[dropcap style=”2″] H [/dropcap]aving a good reputation is vitally important to just about everyone. It is particularly important if your business depends on having such a reputation, or at the very least, NOT having a bad “rep”. If you have ever had a negative post about you on the web, you know how un-nerving this can be personally, and the fiscal damage that it caused by negative reviews online is unfortunately immeasurable.
How will you know if your reputation and credibility is being tarnished? Fortunately there are a couple tools you can use to get notifications of ANY mention of you on the web, as long as they are picked up and indexed by Google. Chances of that are relatively good which means that if someone is engaging in defamation of your person, you are likely to know. Here is how you can practice some basic reputation management:
1. Sign up for Google Alerts. It is a very simple process, as you can see by the following image.. it is a simple form you fill out, once there is any mention of your specific query , you will be notified. This can be very useful also to keep tabs on anything else you want to stay on top of.. use your imagination and you can find some very purposeful uses for it.
2. Another very handy tool is “Me on the web”, also from Google. You will find this service from your Google accounts dashboard. Once you log in to the dashboard, this is what it looks like:
This is a powerful reputation management tool as it allows you to monitor whenever any information on you is published on the web. Not only that but you also can steps to have content AND entire pages removed from the Google index.
I have personally helped a handful of people turn things around when they have had negative info on the web unfairly and inaccurately reported and they were greatly relieved to see the negative information buried where it did not have much of an impact when people searched for the business or person affected.
If you are in a profession in which bad reputation can cost you big bucks, and most of us in the sales and service industry would likely fall in this category, then the above two tools can be a tremendous asset in your reputation management toolbox. Something you may not be aware of, reputation management is big business now days. Given the ease with which anyone can post negative information on the web, it is easy to see why it would be important to keep an eye on these “mentions”. Take action, get “alerted”.