Top 10 Tips for Online Personal Reputation Management

Managing your online personal reputation is more important in 2020 than it ever has been before. The world has shown that we now have stringent standards for what is and isn’t okay. A joke you made ten years ago on a messaging board might have been acceptable back then, but now? Well, you might find yourself, “canceled.” Did you post an embarrassing photo of yourself on Facebook when you were in college? Well, chances are your employer might be laughing at you during your background check and decide then and there to move on to a more serious candidate. Here are ten great tips for managing your personal online reputation.

#1 Research Yourself:

One of the most underrated tips is learning how to research yourself, for yourself. If you Google your name, what comes up? What about you + your college? What about you + embarrassing. You + Facebook. All of these simple searches can turn up cringe-inducing results. Anything that comes up that you wish hadn’t gives you a good starting point when deciding what you want to get superseded from the front pages of Google.

#2 Consider your Aims and Goals:

Your personal, and company, aims, and goals should always be at the front of your mind. Your online reputation should reflect that. If you are going around making jokes in poor taste, that is going to reflect very badly in you and your business in the future. You should always be very cautious about what you say and how you say it online. People can find offense everywhere these days, so tread carefully.

#3 Control your Social Media Presence with Reputation Management

Reputation Management and Social media accounts are the best way of controlling the narrative about yourself. You can directly interact with other people as either yourself or your brand. This also means you can make it clear who is you and who isn’t. Fake accounts, parody accounts, can all use your name and your brand without repercussions. If you don’t ensure you own all the relevant social media accounts, someone else can. And probably will. People can be spiteful that way.

internet research as a part of online personal reputation

#4 Start a relevant blog:

Starting a blog is a pretty trendy thing to do, but if you start one for the right purpose, it can be a genius marketing move. A free blog written by you gives you a fantastic platform to big yourself up, promote your brand or event, share some personal information (selectively) to help build a relationship with other people. Here’s the clever bit. You control 100% of the narrative, you can block comments if you wish, and now you are to use the blog to make you and your company look like saints.

#5 Individual Reputation Management Your name is your brand:

Individual Reputation Management our names are critical. Your name is who you are, at least in other people’s minds, anyway. Associations made with your name are often irreversible. That’s why it’s a good idea to register your name as a website domain because that way, you are the one in control of your website. No one else can make a website pretending to be you, or about you, with any sort of credibility. So remember Individual Reputation Management is the key to success.

#6 Automatic Content Posting:

Most social media platforms offer some sort of automated posting if you are using a business account. For example, Instagram will allow you to pre-upload content that will then be released at a later date. You can upload all of your content for the month on day one, and have a new image posted every three days for the rest of the month. It gives the illusion of activity and a large social media team when you’re secretly just leaving it to manage itself. This can have some drawbacks, though.

#7 Moderate the Comment Section:

The comment sections can be wild. People will say things that they 100% would never say to someone’s face. Hiding behind a keyboard gives people false bravery, which can be terrible for you. Any poor comments, any offensive comments, are your responsibility. You will be held accountable. That’s the biggest problem with automated posting if you don’t monitor the comments of the posts. You need to strictly police what is said to ensure you don’t suffer the consequences.

#8 Don’t argue – Don’t Back Down:

Welcome to the Paradox of social media. If you are arguing with trolls, you are giving them what they want. If you argue with negative reviews and comments, it makes you look immature and reflects poorly on you. Here’s the tricky part. If you don’t comment some times, people feel ignored, sometimes it gives validity in the eyes of others to the comment you are choosing to ignore. Learning when not to argue and when you should respond is a significant thing to learn. It’s typically best not to argue, though.

#9 Fact-Checking:

Not fact-checking is the equivalent of lying to many people. If you choose to present facts and statistics within your posts, it is an excellent idea to quote a source, a credible source, which defines a credible source changes from person to person. But it’s best to pick a reputable newspaper. Wikipedia provides sources for all of its information, so you can fact check there quite easily. You can get in a lot of trouble and lose the respect of your followers for failing to do so.

#10 Hire a professional: Online Reputation Management Firm

These ten steps alone demonstrate just how time-consuming managing your online reputation is. And these are just ten steps. There could probably be 100 if we had time to dig into it. That’s why hiring a pro to do it for you can save you a whole lot of headaches. Professional online reputation management firms like JW Maxx Solutions can be just what you need to keep your reputation in tip-top shape and your mind free to focus on the things that matter to you and your business.