Online Reputation Management: Welcome to the War
Ever Googled co-workers or personal contacts? HR departments regularly Google their employees, especially those whose reputation could affect the bottom line? Same for admissions officers at many graduate schools, who study your Facebook page and LinkedIn profile as much as your transcript.
Fact #3: If you don’t control that reputation, someone else will. That someone else is usually named default--a random collection of the posts on all the social media sites you’re a member of or have been mentioed on (even if you aren’t a member) of all the products you’ve ordered online, of all the personal info you’ve provided on web site registration forms, product warranty forms and any other time you’ve shared anything about yourself online in any form. All of that constitutes your default online reputation.
Fact #:4. Your reputation will fall somewhere on the continuum of negative-neutral-positive. You'll be either a Negative Nathan, whose first page of Google results offers up racy Facebook photos, offensive tweets, and
maybe even customer complaints. Irrelevant Irene pretty much doesn’t exist. All the Google results are about someone else with her common name. But here’s All-Star Anna, whose first-page of Google results back up her qualifications and show her competence and achievements in her industry. If you’re looking to get ahead in today’s world, especially the world of business where reputation is everything, only one of those three is an acceptable alternative.
Welcome to the Dark Side
Welcome to the wonderful world of online reputation management. There are two sides to this world, the dark side and the light. Let’s look first at the dark side. It is filled with "data brokers" and they feed off you. Have you ever heard of:
| Addresses.com Archives.com BeenVerified.com Intelius.com PeekYou.com PeopleLookup.com Peoplesmart.com Peoplefinders.com |
PublicRecordsNow.com PrivateEye.com Spokeo.com Truthfinder.com USA-People-Search.com USSearch.com ZabaSearch.com |
No? Well, they’ve heard of you. Anyone could go there right now and for $20 measly bucks find your deepest personal information. Ever had a traffic ticket, been involved in a legal action, filed for bankruptcy or divorce? Do you own or rent? There are your last 10 home addresses. Why do you move around so much--are you unstable? There will also be any background reports done on you, lots of photos, phone numbers, and more, including any misdemeanor, felony charge or credit defaults.
But wait. There are cheaper and even free sites that draw their info from the ones above. The dark side grows in power:
| Anywho.com DexKnows.com EmailFinder.com FreePhoneTracer.com LookUpAnyone.com Phonebook.com |
PublicRecords.com Spock.com Switchboard.com ThePublicRecords.com TopPeopleFinder.com Yasni.com |
If you’re thinking anonymity is dead, you would be correct.
The Force Awakens
The good news is that someone is on your side in this info war. Sites like DeleteMe.com, ReputationDefender.com, and InternetReputation.com will, for a price, work hard to remove you from all of those databases and give you a fresh start, especially with the omniscient, omnipresent Google search engine.
The work these companies do is not magic. Abine.com even provides a DIY guide for free: How to Protect Your Data and Remove Personal Information From the Internet for Free. They do what any individual could do: submit opt-out requests to the data brokers in the formats required by the data brokers in order to be removed. For some brokers, that means clicking on an opt-out link. For others it means filling out a paper form and sending it via registered mail. Each site has its own protocol. So that means time-consuming work. A site like DeleteMe.com for $130 (for one year) helps make the process more cost and time efficient.
After getting clean, there are many actions you can and should take to limit the data brokers' future access to your personal information. Excellent guides have been written on what you can do by CNET, Technilicious, Gizmodo and more. But there's more to it these days if you want to control that first page of Google results about you.
The Pro-Active Strategy
Remember All-Star Anna? She earned her status because she had a clear strategy and executed it:
- First, she recognized the potential dangers outlined above and made sure she never had a reputation problem to begin with.
- Second, she took the actions required so that her first page of Google results contained what she wanted others to see. To make that happen, Anna was pro-active in getting out the positive information she wanted the world to know.
Link
In--You must have a first-class LinkedIn
profile. It is the most important social media site for any
professional, hands down. If you aren’t represented well there, you
just aren’t playing the in the same league as the rest of America's
professionals.
Blog Yourself--Get online with a blog. Register your own domain and get started with an online resume full of strong recommendations, examples of your best work (don’t break any confidentiality clauses), and professional photographs. Today’s blogging platforms are point and click, dead simple to use. Most are free at a basic level.
Rebuild Yourself--Finally, rebuild your social media profiles to reflect the serious professional you are, even if that means deleting the old profiles or accounts and starting fresh.
Don't Give It Away for Free--Unless it’s a bank or credit card company, never give complete and accurate personal info to any site. Vary your birthdate, vary the spelling of your name, your zip code, and other elements of the forms you fill out. Why? Scrambling the info prevents any of the data brokers from connecting the dots and building back your profile for their nefarious uses.
Blog Yourself--Get online with a blog. Register your own domain and get started with an online resume full of strong recommendations, examples of your best work (don’t break any confidentiality clauses), and professional photographs. Today’s blogging platforms are point and click, dead simple to use. Most are free at a basic level.
Rebuild Yourself--Finally, rebuild your social media profiles to reflect the serious professional you are, even if that means deleting the old profiles or accounts and starting fresh.
Don't Give It Away for Free--Unless it’s a bank or credit card company, never give complete and accurate personal info to any site. Vary your birthdate, vary the spelling of your name, your zip code, and other elements of the forms you fill out. Why? Scrambling the info prevents any of the data brokers from connecting the dots and building back your profile for their nefarious uses.