Assessing Personal And Business Reputations Online
A negative online image can lead to subtle or terrible consequences for both individuals and corporate bodies. The most credible search results usually appear on the first and second SERPS of popular search engines, Google, Yahoo and Bing. In order to assess the state of your online reputation, these are the main places to start from. Simply type certain keywords related to your personal profile or company on these search engines and press enter. The SERPs presented will display what other users will encounter when they search for your profile on the internet. Some of the common search criteria you can use include: your personal names, name of your company, brand names, employee names, account handles or user names.
Nowadays, search engines have advanced settings that allow for personalized searches. Your search criteria may display results based on your history, vanity searches and location. Therefore, to establish the veracity of your online reputation, first log out of any search engines, and disable personalized search preferences. In order to come up with a thorough assessment, list the results obtained from each keyword search on a spreadsheet and tally the final results in three categories, positive, negative and negligible.
Proactive Online Reputation
If you do not feature in the first two SERPs, it is time to build your internet presence. This is especially true for companies, since many leads today are generated from Internet sources. It is also easy to become targeted by negative vitriol, if your company does not have credible optimized web presence in the first place. Hence, proactive online reputation building is important for any organization. If your web presence is tainted with negative allusions to your personal profile or business, it is imperative to take the necessary steps of rebuilding the image, in order to avoid the possible implications mentioned at the beginning. Even one negative item is sufficient to raise the red flag about your personality or organization, and should therefore be dealt with forthwith.
Protecting Your Online Credibility
Individuals and businesses alike can protect their online credibility using simple but effective techniques. First, purchase any relevant domains and TLDs under your brand name. Then, register the brand using unique optimized usernames under all the major social networking sites. Afterwards, hire a competent social media strategist to manage these accounts. The individual will be responsible for maintaining the privacy of these sites, and ensuring that only verified posts and content is posted.
Constant Monitoring
Once you begin to build your online reputation, it is vital to constantly monitor what others are saying about your business on the Internet. Various handy tracking tools are available to assist you with this task. They include feed reader (Google Reader), Google alerts, Yahoo alerts, twitter searches, Technorati, board reader, social mentions among others.
It is easy for one’s personal or business profile to get tainted on the information superhighway. This can lead to drastic consequences, especially for businesses and public personalities. The information above helps in assessing your current online reputation, and offers a few simple tips for protecting and monitoring it.
About the Author:
Jean is an online entrepreneur and writer who helps online merchants improve their internet reputation through savvy social networking and daily online monitoring. She has written and published various articles on the subject and has consulted for various businesses, especially on the topic of the management of online reputation disasters.