A few days ago I emailed the owner of a forum I have participated in for 5 years and asked about his policy on changing member names. I was hoping I could change my member name to John_Lessnau from my anonymous member name. As I suspected, the forum does not allow member name changes and suggested I start a new membership. Unfortunately, starting over with a new member name would cause me to lose 5 years of posting history and forum reputation under my fake name.

Why did I use an anonymous member name in the first place? Because four or five years ago, that’s what most people did. Not only would most people do anonymous member names on forums, review sites, blogs, and other social media sites, they would use different anonymous names on different sites. This makes saying stupid things much less painful, but makes building your online credibility and reputation much more difficult. If I could do it all over, my member name on every site would simply be “John_Lessnau” or jlessnau.

Now-a-days, with Social Media being the hot thing on the web, I am noticing a distinct trend where people are using their true identities across different websites. Several years ago, I noticed Aaron Wall of SEO Book using his real name at many sites he participated and thought briefly of doing this myself but never followed through. Partly because of him branding himself by using his real name, Aaron has become quite well know in the world of SEO, he definitely was ahead of the game when it comes to building a social reputation – I am not sure this was on purpose or not but it certainly worked well for him.

To play catch up, I have created this site, The Lessnau Lounge, where I will discuss my online activities and thoughts. Also, when I write something on another site I use my real name. Hey, if I am going to give a website free content, I at least want readers to know who wrote the content.

If you are starting to ramp up your online presence, don’t make the same mistake I did – start by using your real name right off the bat. You’ll find you will write much more intelligent and thoughtful comments when others know who is behind the words. While you may have fun being an online troll, you’ll definitely benefit more from being a solid online contributor.

Find me at twitter: http://twitter.com/John_Lessnau

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