Posts Tagged ‘reputation’

How honest are you online? Perhaps a little too honest? Have you done any of the following in the past month?

• Posted pictures from a private party you attended?
• Sent a tweet on Twitter or changed your status on Facebook to describe how tired, frustrated or depressed you were?
• Took an online poll that revealed personal details when it posted to Facebook?
• Used profanity or made sexual references in a blog post, a MySpace update or a Facebook wall post?
• Gotten into an argument or made negative comments about a third person when talking publicly on a social media service like Twitter or Facebook?

Users of these services seem to either be unaware or unconcerned that their words have a wider distribution than they may have intended. Individual privacy settings on Facebook are often more lax than they should be, allowing everyone to see your status, wall posts and other personal information. Twitter is sometimes mistaken for another instant messaging system, but everything you tweet is public (other than direct messages), so everyone can see and reply to your 140-character thoughts. The results can be surprising and unfortunate, from simple hurt feelings and misunderstandings to lost job opportunities or respect within a community.

Here are some steps to take to keep your social media reputation positive while staying part of your growing online communities:

• Check the privacy options on every online network you participate in. Make sure they’re set so that only those you’ve approved as “friends” can see your personal details. Nothing beyond your name is really required to allow new connections to find you, though you may also include your city and, on Facebook, your status. Everyone else should have to ask to be a friend before they see more info about you.
• Everything you “say” online is public, even when it’s private. It’s easy for one of your friends, especially if the relationship sours, to cut and paste and turn private conversations or details into public with a click of their mouse. Just like gossip in real life, don’t say anything online you could regret later. While online honesty can be positive and refreshing, it doesn’t mean you have to say everything. Think before you click and learn to edit yourself wisely.
• Think twice about every add-on, game or application you think of adding in Facebook. Most of them are perfectly safe, but they often ask for more access privileges to your personal information than they really need, raising privacy concerns. And they usually generate items for your News Feed that can become annoying to your friends when they have to wade through them, making them the Facebook equivalent of spam.
• Don’t confuse Twitter with Facebook, instant messaging or cellphone texting. It’s public. (Yes, you can lock your updates, but what’s the point of that?) If you’re uncomfortable with everyone reading your tweets, Twitter isn’t for you. It’s a different method of communication and can be very powerful for building communities and finding new business opportunities, but it can also be disastrous if its very public nature isn’t understood by the user.
• Delete social media accounts you’re not actually using. Don’t drive yourself crazy trying to keep up with several services, pick the ones that seem to be working for you and concentrate your communication efforts there. Get rid of the others to avoid someone getting into an inactive account and impersonating you without your knowledge.
• Remember that not only is everything you say online public, it’s more than likely permanent. Deleting a wall post or blog entry may make it stop appearing on Facebook or Blogger, but it’s probably stored deep in one of Google’s many search engine servers, ready to be conjured up with the right combination of magic search terms. Again, think before you click.
• Make sure your online “you” is the person you want everyone to know. Unless you want to be known as a depressed, whiny person who drinks too much, leave the photos of you doing shots at the bar and the comments about how bad your life is to yourself. The power of social media runs both ways: you can create an image as a positive, resourceful person or a negative impression that could cost you friends, money and personal success.

It’s important to be part of this online communication revolution. Being in control of your online image and keeping the private part of your life private are as important, though. Make sure you’re using the tools and not the other way around.

Following up on my “Controlling the online conversation” post from last Monday, I read a good article by Tamar Weinberg on Lifehacker today. She discusses tools to monitor what’s being said about you online and strategies to counter negative impacts on your reputation through personal blogging and participation in social networking sites such as Facebook, Flickr and Digg.

She also has some good – and honest – advice for anyone who has found themselves the subject of unfavorable comments or publicity online: “Sometimes you’ll just have to deal with Internet meanies and grow that thick skin. When direct methods fail, take the opportunity to be proactive and to create web pages and social media profiles search engines will find and use to push negative inaccuracies further down in the results.”

Worth reading and taking to heart.

Are your ears burning? Chances are good that they should be, because you’re being talked about right now. Have you done a Google Search on your name lately? Or your company’s name? Open a new tab or window and do it now, I’ll wait….

Were at least a few of the results about you (and not somebody else with the same name)? Did you know that you were listed on those sites? And even if the results were about another person with your name, consider the potential damage to your own reputation if that person isn’t exactly an upstanding member of society. Could your friends and customers tell the difference?

Information about you is already public knowledge. Probably – and hopefully – not your bank account numbers, social security number or your important usernames and passwords. But it’s likely that, even without your participation, someone has mentioned you online, perhaps on a user group or forum or in a blog post, or included your name on a club or organization website. Asking to be removed from those online references is unlikely to be successful, because:

1. They’re too busy to delete information from web sites or other online sources;
2. They don’t want to, feeling they have the First Amendment right to talk about you;
3. The original author can’t be found;
4. The information has been cached by Google or other search engines, and has reached data nirvana (it’s eternal!).

So what’s a person to do? If we can’t get others to stop talking about us, how do we defend ourselves online?

The key is to control the conversation. Accept that your business and your professional and personal reputation are going to fair game for others online, and be aggressive in establishing yourself as an authority on the one person you know best – YOU. Here’s a checklist of ideas to stay one step ahead of the social media revolution, so you can put these tools to use for you in your efforts to control the online conversation about yourself.

• If you’re not already using personal social networking sites like Facebook, consider establishing a presence there for yourself and your business.
• Get connected through business social networking sites like LinkedIn. These sites have become an online alternative to the “black book” or Rolodex, especially among professionals who depend on a large number of contacts for their business success, such as salespeople, recruiters and purchasing professionals. Of course, every business owner, manager or anyone looking to move up professionally can benefit from a strong personal network, so these sites are worth considering for all but the most isolated.
• Do a regular check of yourself and your company or organization on Google, at the least. Yahoo! and Bing are also worth checking. Know what results others are seeing if they search for you online.
• Consider starting a business or a personal blog. Regular writing about your professional and personal accomplishments will help establish your control over your online reputation. Yes, it can be difficult at first, especially if you’ve never been much of a diary-keeper or if you are naturally shy. But if you can set the tone about what people read about you online, and you’ll have a ready method to respond to things other people say about you.

You did a search about yourself earlier. Now consider that anyone else typing your name or your company’s name into Google are seeing the same results. If they’re making a decision about doing business with you, are those results going to influence that decision positively or negatively?