Managing Your Online Reputation
<p style=""><span
style="FONT-SIZE:10pt;FONT-FAMILY:'Arial', 'sans-serif';">There
has been an explosion of recent discussions online about
how social networking profiles are used by HR
professionals in gauging a potential candidates fit within a given
company. It's true - your online reputation can
directly impact your employability. So, what can you do
about it? Manage it!<br><br>Online Reputation
Management, or ORM, is the practice of consistent research and
analysis of one’s personal or professional, business or
industry reputation as represented by the content across all types
of online media. It is also sometimes referred to as Online
Reputation Monitoring or Online Image
Management (Wikipedia).<br><br>The primary
step to actively managing your online reputation is to understand
what's out there about YOU. Here are 5
interesting tools to get you
started:</span></p> <ol type="1"> <li
style=""><span style="FONT-SIZE:10pt;FONT-FAMILY:'Arial',
'sans-serif';">Google Alerts - <a rel="nofollow"
href="http://www.google.com/alerts">
http://www.google.com/alerts</a> This is a free
service and goes beyond simply googling yourself. Put
your name in quotes, separated by commas to indicate various
versions of your name or screennames and receive email alerts when
new instances pop up on the web. There's an
Alerts Helppage to assist you in managing the informational
returns.</span></li> <li style=""><span
style="FONT-SIZE:10pt;FONT-FAMILY:'Arial', 'sans-serif';">QDOS -
<a rel="nofollow" href="http://qdos.com/signup">
http://qdos.com/signup</a> This is a free site in
which you take a moment to register with your name and
password. It gives you your digital footprint score as
well as comparative scores to other categories of people (i.e.
bloggers). If you go by multiple names (screen names,
maiden versus married, etc) pick the one you are most interested in
seeing a score for. It doesn't let you change
your name unless you re-register with new password and email
address. </span></li> <li
style=""><span style="FONT-SIZE:10pt;FONT-FAMILY:'Arial',
'sans-serif';">USSearch.com - <a rel="nofollow"
href="http://www.ussearch.com/consumer/index.jsp">
http://www.ussearch.com/consumer/index.jsp</a> This
is a free site with ability to purchase info beyond the
basics. Type in your name and watch your adult life
appear on the page including your names, age, locations,
etc. The thing to realize is that ANYBODY can pop your
name in there and pay for what they want to see about
you.</span></li> <li style=""><span
style="FONT-SIZE:10pt;FONT-FAMILY:'Arial', 'sans-serif';">Annual
Credit Report - <a rel="nofollow"
href="https://www.annualcreditreport.com/cra/index.jsp">
https://www.annualcreditreport.com/cra/index.jsp</a>
This is a free site that gives you your credit
history. For $7.95 (one time) you can also see your
current credit score (compared to companies that make you sign up
for $12/month to see the same thing).
</span></li> <li style=""><span
style="FONT-SIZE:10pt;FONT-FAMILY:'Arial',
'sans-serif';">PeekYou - <a rel="nofollow"
href="http://www.peekyou.com/">
http://www.peekyou.com/</a> Free site that lets you
look up your name and see how many times you've been peeked
at.</span></li> </ol> <p><span
style="FONT-SIZE:10pt;FONT-FAMILY:'Arial', 'sans-serif';">The
second step is to manage the information.<span
style=""> </span>According to QDOS, there are
four components of your online identity: popularity,
impact, activity, and individuality. Create
a chart for yourself pre-determining what's
acceptable for you going forward and measure your desired online
activities against it. In other
words, deliberately determine what it is you do on the
internet (shopping, blogging, feature a business, post photos, etc)
along with how these activities can appear in other ways on the
web: your contact information can be sold, you can be contacted by
people you don't know, and what you do for
"fun" can be used against you. Your
online presence doesn't have to be negative - if that was
the only outcome, millions of people wouldn't be adding to
their online image on a daily basis. The point is, your
online presence should be a positive thing for you and its up to
you to manage that perception.<br><br>The downside of
finding yourself online is that if you don't like what you
see there isn't much you can do about it except remove
questionable pictures and text that you provide through login of a
page you have established - though be warned,
once your info is out there it is often there to
stay. In many cases you'll come across others
with the same name as you, and this does make for interesting
reading. </span></p> <p><span
style="FONT-SIZE:10pt;COLOR:black;FONT-FAMILY:'Arial',
'sans-serif';">Ultimately, you want people looking
for YOU to be able to differentiate between you and a
same-named questionable other while at the same time knowing that
where and how YOU are showing up isn't going to
wreck your career
choices.<br></span><br><strong>Lisa
Mauri</strong> is co-owner of <strong>Change Your Job,
Change Your Life LLC</strong> at <a rel="nofollow"
href="http://www.ChangeYourJob.us">www.ChangeYourJob.us</a></p><br>
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