Your Online Reputation

By now I’m sure you’ve googled your name, and if not … I’d be surprised. Before you read further you might be interested in doing so. I’ve done it many times, hoping to always come up #1 … yes kidding. But seriously have a look, its part of your digital footprint, one that may well reside throughout the ages.

I’ve written earlier about your digital footprint and why you have to join the conversation and start to assist in the building of your footprint. Your reputation is going to be built with or without your input.

There are companies that will assist in research and cleaning up your online reputation if needed, or enhance it. One such company is Reputation Defender.  These types of companies for a fee will research and monitor your online presence. As well, these companies will also blog and post positive information and links in an effort to push down any possible negative search results. Pushing down negative search results will assist in hiding them (remember, not many of us go lower than page 3 on a Google search).

The key resources are monitor, protect and define and in today’s new world, it’s more work than you think. If you are worried, or you’re being unfairly misrepresented or your reputation unreasonably tarnished, Reputation Defender is a good starting place.

Although I have written previously about keeping it real, being honest and upfront, overall it’s the issue of trust.  I think it’s best we all keep in mind, at present the Internet doesn’t forget. It will interesting to see how we deal with these issues that are brought on by new technology. We can’t control the conversation, we can only contribute to it.

Michael Bickerton, Raven5 Ltd, August 2010

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