Online Reputation Management – Are You Managing Yours?

The internet provides the perfect platform for businesses and individuals who want to promote themselves.
If you use it in the right way, the internet can help you quickly build and improve your online reputation. Unfortunately, the internet also makes it easier for your reputation to become damaged.
To ensure that your reputation works for you, your online presence needs to be very carefully managed.

Using the Right Tools

In order to effectively manage your online reputation you need to make sure you are using the right tools in the right way. Whether you are an athlete, musician or entrepreneur, this should always start with a website.

A Website

A website is a piece of digital real estate over which you have complete control. It should play a crucial, central role in managing your online presence. A website gives you a platform which allows you to tell people about your approach, your experience, your achievements and, if you have a blog, a channel for giving your opinion and showing expertise.
A blog can be a crucial reputation management tool. Rather than waiting for a newspaper or another website to publish half truths and commentary about an event you were involved in, why not write about it on your blog? This gives your followers a chance to hear your version of events first hand. It also gives you a great opportunity to showcase your expertise and personality.

Social Media

The social web is an incredible platform. It has never been easier to build and engage a community of followers. If you use it in the right way, the social web can help you drastically improve your reputation, build awareness about what you do, reach out to other professionals, engage with your community and, most importantly, react in real time to events which might impact on your reputation.
Which social media platforms you should use to build and engage your community depends on what you do, who your audience is and how actively you want to engage. One thing is for certain; you need to be using social media in at least some form.

Build a Brand

To build and manage your brand you need to create a strong visual identity. You need to have an instantly recognisable signature which carries through to every element of your online presence.
Here are some examples of branding concepts we’ve done for Ryan Jones (Welsh Rugby International):

Above you will see a logo, an iFrame module for use on Facebook and a Twitter background. You can see that there is a consistent identity running through each of these graphical elements.

Read Also: Why is Online Measurement Important?

A website and the most popular social media channels are the primary tools for any online reputation management campaign. But what happens if it all goes wrong? Is there anything else you should be doing? Next week we will be writing another blog article which covers some more advanced online reputation management techniques. Why not subscribe to our RSS feed to make sure you don’t miss it? Alternatively, you could follow us on Twitter or Facebook.
We offer a comprehensive online reputation management service for athletes, celebrities and entrepreneurs. If you are interested in what we can do for you, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.
By Angus Findlay

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