional for several reasons:
- First and foremost, the username is completely inappropriate. Extremely childish. Very poor taste.
- The username is not professional at all, unless your business’s name was “Fluffy Kitten 123″ LLC.
- Nothing wrong with @hotmail, though it means you cannot be troubled with having your own domain name.
- It’s all to easy to create a cheap @hotmail account to use for spamming and fraud.
Here is a quick list of the best things you can do to make yourself look better on the internet as a business:
- Own your own domain. For example, I have pk@piotrkrzyzek.com
- Use consistence name schemes. In my example, I use the first and last name initials @piotrkrzyzek.com
As a person, here are some things you can do to help yourself look better:
- Use a reputable e-mail service, like gmail. I also have piotr.krzyzek@gmail.com. I use this for all my business correspondences. Other good services can include: Schools (.edu), Government (.gov), Military (.mil), Hotmail, Yahoo. There are of course others, but these are the ones that come first into my mind.
- Use business standards when creating your e-mail address. Use something along the well accepted format of firstname.lastname@service.com. Other good variations include: last.first, initials, firstInitial.lastname. You can also use your self employed business name as the address name. If for example you have Nuclear Fusion Design Studio Blog, you can safely create NuclearFusionDesigns@gmail.com and it will still look good.
- Do not use profanity or ‘adult’ words in the username.
- Do not use silly, funny or cute usernames. Keep it professional.
- Great tip if you have a few extra bucks, get your own domain and use that.
For further reading, you can check out “How What Your E-mail Address Says About You” at Lifehacker.com
This is the first part of a long series I’m calling “Better Business Hygiene“. Better Business Hygiene aims to teach you how to look better on the internet as a person, as a business (even if you don’t have one) and how to position yourself as an expert in your niche.
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