How Not to Wreck Your Reputation

Posted by Pat Padley on Jul 20th, 2009 | no comments

The perfect way to shatter a first impression is having a potential employer come across photos from your frat days or pictures of you in your skivvies. “[This month] the wife of Sir John Sawers, the new head of British spy agency MI6, caused a stir when she posted personal family information to Facebook, including an unflattering photo of the middle-aged bureaucrat wearing nothing but Speedo swim trunks while on vacation at the beach. It’s a silly, tabloid story—but it also teaches a serious lesson about social media security.”(Informationweek.com) |  Link to BBC story

To make sure that you don’t make the same mistake, I thought I’d share a few quick tips about managing your reputation online.

1.) Google yourself:

I guarantee potential employers will. Usually this is the first thing I do when I come home from meeting someone new. Learn how Google associates your name. If you find that your name or business is hard to search for, hire someone to help with SEO (Search Engine Optimization). This will help users find relevant information about you.

2.) Explore your privacy settings:
Use the built-in privacy settings in Facebook. Check out this article on 10 Privacy Settings Every Facebook User Should Know. If there are any photos you would not want a CEO or your mother to see, un-tag yourself from the photo, or contact the person who posted it and ask them to take it down.

3.) Monitor your reputation:
Not everyone has time to continually monitor when their name or company is mentioned on the Internet. Use a free service like Google alerts to track Web results, news and blogs. Set up keywords and Google will e-mail you when your name or keywords are mentioned online. For more real time tracking use a free resource like Monitter to see if your keywords are in today’s conversations on Twitter.

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