“Googling” is everywhere. We’ve all heard of employees getting fired – or applicants not hired – because of their Facebook or MySpace profile. And when you search for a potential employer, you might find a list of lawsuits, complaints and “IHateAcme.com” websites. Or you might find a list of company press releases. Either way, there’s a good chance what you find will influence your impression.
To monitor that “you” brand:
- Set up Google Alerts for your name
- Check Technorati regularly for your name in blogs
- Check Google Video for your name in videos
How can you help make sure that your “YOU” brand shows up positively & accurately?
Don’t reveal everything to the world in your social networking profiles or on your blogs. Think what you would want to find in the social media if you were hiring “you”. Then create a professional profile to match for Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, etc.
Register “yourname.com”, if it’s available. If not, get the .net domain or .org or one of the others. Set up a blog, if you don’t have one, with this domain name. Anyone who links will probably use your name for anchor text. Your blog can link to your Facebook profile, or YouTube video, or Flickr photos, etc. You can write up a bio for your “About me” page & link to a resume.
Link from your blog to your articles posted online, and to the positive pages created about you. Be sure to go to Digg & StumbleUpon and other social bookmarking sites to bookmark these pages.
Whenever you put something online, remind yourself: “This is eternal.” Because it pretty much is.
You don’t need to do all this reputation management today. But long-range, this plan will strengthen that brand of “YOU.”
