Admit it. You’ve googled yourself. Were you happy with what you found? Whatever you found is exactly what your clients or potential customers will find.

What if you didn’t find anything? Or your name was buried on page 12 of the search results?

Well, then … if you haven’t already done so, now is the time to join social networks like LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter and create your online “brand.” Because as noted in a recent NY Times article, “Not being online today is akin to not existing.” While it may be hard to think of yourself as a brand, it’s necessary. As stated in the same article: “If you don’t brand yourself, Google will brand you.”

Another reason to use these sites is that they allow you to monitor what is being said about you and your business. One expert quoted in the Dallas Business Journal advises that “Communications are taking place right now on Twitter, Facebook, and all the other social networking services behind your back … It’s going on, whether you ignore it or not. The wisest course of action is to be informed about what’s being said about you in public forums.” Domino’s Pizza learned this lesson just this week.

Although there are many social networking sites, three of the most popular are LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Here’s a brief overview of each:

• LinkedIn: If you’re new to social networking, I would advise you to start with LinkedIn, a professional networking site. You can create a profile (see mine here) and use it to network with other professionals in your field, get the word out about your expertise, look for work, or reconnect with colleagues.

• Facebook: You may think of Facebook as a site for high school and college students only, but that perception is wrong. In fact, Facebook has seen more growth lately in “older” users — people using it to stay in touch with family and reconnect with old colleagues and school friends. Businesses can have Facebook pages, too. So if you’d like to have a personal page that is restricted to friends and family and another page for your business — one visible to the world at large — you can do that.

• Twitter: Here’s how they explain it on the Twitter home page — “Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?”

You use Twitter to send short messages (140 characters or less) to people who are “following” you (meaning they have signed up to receive your updates) — your clients, family members, friends. Yes, many of the messages (called “tweets”) are mundane. And it’s possible that you can’t imagine what you could possibly tweet about that would be of any interest to your clients. If so, don’t start tweeting — yet.  But set up the account, then search for colleagues and/or competitors — or for companies whose business models you admire — and watch what they do with Twitter. If you have a blog or a website, you can link it to your tweets so that visitors to your site can see what you’re doing. And the next time you’re at a conference or a meeting and something happens that you want to instantly inform your clients/customers about, you can tweet about it. Because if it’s interesting, others will be tweeting about it, too.

So … what are you waiting for? Jump in! If you’d like help getting your feet wet, contact me. I am currently working with a client to create profiles for her on these sites (as well as several others) so that she has a consistent and updated brand — one that is tied into her blog and website.  I can do the same for you.