The ability to monitor how your name is used online has been around for some time. By creating an RSS feed with your name as the keyword, you could then be alerted in your feed reader anytime your name (or company name or website) was posted online. The process to set up the feed, while easy for power Internet users, wasn’t “non-techie” ready – until now.
If you have a Gmail account, you can now simply login to your Google Dashboard and set up alerts for your name or email address. Anytime your name or email is posted online, you’ll be notified automatically.
Now that getting notified is easy, the hard part is still managing your reputation online. I recommend everyone monitor their own name as well as the names of their children. As my daughter begins 8th grade, it will be important for me as a father to know when her name is being used on any social networking service or blog.
Google’s new “Me on the Web” service makes it easy.
Do you accept “friend” requests from everyone who asks for it through your Facebook and LinkedIn account? I do. Even people I’ve met just once at a conference. But lately I’ve started to think it may not be a good idea. Consider the case of Bernie Madoff, the $50 billion dollar ponzi scheme mastermind. There were probably, dozens, if not hundreds of investment professionals that worked in the industry who now have to work backward to separate themselves from Madoff’s firm. They took photos with him at events and probably sent business his way on more than one occasion. And all thought they knew him as a friend. Certainly they thought they knew his reputation better than a person they met one time at a conference.
Some people may argue that they way they use social networks is to connect with people – regardless of how thin those connections may be. But keep in mind that there is no degree of friend designation on sites like Facebook or LinkedIn. That person I met once at a conference is the same type of “friend” as my college roommate whom I’ve known for 20 years on Facebook. It would be interesting to be able to categorize people as “friends” or “acquaintances” for people we don’t know very well.
I consider “friends” to be people I would trust to babysit my daughter. Yet I have over 600 “friends” on Facebook that I probably wouldn’t even recognize if they walked into my office at this very moment. And yet I “friend” them without a second thought – connecting them, if in just a small way, to my own online reputation. Heaven forbid they should do something awful, I might have some explaining to do when asked why they are my friend on Facebook.
Offline, you can tell a lot about a person by the company they keep. Why should online be any different?
The ability to control your corporate or individual online reputation is now largely a matter of learning effective search engine optimization. The ability to push favorable articles, blog posts and message board threads higher in the search results and thereby pushing the unwanted links further down is the most efficient way of controlling what users see. In other words, whoever is better at search engine optimization will win the battle of online reputation management.
Although there’s recently been a heavy emphasis on making corporate websites search engine friendly, most company websites still don’t do a terrific job and therein lies the rub. These days blog and message board software that can be installed by just about anyone automatically “search-engine-optimizes” every single post and message thread – making them powerful information sources in all the search engines. It’s ironic, but the gaudy and unattractive free WordPress template blog will often blow away the the million-dollar website of a corporation in Google simply because it’s installed from the beginning with all the right tips and tricks to make it quickly searchable and available worldwide. And the blog owner may not even realize it.
The next time you’re trying to convince the boss to hire an in-house or outsourced SEO expert for the website, be sure to remind them that is no longer just about brand marketing – it’s about being able to compete in a world where anyone can install a simple SEO blog and shoot straight to the first page of the search engine results using your own company name – without knowing a single SEO strategy themselves.
“With Trackur’s online reputation tracking technology you can keep track of any web content that mentions your name. Not just your personal name, but your executives, your company brands, and even your competition.
The truth is, the web has made it possible for individuals to freely share their thoughts about you–and without much accountability. You should be made aware the moment your reputation is being discussed. Sure, you need to know about the attacks by your detractors, but you should also know when you’re receiving praise too!
The internet has given a powerful voice to consumers, bloggers, forums, and even users of MySpace. Arm yourself with Trackur’s intelligent online reputation monitoring and you’ll never get caught by a surprise attack on your good name.”
The Bourquin brothers are co-Founders of Ideas For Download, LLC, a privately-held company in Southern California that produces online media, conferences and lead generation websites. As early adopters of Internet technology, they have always been fascinated with the way online information affects the offline world for individuals, organizations and companies.
The Bourquin brothers are co-Founders of