After taking last week’s quiz, you may have some new ideas about your future. You feel energized and want to hop on your computer and get started on your journey. Just a minute! Let’s talk about emails.
Unless you’re reading this on a print out brought to you by your twelve-year old, I think it’s safe to say that you have an email address. Most likely you use it to email your friends, your family, and maybe even co-workers. Until now you probably haven’t had reason to give it much thought. After today, I hope you will.
Think of your email address as your name. Have a nice ring to it? Even with the .com ending? View this email address as your digital name because that’s exactly what it is. Whenever you send or receive emails, people see your name. It’s free advertising for YOU.
How do you put together this email address? Pick your full name or first initial and last name and put them together as in judyjones or jjones. If your name is common, chances are that someone with your name got there first. You may have to add something to your name, the two-letter abbreviation of your state, for example, such as judyjonesny, or a two-digit number, judyjones67. Yes, you can use a dot (judy.jones) but just be aware that the dot will have to be very clear in all communication or you will lose email to that vast digital no man’s land.
It seems like I shouldn’t have to say this but I will: for your business email, don’t use any nicknames or, even worse, an address that displays a less serious side of your personality, such as pokershark98@yahoo or kimtequila@msn.
If you’re determined not to leave your playful side behind, then sign up for a few email addresses. I suggest three—one for business, one for your social side, and one to handle all that junk mail you receive. No, you won’t have to check them all every day and you can have all your mail forwarded to one email address easily enough. The idea is to have one email address for business as we discussed today, one for personal use such as kimtequila@msn, and then one for those deals online that make you give up your email address so they can then send you endless amounts of junk.
Next you need to pick a provider such as Google, Yahoo, MSN, Hotmail or any number of other choices. My advice is to go straight to Google and sign up for a Gmail account. No, I don’t have stock in the company. The fact is simple: They have a great email system and a set of supporting tools that are easy to use.
There is one other option and that is to purchase your name at a registry and create a professional looking judy@judyjones.com address. There are many companies that do this but a few popular ones are www.godaddy.com, www.register.com, and www.networksolutions.com.
OK, judyjones59@gmail, nice work. With this out of the way we will continue with our journey.
Jason Veduccio is a hard-working entrepreneur following his dreams, and he wants you to dream, too. Drawing on his experiences working with companies on marketing, technology, hiring, and workplace issues, his regular column will demystify the job search process and identify strategies for moving up the corporate ladder. Founder of In1Concepts, Jason also knows the ins and outs of launching a new business. He welcomes your questions and can be reached at jason@in1concepts.com.
