Have You Considered Online Reputation Management?

Your Reputation Management activities are crucial. Want to learn about someone? Just “Google” them!

Online Reputation Management is a hot topic these days. A common practice online is to use the Internet to find out juicy details about someone or about a business. Google is the top search engine for information gathering. Every day over a billion names are searched on Google.

Is your reputation important for your career?  Of course! And where do you think those job recruiters go to do their detective work? The majority of job recruiters are required to Google potential employees during the hiring process.

Go ahead and try it —  Google your own name in quotations –  “Bob Smith” and see what shows up!  If you’re Bob Smith, a common name, Google will reveal that there are a lot of Bob Smiths’!  If you own a business, Google your business name. Did you know that you can even create an alert at google.com/alerts that informs you when your name or business is mentioned? How cool is that?

People looking for business, products, and services are making judgments about you or your company based on what they find during their detective work.  Ever had a bad experience at a Mexican restaurant and posted your heartburn experience online?  What people discover about you or your business may influence their decision as to whether or NOT to do business with you.

Bing Crosby had reputation management down in the first lines of his song years ago…

You’ve got to accentuate the positive
Eliminate the negative
Latch on to the affirmative
Don’t mess with Mister In-Between

Be proactive and make a good first impression

Ultimately, it’s your responsibility to ensure you make a good impression when someone Google’s you. Reputation Management is not difficult to do. Here are some proactive tips for eliminating the negative and creating a positive online experience for potential employers and clients.

Remove negative or questionable content: If you have posted negative content online whether, an old video on YouTube or a post on Facebook, delete it!  Eventually, Google will empty it from its cache. Cleaning up negative content said about you or your business requires some work with a lot of positive damage control. That means you’ll have to get to work and start creating positive content to push that negative stuff down the search engine.

Be aware and monitor your reputation: Not only can you use google/alerts to search for your name and your business and monitor what is being said. There are a lot of software solutions that will monitor your reputation for you. If you’d like to checkout software that works on autopilot 24/7 to alert you, check out, Rep Informant.

Create quality relevant content online: Become an expert or authority in your field of work. Create a blog with WordPress or any of the free services like Blogger, Weebly, Medium, or Tumblr. Focus on creating quality content for your industry or business niche. Provide value and create content your customers are interested in, not just self-promotional copy.  Create quality, insightful, relevant content that resonates with your target audience and invites interaction.

Get a professional head shot: If you’re a business owner or entrepreneur, it is especially important to invest $50 to $150 in profession photos of you.  Here’s a little SEO trick too. Save you picture with your name. Tagging your photo with your name, “Bob-Smith” gives you optimal search engine results.  This often overlooked technique works with any photo embedded in your blog, create tags relating to your topic that the Google bots can find.

Be responsive, contribute, and engage: Smart reputation management is proactive. Create a reciprocal exchange with clients on your website, your YouTube channel, Facebook, and your social networks.  This is too often overlooked but gives you a lot of positive results. Important: Become a contributor and comment on other peoples blog articles and LinkedIn posts. Have you ever given an Amazon book review?  There are plenty of social networks and forums relating to your business and industry.  As a result, you’ll start showing up on the search engine as a contributor with constructive and thoughtful insights.

Get listed in online business directories: Prior to the internet, brick and mortar businesses always listed in the white pages, yellow pages and other paper directories. Getting noticed has not changed during the online information revolution. Make it easy for people to find you and visit your website where you can make that stellar first impression.

Encourage reviews  on your articles and content: Feedback is valuable. For instance, a review on Amazon or a recommendation on linked goes a long way to boost your reputation and what people see and read about you or your business online. Almost 90% of review readers believe what they read online according to a recent study.

 As Bing said, accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative! And please don’t be mediocre online, be excellent.   If you’ve enjoyed what you’ve read, please give me a thumbs up or a brief comment!  Thanks, Mark