Did You Hear the One About You 10 Steps to safeguard Yourself Online

Just as you don't know about it, it doesn't imply that people aren't saying good (or bad) reasons for having you as well as your business on the web. Follow these ten steps to protect your reputation online.

Step one 1: Don't Do Anything Foolish Online

"An employee of a large, well-respected pr firm was flying to Memphis, Tennessee to go over, of all things, social media with among the firm's largest clients, FedEx. Unfortunately, this employee, who, as a social media expert, must have known better, decided to tweet his disdain for the city of Memphis in the same way he was exiting the city's airport.

Twenty minutes later, as he was entering the FedEx headquarters, all hell broke loose. Many FedEx employees who followed this gentleman on Twitter saw his tweet about Memphis and, as proud residents of said city, took offense.

Within days, the story had spread around the globe, embarrassing the employee and the PR agency, and bringing into question FedEx's wisdom for hiring a social media expert who assumed nobody was reading his tweets," say Jamie Turner and Reshma Shah, authors of Steps to make Money With Social Media.

Step two 2 2: Find Out What Others say About You Online

You may claim, "But I'd never do anything so foolish online!" What can be said about you by others online can also have an instantaneous and drastic impact on your business. Consider this next example:

"One morning in late 2008, a software glitch occurred, and an outdated article about United Airlines' 2002 bankruptcy filing suddenly appeared in the Google News system as though it were new. The sudden appearance of a new-seeming article led a writer at the 'Income Securities Advisor' newsletter to say the possibility of a bankruptcy in their own article.

The article was then automatically distributed by the Bloomberg wire to hundreds of websites. Once a (false) story about the new United bankruptcy rumor appeared on a huge selection of sites, the Google newsbot mistook the story's popularity as confirmation of its importance and made the story a lot more prominent on the Google News site. The cycle continued.

Stock traders immediately reacted, send UAL stock right into a tailspin that ended with a 76 percent drop in the business's value before trading was automatically halted. By afternoon, United was able to deny the rumor, but UAL stock still closed down ten percent on the day. Of course, all parties involved claim that somebody else was responsible for the error," say Michael Fertik and David Thompson, authors of Wild West 2.0.

So you might ask, "How can I discover what others could be saying about me online?"

Step three 3 3: Begin by Conducting a Google Search

The place to start out discovering this information is by doing what people do over one billion times every day: conduct a Google search. Begin by searching all on your own name.

When Not long ago i searched on Google using my name, for example, on the first page of the results, I found links to:

My Google Profile

My Website

My LinkedIn account

Articles I've written

My Facebook account

A speakers bureau to which I belong

eBay University, that I taught

What results can you get for a Google search on your name? What results do you get when you conduct a search for your business?

Step 4 4: Develop a Google Profile

Next, to insert the info that you want others to read about you in what's likely to be that first valuable little bit of online real estate, create a Google Profile, utilizing a free tool from Google at profiles.Google.com.

According to Google, your Profile may be the way you present yourself on Google and over the Web. Together with your Profile, you can manage the information - such as your bio, contact details, and links to other sites about you or developed by you - that folks will see.

At a minimum, your first name, last name, and photo will undoubtedly be public on the net. You can then provide a variety of additional information about yourself in your profile. You may also enable visitors to contact you without displaying your contact information.

Step 5: Set Up a Google Alert

To stay continually up-to-date on what folks are saying about you online, join another free Google service called Google Alerts at http://www.google.com/alerts.

Similar to the old-fashioned clipping services which would send you copies of articles from newspapers and magazines on topics of one's choice, Google will do the same for you for the Internet - but for free. You determine how often you desire Google to notify you by e-mail when articles containing your keywords of preference appears on the Web.

In fact, join Google Alerts for your business, colleagues, clients and vendors - to keep abreast of what is happening with your planet online.

Step 6: Join Social Media Accounts

Why should you do this? Google will consistently rank these sites high, being that they are many of the most popular sites on the net.

If you don't curently have them, join LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube accounts. For LinkedIn and Facebook, you can even create a URL which has your name. For Twitter and YouTube, select a username as near your real name as you possibly can.

Step 7: Create YOUR PERSONAL Website

Another defensive posture you can take is to buy a domain together with your name, in case you don't have an ongoing need for an internet site. "If you discover online content for which you don't wish to be associated," says Kristin Burnham, of CIO.com, "you may use this site to create additional pages all of which will rank high on a Google search of you, since it contains your name in the URL."

But what should you do if someone does make an effort to sully your reputation or that of your business online?

Step 8: Play Great Defense

"Monitoring the net won't prevent an online attack," says Jon Bernstein of BNET.com. "If you fall victim, don't panic: Think before you respond... If a blogger has their facts wrong, correct them - most will quickly amend their post. If their criticism is true, apologize using the same medium as the message... Your willingness to engage is likely to win over the skeptics."

"If windows 10 sound problem is an isolated incident and no one has replied," says Andy Beal, co-author of Radically Transparent: Monitoring and Managing Reputations Online, "you may consider letting sleeping dogs lie."

But if it is a serious attack, follow the lead of J. Patrick Doyle, president of the Domino's pizza chain. After two disgruntled employees caused an immediate uproar by posting a disgusting video supposedly exposing operations at their Domino's restaurant on YouTube, Doyle created and posted his own video on the webpage to tell his side of the story. Doyle's video has received over 150,000 views.

"Generally, people will remove the offending item from the blog or forum," Bernstein states. "But if they don't, you can look at a more public approach. read more , constructive, conciliatory, and willing to engage. Try something along these lines: Jim, I've already spoken for you about this, and you know, what you are saying about me is inaccurate. I would like you to remove it. Meanwhile, if anyone out there scanning this has any questions, this is one way to attain me."

We discussed the possibility of others posting malicious, untrue information about you or your organization on the Web throughout a recent conference session I conducted on social media. One attendee responded by saying, "You may be surprised at the amount of your fans who'll also come to your rescue online to assist you set the record straight."

Step 9: Play Good Offense

The easiest way to manage your online reputation, says Amanda Berlin of Forbes.com, would be to continue to generate positive search results which will rank as highly as you possibly can in a Google search, to edge out anything negative which could appear one of many search results.

"The target is to obtain the negative results from appearing in the most notable 20 hits," says George Brown, ONLINE MARKETING architect. "People rarely look that far down if they search for you."

Crowd out anything negative that is said about you online with just as much positive information as possible, especially with content on popular, highly-ranked sites.

In fact, in writing this article, I'm attempting to follow some additional advice from Jon Bernstein: "Be proactive. Offer to blog and write articles about your specialist subjects for online publications that hit your present and future customers. Earn a reputation as a 'player' in your field. Get your name out there."

EzineArticles is a site you may even want to consider to create your articles online.

read more : Remember that the Internet isn't Your Grandfather's Newspaper

Finally, keep in mind that the media of today is quite different than it was in the time of Babe Ruth.

In accordance with Jeff Klinkenberg, writer for the St. Petersburg Times, "Sports writers of his era usually hid character flaws from the general public. In one spring-training story told now, but not then, Babe Ruth ran naked by way of a railroad car while being chased by way of a woman with a butcher's knife."

Not only was the function not captured by way of a camcorder for instant upload onto the web for the entire world to view by midnight that evening, one writer who observed the function even reportedly remarked, "There's another story we're not likely to cover."

What is the brand new reality? In accordance with Erik Qualman, author of Socialnomics: "What happens in Vegas, stays on YouTube."