Lesson 21 – Managing Your Personal Reputation

In our last lesson we discussed what would happen if you were to find that one of the directory sites, or one of the webpages appearing in the top ten search results had negative information about your company.  We mentioned that if you had the opportunity to answer the feedback online that you should do so carefully.  However, as you already know, there is not much that you can do once a negative review is already posted.  The most important thing for you to do is to get as much positive and true information posted as possible as well as to share it on social media platforms. The best defense against negative information is to flood the search engines with positive information.

The strategy is not much different for executives closely associated with your company.  Consumers and business people will often conduct a Google search about a company’s executive as well as their company.   In the mind of customers, you the owner or manager  ARE the company.  Therefore, if negative information about a company seen online can keep a prospect away; the same is true of negative information about the owners and visible executives.

Executives should take care to post positive information on their site and platforms with their personal/professional name.

1)      Blogs-Executives and owners should attempt to make sure their name is secured and if possible populated with an active blog.

2)      Social Media-Executives and owners should make sure their personal account reflect what they would want their best customer to see.

3)      Videos-Executives and owners should make sure that videos posted with their name and/or the company’s name should be complementary.

Because the situation gets more complex as the internet grows more varied in the different kind of platforms it has, it is prudent to call on someone else to manage your personal internet profile.  The profession is now called ‘Reputation Management’ and the service can be found amongst independent online marketers.

However, you will want work with someone that you know well and that knows you well to undertake this kind of service.  Call us today so that we can evaluate your online reputation and show you what you will need to do next to weed out information that will reflect negatively on your company.

We will now move away from reputation management and SEO and on to Social media in our next lesson.