Best Practices to Clean Up Your Online Reputation

Learn how to clean up your online reputation with our guide to digital information resources below.

When it comes time to monitor, manage, and clean up your online reputation, there are lots of methods to choose from. Some individuals and brands focus their efforts on content creation, while others focus on social media and SEO.

No matter which method you prefer, it’s important to pair them appropriately to achieve the best possible results.

As with any industry, there is advice, recommendations, paid services, and agencies just waiting to gobble up your money to put these “best practices” to work for you.

Instead of trying to sell you on any specific service or model, we will provide you with some of the best resources in the industry so you can learn which methods work best and how to implement them yourself.

Online Reputation Management Resources You Should Know

– How to Manage Your Online Reputation for Free

As mentioned earlier, there are many paid services available to manage your online reputation. Some of these services are undoubtedly important. However, unless you have a huge business with hundreds of employees and a budget to spend, spending thousands of dollars on ORM is most likely not your priority.

There are actually many ways that you can get started with your own monitoring and management before deciding if you need to hire an outside agency or invest in premium ORM tools and services. These methods include performing a simple Google search on yourself or your brand to see what comes up, limiting any privacy and settings you may have open on social media, reviewing on all major review sites like TripAdvisor, and building your own content with a blog and social media.

– 5 Ways to Protect Your Brand with Social Media and SEO

Simple tasks, such as setting up a social profile across the major search engines, can lead to quick improvements in search results. Since Google loves sites like Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook, it also ranks their content much higher in search results than many other sites. This makes it very easy for anyone to create a site using their personal or business name, while also adding a few brand-name listings on Google.

Other methods for using SEO and social media include creating a blog, linking social profiles, replying to comments, and understanding how to best portray your online content to your audience and customers.

– Understanding Online Reputation Risks and Consumer Protections

Managing an online reputation also means understanding how personal and business information is collected, shared, and sometimes misused online.

Government consumer protection resources offer guidance on addressing misleading content, scams, and unauthorized use of personal information.

These resources help individuals recognize reputation risks and understand the actions available when online information causes harm.

– How to Improve Your Digital Footprint and Your Online Identity

In addition to worrying about customer complaints and negative reviews, every individual and brand also needs to worry about their online privacy and the information they may unknowingly be sharing through social media or other online applications.

The article shows you how to change your Facebook settings, perform a simple Google search for yourself, revise your existing blog, and remove any abandoned social media accounts that may be releasing old information or leaving your organization open to unwanted attacks and leaks.

– 4 Ways to Protect Your Reputation Online

WikiHow is known for its generic tutorials and guides on pretty much everything. Not surprisingly, they also have one on protecting your online reputation. Like their other guides, this one is also pretty basic, but it does cover some areas that many people simple don’t think of, such as presenting yourself well online with professional and nice looking photos (for use on LinkedIn and resume sites), avoiding spelling and grammar errors on your business web sites and blogs, sharing photos and information that your audience will actually find value in… and of course, thinking before you speak, click or post!

These ideas may be simple, but they are also among the most recognized customer and investor negatives that many individuals and brands continue to overlook.

The Many Parts of Online Reputation Management

As you can see, we could talk about the many components of protecting your brand and reputation all day. The important thing is that you have a good idea of what to look for and know how to monitor your brand mentions online.

Should you feel there is too much work for yourself to manage, then it’s time to invest some money in top industry software and tracking solutions, or even hire an online reputation management agency.