Protect Your Online Reputation
Previously we have written about protecting the image and reputation of your business. As reported by Bnet, in a world of social media which has led to the blurring of the lines between our personal and professional lives, it has become increasingly important to take steps to protect your personal reputation. It doesn’t take much for a smear campaign against you to quickly spread across the internet which can be seriously damaging to your career.
You can use the following tips for tracking and repairing your online reputation:
Tracking your online reputation
* Make a list of the most likely places your name would appear online to begin monitoring your online reputation. Identify blogs, forums, and social networking sites, such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, which anyone within your professional circle may also use. You can even track your company’s corporate site and previous places of employment.
* You can then set up your own individual Google alerts for the sites you want to frequently monitor at www.google.com/alerts. Other monitoring tools include Twinbox, which tracks comments made on Twitter through Microsoft Outlook.
Repairing your online reputation
* Although the above tips are useful, unfortunately they will not prevent online attacks. The first thing to do is examine what has been said about you and whether it is accurate or not. If not, you should correct them immediately. If it is true, you should apologise via the same medium as the message.
* If your professional realm is under attack, consider advising your employer as well as the legal department – especially if the comments made are defamatory.
Other useful information
An important aspect of creating your own personal brand online is to separate your business and personal social networking contacts. For example, you could use Facebook for personal networking and LinkedIn for business networking.
You build and maintain others’ brands every day, why not start doing it for yourself?
Create your own PR that reflects the real you – the professional you. By circulating positivity around your name, the likelihood of negative commentary being regarded is reduced.