Notes

Did You Hear the One About You? 10 Steps to safeguard Yourself Online
Just because you don't know about any of it, it doesn't imply that people aren't saying good (or bad) things about you as well as your business on the Internet. Follow these ten steps to protect your reputation online.

Step 1 1: Don't Do Anything Foolish Online

"An employee of a large, well-respected pr firm was flying to Memphis, Tennessee to discuss, of all things, social media marketing with among the firm's largest clients, FedEx. Unfortunately, this employee, who, as a social media marketing expert, must have known better, decided to tweet his disdain for the town of Memphis in the same way he was exiting the city's airport.

Twenty minutes later, as he was entering the FedEx headquarters, all hell broke loose. A number of FedEx employees who followed this gentleman on Twitter saw his tweet about Memphis and, as proud residents of said city, took offense.

Within days, the story had spread around the world, embarrassing the employee and the PR agency, and bringing into question FedEx's wisdom for hiring a social media expert who assumed nobody was reading his tweets," say Jamie Turner and Reshma Shah, authors of How to Make Money With Social Media.

Step 2 2 2: Find Out What Others are Saying About You Online

You may claim, "But I'd never do anything so foolish online!" So what can be said about you by others on the net can also have an immediate and drastic effect on your business. Think about this next example:

"One morning in late 2008, a software glitch occurred, and an outdated article about United Airlines' 2002 bankruptcy filing suddenly appeared in the Google News system as though it were new. check here of a new-seeming article led a writer at the 'Income Securities Advisor' newsletter to mention the possibility of a bankruptcy in his own article.

This article was then automatically distributed by the Bloomberg wire to hundreds of websites. Once a (false) story about the new United bankruptcy rumor appeared on hundreds of sites, the Google newsbot mistook the story's popularity as confirmation of its importance and made the story a lot more prominent on the Google News site. The cycle continued.

Stock traders immediately reacted, send UAL stock into a tailspin that ended with a 76 percent drop in the company's value before trading was automatically halted. By afternoon, United could deny the rumor, but UAL stock still closed down 10 percent on the day. Of course, all parties involved claim that somebody else was responsible for the error," say Michael Fertik and David Thompson, authors of Wild West 2.0.

So you might ask, "How can I find out what others may be saying about me online?"

Step three 3 3: Start by Conducting a Google Search

The place to start discovering this information is by doing what folks do over one billion times every day: conduct a Google search. Start by searching by yourself name.

When I recently searched on Google using my name, for example, on the first page of the outcomes, I found links to:

My Google Profile

My Website

My LinkedIn account

Articles I have written

My Facebook account

A speakers bureau to which I belong

eBay University, for which I taught

What results do you get for a Google explore your name? What results do you get once you conduct a search for your business?

Step 4 4: Develop a Google Profile

Next, to insert the info that you would like others to learn about you in what is likely to be that first valuable little bit of online real estate, create a Google Profile, using a free tool from Google at profiles.Google.com.

According to Google, your Profile may be the way you present yourself on Google and over the Web. Together with your Profile, you can manage the information - such as for example your bio, contact details, and links to other sites about you or developed by you - that folks will see.

At the very least, your first name, last name, and photo will be public on the Internet. You can then provide a variety of additional information about yourself in your profile. Also you can enable visitors to contact you without displaying your contact information.

Step 5: SETUP a Google Alert

To remain continually up-to-date on which folks are saying about you online, join another free Google service called Google Alerts at http://www.google.com/alerts.

Like the old-fashioned clipping services which may send you copies of articles from newspapers and magazines on topics of one's choice, Google can do the same for you for the Internet - but also for free. You regulate how often you would like Google to notify you by e-mail when articles containing your keywords of choice appears on the net.

In fact, sign up for Google Alerts for your business, colleagues, clients and vendors - to keep abreast of what is happening with your planet online.

Step 6: Join Social Media Accounts

Why should you do this? Google will consistently rank these sites high, since they are some of the most popular sites on the net.

If you don't curently have them, join LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube accounts. For LinkedIn and Facebook, you can even create a URL that contains your name. For Twitter and YouTube, select a username as near your real name as possible.

Step 7: Create Your Own Website

Another defensive posture you can take is to buy a domain with your name, in case you don't have a current need for a Website. "If you discover online content for which you don't wish to be associated," says Kristin Burnham, of CIO.com, "you may use this site to build additional pages all of which will rank on top of a Google search of you, since it contains your name in the URL."

But what should you do if someone does try to sully your reputation or that of one's business online?

Step 8: Play Great Defense

"Monitoring the Web won't prevent an online attack," says Jon Bernstein of BNET.com. "If you fall victim, don't panic: Think before you respond... If a blogger has their facts wrong, correct them - most will begin to amend their post. If their criticism is true, apologize utilizing the same medium as the message... Your willingness to activate is likely to win over the skeptics."

"If it's an isolated incident and no you have replied," says Andy Beal, co-author of Radically Transparent: Monitoring and Managing Reputations Online, "you may consider letting sleeping dogs lie."

But if this can be a serious attack, follow the lead of J. Patrick Doyle, president of the Domino's pizza chain. After two disgruntled employees caused an immediate uproar by posting a disgusting video supposedly exposing operations at their Domino's restaurant on YouTube, Doyle created and posted their own video on the website to tell his side of the story. Doyle's video has received over 150,000 views.

"Usually, people will remove the offending item from your blog or forum," Bernstein states. "But if they don't, you can consider a more public approach. Be open, constructive, conciliatory, and ready to engage. Try something along these lines: Jim, I've already spoken to you about this, and you know, what you say about me is inaccurate. I would like you to take it off. Meanwhile, if read more out there reading this has any questions, this is one way to reach me."

We discussed the possibility of others posting malicious, untrue information regarding you or your organization on the Web throughout a recent conference session I conducted on social media marketing. One attendee responded by saying, "You may be surprised at the amount of your fans who'll also come to your rescue online to assist you set the record straight."

Step 9: Play Good Offense

The best way to manage your web reputation, says Amanda Berlin of Forbes.com, is to continue steadily to generate positive serp's that will rank as highly as you possibly can in a Google search, to edge out anything negative that could appear one of many search results.

"The target is to get the negative results from appearing in the very best 20 hits," says George Brown, Internet Marketing architect. "People rarely look that far down if they search for you."

Crowd out anything negative that has been said about you online with as much positive information as you can, especially with content on popular, highly-ranked sites.

In fact, in writing this article, I am wanting to follow some additional advice from Jon Bernstein: "Be proactive. Offer to blog and write articles about your specialist subjects for online publications that hit your current and future customers. Earn a reputation as a 'player' in your field. Get your name on the market."

EzineArticles is really a site you may also want to consider to create your articles on the net.

Step 10: Understand that the Internet isn't Your Grandfather's Newspaper

Finally, understand that the media of today is quite different than it had been in enough time of Babe Ruth.

According to Jeff Klinkenberg, writer for the St. Petersburg Times, "Sports writers of his era usually hid character flaws from the general public. In one spring-training story told now, however, not then, Babe Ruth ran naked by way of a railroad car while being chased by a woman with a butcher's knife."

Not only was the event not captured by way of a camcorder for instant upload onto the web for the whole world to view by midnight that evening, one writer who observed the function even reportedly remarked, "There's another story we're not likely to cover."

What is the brand new reality? According to Erik Qualman, author of Socialnomics: "What happens in Vegas, stays on YouTube."
Website: https://atavi.com/share/w042d1z96u4u