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How to Manage Your Online Reputation

by on July 24, 2014
in Computer Safety & Support, Computers and Software, Tips & How-Tos, Privacy :: 4 comments

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When was the last time you Googled your name? If you haven’t, it’s a good habit to get into, because it’s exactly what a potential employer is likely to do when they’re sifting through a pile of resumes. “The stuff people care most about is what they find when they Google you,” says Michael Fertik, CEO and founder of online reputation-management firm Reputation.com.

That’s why it’s important that you own what you look like online. Depending on what you (or others) post on social networks or personal sites, what a search engine turns up may not reflect the accurate or professional picture you want it to.

But there’s plenty you can do to make sure the best parts of your virtual self pop up on that first page of a Google search. Here, we’ll walk you through how to do everything from maintaining current social media profiles to ensuring that your professional information appears first.

Decide what you want out there

While Facebook posts and photos might be for the eyes of friends and family only, privacy settings on more-public networks such as LinkedIn or Twitter can be more beneficial when relaxed. After all, you don't want to be completely invisible on the internet. “It's weird for people in this day and age not to have an online profile,” Fertik says.

But if you haven't been refining your internet footprint over the years, your online profile may also include nuggets like ancient MySpace photos, an out-of-date company staff page, even out-of-context rants on old blogs — all of which can give someone the wrong impression.

Deleting these may not necessarily clear the internet of the detritus. In an age of retweets, shares, and linkbacks, the same photo can exist on many sizes across the web. So instead of wasting time and energy cleaning up a digital backlog, focus on strengthening existing profiles, which will help them beat the less-flattering stuff to the top of the search page.

Improve your LinkedIn profile

Surveys indicate that anywhere from 88% to 97% of recruiters go to LinkedIn to find candidates. LinkedIn profiles also turn up very high in Google search results, most likely due to the site's high traffic, how often it’s linked to, and amount of content users post everyday. So it’s not only a good idea to have a public LinkedIn profile, but to also ensure that it's accurate, current, and grabby.

LinkedIn trainer and speaker Viveka von Rosen says that the Headline field (the line beneath your name) is the easiest — and most-often overlooked — place to grab attention when building a profile. “Rather than going with the default (your title at your current company) take the opportunity to say what it is that you do. Something like, ‘graphic artist working with startups in the Sudan,’” Von Rosen suggests.

Using keywords related to your field when describing yourself in the Summary and Experience sections can also help your profile turn up on Google if someone is searching for particular skills.

Once your profile is spruced up, you want to make sure it’s visible on the web. Head into Settings and select Edit Your Public Profile. Then check that reads “Make my public profile visible to everyone.” You can then reveal (or conceal) specific information within your public profile.

Von Rosen suggests allowing your Name, Photo, Headline and Summary to be open, while remaining cautious about revealing too much. “With identity theft, I limit what's visible publicly – for example, in a page of Google search results,” she says.

Get active on Twitter

If you're on Twitter, regular posts relevant to your field can help build up your online profile for prospective employers. Like LinkedIn, Twitter profiles often turn up on the first page of Google search due to the site’s traffic and content flow.

Reputation.com's Fertik suggests picking a Twitter username as close to your real name as possible. That way when someone searches for your name, it's your Twitter and LinkedIn profiles that pop up alongside your personal website and company blog.

Changing your username is simple: Head to Account and enter the new name. If it's available, it's yours.

If your Twitter page is very personal — say, intended for friends and home to some off-color opinions — it might make more sense to limit access to only followers you approve.

Being cautious in that way can do a lot to boost your chances. A CareerBuilder survey found that two in five employers check social-media during the hiring process. Forty-three percent of employers rejected candidates based on inappropriate or discriminatory content on their profiles. On the flipside, 19% of recruiters who scanned social-media profiles hired candidates based on positives they found within.

To stop your off-color Twitter feed from showing up on Google, head to Settings, then Security and Privacy, and select Protect. Bonus: This also prevents the Library of Congress from archiving your tweets.

Dial up the Facebook privacy settings

“Recruiters use Twitter to post jobs, LinkedIn to source candidates, and Facebook to eliminate candidates,” von Rosen says.

Many employers take Facebook profiles into account, even if they shouldn’t. A North Carolina State University study mapped Facebook behavior against personality traits. The researchers found that there’s often little correlation between a person’s real-life personality and how they portray themselves on Facebook, so employers could likely misjudge a candidate based on his or her profile alone.

To keep your Facebook profile out of search engine results, head into Settings, Privacy and select “No” in response to “Do you want other search engines to link to your timeline?” question.

Facebook no longer allows users to hide their profiles from the website's own search, but you can control how much of your profile will show up. For example, changing who can see your posts and photos to “Friends Only” means that a potential boss would see only your cover photo, profile photo, plus any About info — where you live, work, or went to school — that you've allowed to be public.

If a potential boss is in your extended Facebook network, you might want to change who can see future and past posts. We recommend setting updates as viewable to Friends Only — at least during the application process.

You can also clean up your feed post-by-post. Under Settings, Timeline and Tagging, there's an option to check how your timeline looks to the public (n.b., this includes anyone logged into their Facebook account). If the photos and statuses displayed aren’t career-friendly, you can change individual visibility by selecting the photo or status, clicking edit, then changing “Public” to “Friends” or “Only Me” from the drop down menu.

If you have a fan page or are the administrator for a group with a lot of fans, allowing these pages to hit the search engines is good for boosting your online profile. For these pages, head to Settings, General, and make sure that “post targeting and privacy” is turned off. You can also lift any country or age restrictions (the page default settings are open and public).

For more on Facebook privacy settings, including how to limit what's shown to the Facebook public, check out our comprehensive guide.

