Keeping Track of Who You Are Online: A Tale of Amazon and Social Media Sites

Some days it is especially hard to keep track of who you are online. And this is certainly true when sites you think you are already on turn out to present a different story.

Here is what started me thinking about this:

The May 2011 Kindle Direct Publishing Newsletter had this note in the left-hand sidebar:

To create Author Pages, set up a profile for each site where your books are available:

Amazon.com

Amaon.co.uk

Amazon.de

Amazon.fr

Amazon.co.jp

This started me out on a maddening quest:

First, by searching on my name on each site, I found that my books were available on all five sites (U.S., U.K., Germany, France, Japan). So far so good.

But, second, I found that the reviews my books had received on the U.S. Amazon site were NOT on any other sites with the exception of a review in English on the Amazon Japan site from an American currently living in Japan.

Next, I tried to create an Author Page for each country Amazon site.

My password worked with all but the Japanese site. Presumably I needed to know the Japanese characters for the letters and numbers in my password.

Plus I was able to add my Amazon author bio to the U.K. site. But when I tried to add the bio to the German and French Author Pages I created, I got an error message.

Talk about dealing with a split personality!

Then I read a post by Denise Wakeman about sites that help you consolidate all your social media info and links. Feeling overwhelmed by the multiple Amazon identities, I quickly checked out her recommendations:

Flavors.me

About.me

Itsmyurls.com

Socialbios.com

She said that Socialbios.com makes it "super easy to embed your bio on your Facebook page with an app as well as on your blog." And she added that this service takes "your bio a step further by giving visitors the option to find out mutual connections on the popular social networking sites."

But the thought of adding content to four more new sites after my Amazon wrestling match with four foreign sites was just too much for now.

Instead I decided to write about these four social media consolidation sites and ask Miller Mosaic blog readers to post any comments here that you may have after trying these sites for yourself.

Meanwhile, you may want to read Denise Wakeman's entire post about how many social profiles you need.

© 2010 Miller Mosaic, LLC

Phyllis Zimbler Miller (@ZimblerMiller on Twitter) is the co-founder of the social media marketing company Miller Mosaic LLC.

Get the free information "8 Social Media Marketing Mistakes" and "Social Media Marketing Does Not Magically Work; You Have to Work It" at www.facebook.com/millermosaicsocialmedia



And see Phyllis' Author Page on the U.S. Amazon site.