One of the main steps to become a successful online publisher is to build a strong online identity. The more you establish yourself as a reliable source of information, the more the people will seek you for help and visit your site.

Photo credit: Robin Good

In this short video tutorial, Robin Good explains how to build a strong online identity. Is it all about a fancy name or writing good content? No. What really matters is your passion and desire to share your knowledge and explore. And don't be afraid to get your hands dirty, it's part of the game.

Want to know how to build a strong online identity while increasing your credibility and reputation online?

Here is a short video from Robin (with a full English text transcription) sharing with you some simple advice:

Intro by Daniele Bazzano

Building A Strong Online Identity

Duration: 6'

Full English Text Transcription

Hi guys this is Robin Good for MasterNewMedia, answering your key questions received from my email inbox at Robin.Good(at)masternewmedia.org, and focusing mostly on professional online publishing and related topics.

This time I've got an interesting request from you: "Let's say I want to create a strong online identity. How do I do that? Is it all about having a fancy name like yours? Is it so?"

That's a great question I think.

The Identity Is Not A Name

Let's re-focus it. Topic is: Online identity. How do you build one.

Is it about the name? Is it about the content? Is it about the overall personality, impression, feeling that you give out? It's probably about all of these things.

An online identity is not so much built by thinking up a fancy, memorable name, that reflects who you are, and what you're trying to do, but it can be enabled also by that.

In fact, I generally suggest people who are opening a new blog, not to start with their name. because the blog name is quite important and nobody is going to search for your name outside of your own friends.

If your focus is in video publishing, call your blog "Video Publishing - by Jerry O'Hara", but put video publishing as the main thing there because it's the topic you're talking about.

Develop Your Identity Along The Way

Many times people are trying to built an online identity thinking that this is something that they can strategize from the very beginning. I don't think this is the case, and it wasn't the case with me.

MasterNewMedia was out there before Robin Good existed for a long time.

Until I realized I wanted to have and identity, that the person behind MasterNewMedia was for many people ore important than the MasterNewMedia brand, realizing that MasterNewMedia was not easy to memorize, and to spell out again, and to pronunciate for many people to this day, also knowing that my name was very long and complex, and not easy to pronunciate for people that are not from my country, then I put that mechanism in place. But, otherwise, you should always state that first.

The Identity Is What You Do

You should do something valuable, and good, and great, and then, once you've done that, you are probably going to develop your own identity and personality naturally, to which you can inject more character, a better name and so.

But you can't really build a personality by deciding a fancy name, or a cool logo, or that.

That character, that identity, is a result of something you do, not just of a name you have. It can be as fancy, and a memorable as you want, but unless it is deeply, and strongly, and repetitively associated to something that characterizes, that matches up, reinforces that name in some way, then is going to have no value.

Always Give The Best You Have

So Robin, how am I going to build my online identity? You build your online identity by bringing out the best you've got.

The best you've got about the things that you're most passionate about, and you've decided to cover on your site, on your newsmagazine, on your blog, or e-zine, whatever you got.

You should come out, using your own singular pronoun for yourself, and not talk always like you're a team.

• Come out yourself,
• show your face,
• say what you think,
• take a stand,
• defend some people who are not in an easy position,
• challenge somebody,
• bring in tremendous gifts to your audience.

That's what you can do to build an online identity no matter what's your name.

That's really how you can do it, by really having a conversation with them, not just publishing stuff, putting content out there. But trying to come up as a direct human being there that has some special traits, whatever they are: that you scream all the time, that you complain all the time, that you find only the greatest tools, and you're always amazed by them, and you analyze why they can be so great, whatever that is.

Be Like Robert Scoble

Give space to a personality to give out, and that's how you can build a strong online identity.

Robert Scoble didn't think up it's name. Why does he have such a strong online identity? Because he has dedicated his recent life just to this. To share, to give to other people, to explore, to make mistakes, get criticized, get squashed by other people who don't appreciate what he does. And not defending, not trying to o fight, but just trying, and trying, and hopefully learning something from all out of this.

That's the way I think anyone, without expecting to become as popular as Robert Scoble, can develop a tangible, memorable, unique online identity.

It's not in the name. It's in what you do. That's what I strongly think, and I recommend you do it.

This is all from Robin Good. Write me more, ciao!

Do you have more questions you want Robin Good to answer? Post them here below inside the comments area.

Do you want to learn more about other key strategies in professional web publishing? Check out POP, a new video blog site where Robin Good shares his expertise with "in-depth" video tutorials to help professional online publishers to monetize their sites.

Originally shot and recorded by Robin Good for MasterNewMedia and first published on December 10th 2008 as "Building A Strong Online Identity: Robin Good Video"