The online community boasts more than 500 million users worldwide spending upwards of 500 billion minutes per month discussing celebrity gossip, the latest Apple products, and, oh yeah – you?
Whether you know it or are unaware, you are part of the social media craze that has slithered its way into our homes, relationships and businesses. Your brand is a mix of available information, personal, professional, pictures, etc., in cyberspace. With or without your knowledge. So, what are you proactively doing to monitor and manage this information?
Control of an online reputation is an enormous, time-consuming feat. Before Twitter, Facebook, Tic Tok, and other social media platforms exploded, a vehicle for rapidly disseminating positive or negative information on brands, people and businesses didn't exist. Watercooler gossip had a limited reach, and the perpetrator could quickly squash negative comments.
Today, managing privacy has gone beyond our immediate social circle of friends, family, and coworkers. Kicked up a big notch, our reputation also incorporates the perceptions of millions of individuals, many of which you've never met but are active participants in social media. Anyone connected to sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and YouTube, among others, has the power and ability to potentially affect your career, relationships, and your acceptance into schooling, a social club, or a new business.
Go Forth and Google
It's safe to assume people regularly Google you or your firm, which can result in less-than-positive information popping up in the results. This could include the rantings of a disgruntled former employee or colleague, a reply to a blog posting, unflattering articles, or a business or person with the same or similar name. In any case, your brand is at risk, and a person's perception of you and your credibility could instantly be impacted – or even destroyed - by the information resulting from a simple Google search.
Fortunately, the tools used to destroy you can also be employed to promote you positively. Search engines are no longer just search engines. They are reputation management tools that can monitor information about you, your firm, or your clients. The first step in winning any reputation war is to learn what information is available to others. This is most easily done through a Google search.
We can't expect one single outlet like Google to catch everything available, though. Spend time looking on various search engines for mentions of your or your firm to get a more comprehensive view of public information. Set up Google alerts, an automatic email update of the latest relevant Google results based on your topic of choice. Google alerts can be set up to monitor your name, your firm, your clients, or a host of other issues relevant to your life.
In addition to the user information generated by social media sites, sites like Zoominfo and PiPl stockpile information about you from various sites. These sites present the information to the world in a "profile" format.
Because the information is being assembled automatically, with little human oversight, sites can mix information about people who may share the same name. These sites are particularly troubling for those with the same name as an infamous celebrity or someone associated with a scandalous event. Taken out of context, this can be highly damaging.
And don’t forget Wikipedia, which studies have shown is more inaccurate than Encyclopedia Britannica. An incorrect or defamatory entry may exist without you even knowing it. If your firm has a Wiki page, monitor it regularly for erroneous edits.
Create Your Own Content
If you’ve conducted your due diligence and aren’t happy with what is coming up online, what do you do? How do you push down that negative content that is coming up when others are searching for you online? It starts with putting out your own content, and a lot of it.
Write articles and publish in a variety of well-read online publications. Regularly publish on your firm’s blog. Any opportunity to create content positioning you as an expert in your area of practice is key. Create enough of this content, and you will begin to push down what you don’t want others to see initially.
You can also work with your PR and marketing team to position you as an expert available for third party comment with reporters at target publications. This will help to further populate your search results with positive content showcasing your expertise.
Do Your Own Background Check
It’s important to remember that information is easily accessible well beyond a Google search. A treasure trove of information about you is freely available to anyone who knows how to look for it. Do you own property? Have you ever been arrested or divorced? In most states, that information is of public record, and much is available online for a fee.
When an employer or prospective client does their due diligence, all kinds of information, even outdated, can surface. While at it, order your free annual credit report from the big credit bureaus. You need to know what information is out there and manage it as needed.
Actively Manage Your Social Media
Every social media outlet is an opportunity for you to promote your brand, and it is also an opportunity for others to comment on it. In addition to regularly populating your social media channels with quality content, you must also carefully and regularly monitor your social channels to delete unwanted posts and take greater control over what is being said by others.
Your success, and the success of your firm is largely based on the strength of your brand and public perception. If the brand is strong enough, others will want to be associated with it. If the brand is weakened or tainted, they may look elsewhere. It is incumbent upon each of us to use the tools and resources available, like search engines and social media to monitor, enhance, and promote our brand.
Warren Buffet put it eloquently when he said, “it takes 20 years to build a reputation and 5 minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently”
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