Pull up the positive, push down the negative

Outside your own profiles, there’s content on the web that’s out of your immediate control. Things like rants from ex-employees, customer complaints, or unwanted photos from an past flame can paint a negative picture.

If you find an unflattering photo or inaccurate info on someone else's site, the best first step is to contact the site owner and request it be removed or updated. In most cases, the site owner will comply.

However, negative reviews and undesired content that has been posted on sites like newspapers, Yelp, Amazon, or Angie's List might be harder to take down. These larger companies are unlikely to grant a request unless you can prove the content is defamatory or inaccurate.

If they won’t budge, you can try what services like Reputation.com do: publish more content to push the offending article out of the first page of search results. For example, publish a blog post, put up a photo set on Flickr, or add information to a public social profile, such as LinkedIn or Google+. “Make sure your latest and greatest resume info is posted in short narrative and bullet format on a variety of resume sites,” Fertik says.

For bigger cleanup jobs, Reputation.com (and agencies like it) can take on the task for a fee (from $100 depending on the scale of virtual damage). Reputation.com uses patented algorithms to publish search engine optimized content. For example, the service might write and publish your professional details and biography at a selection of websites they say are picked especially for your field. By publishing lots of high-quality content with good keywords the negative content should be pushed further down the search results list.

Depending on the industry you want to work in, other social network accounts on less popular portals, such as Google+, Pinterest, and Tumblr, can help build an even more rounded online profile. If you work in fashion or design, for instance, a Pinterest profile can both show off your work and help you engage with fashion and design followers (i.e., potential customers).

Increasing the right kind of visibility — and diminishing what’s less appealing — is key to putting your best face forward online. “If you're not findable by your subject matter and name,” says Fertik, “people aren't going to be able to give you the opportunities.”

[Worried woman image via Shutterstock]


Discussion loading

Profiles / Accounts

From Steve Daniels on August 10, 2014 :: 10:29 pm

I have two profiles on FBook.
Also, three email addresses, two of which are strictly for the FBook accounts.
I’m a decent person, but that doesn’t mean nobody will ever take a dislike to me. If someone manages to become a substantial problem for me on .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address), I’ll simply delete the account, and make a new one, starting with a new email. None of the accounts are connected, especially via the emails.
As far as my real name goes, a quick Google search for me shows a minor item from when I was in a play in elementary school.
I’ve been told that using false IDs is just too confusing. I keep a notebook, which I rarely need to refer to, and if the notebook gets lost in a hurricane, I’ll start over.

Reply

How to Manage Your Own Online Reputation

From RepWarrior on October 02, 2015 :: 10:26 pm

Industry Secrets to Managing Your Own Online Reputation that the Big Companies Don’t Want You to Know!
 
By the team at RepWarrior.com

October 2, 2015
Online personal and business reputation management is a growing problem that will only get worse, as more and more people use Google searches to do background research on people and companies they interact with. Big reputation management companies charge thousands, and sometimes tens of thousands of dollars to manage their client’s online reputations. Many of these companies are met with limited or no success, as the tactics and strategies they employ are at best shallow, and at worse detrimental.
RepWarrior.com gets contacted by clients everyday that have had a bad experience with another online reputation management company. The common complaint is that the negative stories and reviews they paid these companies to suppress are usually in the exact same place as when they started, and the only difference is that these clients have spent a lot of money to get absolutely no results.
Our Analysis of the Problem
When we do an analysis on why these other companies are not able to achieve the results they promise their clients we find some common denominators. The most frequent tactic that these other companies normally use is to build ‘shallow’ and non-authentic websites that bring absolutely no value to the web. These non-sites are usually just one or two pages deep with content obviously written by a ‘content spinning’ program (an article rewriter), or by someone presumably working for a dollar or two a day in a third world country. Google likes websites, and content in particular, that bring “added value to the Web” as they have stated over and over again. What these companies are doing is creating sites that are essentially worthless in a never-ending quest to try and game the system. This does not work anymore, and it never really has.
With the release of Google’s latest algorithm updates, namely Panda, Penguin and Hummingbird, these types of websites are almost guaranteed to be penalized and devalued. Once this happens, it is near impossible to get them to rank highly.
Another issue with creating these types of shallow and non-authentic sites is that it can cause confusion in people doing the searching. Imagine if you will, stumbling upon several seemingly different websites with poorly worded, shallow content that all look like amateurs created them. What would you think? Would you be confused as to why someone wouldn’t take the time to create a real website that will actually keep someone’s interest for more than a few seconds before they click away, never to return?
The same problem seems to occur with these companies other tactics in regards to creating blogs, social media and directory listings. Mostly these “digital assets” (and we use this term very loosely here) are created in much the same way, and by their very nature will cause the same kind of confusion and skepticism that shallow websites will cause.
The simple truth is that these are exactly the types of tactics the biggest companies in the reputation management space are employing, while they are making millions of dollars charging people for this shoddy service.
The Dirty Secret of the Online Reputation Management Industry


For the rest of the article please visit our website at http://repwarrior.com/how-to-manage-your-own-online-reputation/

Reply

RepWarrior is the best reputation management agency

From Patrick Nelson on July 30, 2016 :: 3:07 pm

RepWarrior employs the only type of strategy that can work for burying negative content.  I hired them to bury negative content off the first page of Google and they did it in less time and for less money than many other companies I had contacted.  I am very happy with the results.  They even offer a payment plan.

Reply

Online Reputation Management

From Susan Levinson on May 27, 2018 :: 10:53 am

I had success using a very inexpensive service from a place called Fix Your Search Results at http://www.fixyoursearchresults.com. It took a couple of months but they got a few bad blogs off of the first page of Google for a search of my name.

Reply

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