Here are some general tips to consider when managing your online reputation.
Create official online profiles. Don’t let just anyone talk about you online. Create your own profiles and websites complete with the kind of information you actually want to be available about you.
Check what people are saying about you online. Whether good or bad you can do yourself a favor by finding out just what is being said about you online. Use some of the tools mentioned later in this article to keep yourself in the loop.
Stay on the ball. Don’t get lazy about monitoring your reputation. If necessary, perform monthly checks to see if there’s any information about you that could be potentially harmful.
Google yourself. The simplest way to find out where your or your company’s online reputation stands is to Google yourself. See what kind of results pop up first. If they aren’t what they’d like them to be, you’ve got some work to do.
Assume everything can get on the web. Both in your personal and professional life, what you say online and off can come back to bite you. Be safe and assume any emails, conversations or photos out there can eventually end up on the Web.
Choose your words carefully. If you are blogging, running a website or just have a social media profile, be careful what you post. Unless you’re looking for controversy what you say may cause you problems in the future.
Know your weaknesses. If you know your business has a particular weakness or are just familiar with your propensity for getting wild on the weekend, keep this in mind and have it as your top priority for checking on your online reputation.
Protect yourself from hackers. This may seem like it goes without saying, but many people fail to adequately secure their online information. Make sure yours is as safe as it possibly can be.
Keep social networks private. One way to deter prying eyes is to keep your social networking profiles private to all except those you approve. This will keep casual viewers from seeing your information, good or bad.
Consider pseudonyms.If you do want to keep a blog or engage in hijinks on internet message boards, create a name for yourself to hide behind so you can’t be easily tracked.
Be proactive. Instead of waiting until you have an issue with your online reputation, stay ahead of the game. Search for what’s being said about you regularly so you’ll stay up-to-date.
Act fast. If you do find something said or posted about you online that you feel could be particularly damaging to you, take action immediately. Whether its your friend posting photos from your Vegas trip or someone you don’t know slandering your business, taking care of it sooner rather than later is best.
Keep your cool. You may be incensed at what someone has said about you online, but don’t let it show. Keep your anger to yourself and off the internet where it can do more harm than good.
These articles provide some useful and informative reading material for anyone wanting to know more about online reputation both for businesses and individuals.
Protect Your Online Reputation: This article from SEO Chat lays out some basics for monitoring and protecting your online reputation.
Ten Tactics That Could Save Your Online Reputation: The CEO of Trakur gives some great advice in this Mashable article on how your company can avoid reputation meltdown.
How to Manage Your Online Reputation: This article goes through a number of tools and how to use them to keep your reputation intact.
Social Networks Become Powerful Tool in Online Reputation Management: Find out how social networks are playing a bigger role than ever in online reputation from this short article.
How to Create Online Reputation Tools for Your Brand: Worried about the online component of your company’s brand? This article gives some advice on creating custom tools to monitor and control your online rep.
Online Reputation Handbook: You’ll find just about everything you ever wanted to know about online reputation in this helpful handbook.
Manage Your Online Reputation: Lifehacker gives some great tips and pointers, as well as links to tools that can help you get control of your reputation.
Free Online Reputation Management Beginner’s Guide: If you’ve never done much with online reputation before, or haven’t even considered it, check out this business-geared article.
How To Protect, Fix Your Online Reputation: From keeping problems from arising to fixing them when they do, this article is full of helpful advice.
Using Social Media to Manage Online Reputation: Find out how social media can be a help, not just a hindrance, to online reputation.
Managing Your Reputation Online: Technology Review provides this informative article that can help you understand and take action when it comes to your virtual reputation.
Online Reputation Management for Individuals: Online reputation isn’t just a concern for businesses, and this article explains how individuals can keep their name in good standing as well.
These sites are dedicated to helping you keep an eye on and manage online reputation, providing the basics, suggestions for security, and much more.
Online Reputation: This site has articles on everything from brand reputation management to monitoring your reputation online.
The Reputation Blog: Business owners and leaders can take advantage of the advice offered by this blog.
Reputation Advisor: Here you’ll find advice and articles that provide essential information on keeping your business’ rep and your own looking good.
Reputation Management: From information on slander protection to posts about using search engines to monitor your reputation this blog is full of great info and insight.
CopyBrighter: Get some new insights into online reputation management and social media from this blog.
StepRepBlog: Find out just what social reputation is or get tips on connecting positively with customers from this site.
OnlineReputation.com: This site provides more in-depth explanations on how to use reputation tracking software, advice on building a solid online rep, and much more.
These tools can help you manage your numerous online profiles, monitor your personal reputation and more.
ClaimID: Check out this program that uses OpenID to manage your personal identity over several sites, meaning you only have to remember the password for one, not numerous ones.
FindMeOn: Want to connect your identity over several sites? FindMeOn lets you do that while keeping your information private and secure.
FreeYourID: Make maintaining your online identity easy, with this tool that bases it directly on your name.
Garlik: If you’re worried that your identity may be more than marred and straight out stolen, give this tool a try. You’ll be able to search for mentions of you on the web that might involve identity theft.
myOpenID: Don’t worry about having multiple logins with this OpenID site.
SpyShakers: Try this tool to get access to any of your profile passwords remotely. It specializes in protecting your information from spyware.
TypeKey: TypeKey allows you to integrate your blog into your OpenID, allowing you to manage pretty much everything with one main profile.
Realmee: Here you can create a personal profile that will allow you to more easily control what others can see of you online.
LookUpPage: Want to control what people find when they search for you? This site helps out, by giving you a central page that comes up at the top when your name is searched for.
MonitorThis: Try out this site to monitor and track keywords over multiple search engines, giving you clues about who’s talking about you.
Professional Identity
Keep your business’ name out of the mud by protecting it with these helpful tools.
Trust-Index: Find out how well your business is trusted with this tool.
Google Alerts: With Google Alerts you can get email updates of the latest google results based on your name or other topic of your choosing.
BoardTracker: Whether you post on boards yourself or want to see if anyone else is talking about you, this tool makes it easy to filter to threads.
Vanno: Get an online reputation the democratic way, with this site that allows others to vote on the stories, videos and blogs about your company.
Serph: Use this search tool to look up your company and find out just what kind of buzz is going around the web about your company.
Searchles: This social search engine can help you keep up with the news out about your business.
Omgili: Search through the numerous forums out there to find out what people are saying about you using this helpful tool.
BoardReader: This tool is especially useful, allowing users to search through forums, videos, Twitter conversations, IMDB and more.
Joongel: Zoom in on the type of media you’d like to search with this online tool. Choose from videos, photos, shopping sites, and more.
Techrigy: This company makes it easier and simpler to monitor your business’ reputation online.
Keotag: Match blogs with tags that reflect talk about your business or related topics using this tool.
UpdatePatrol: This tool makes it easy to watch websites for updates and changes, which can sometimes be useful when you want to know what a particular site is saying about you.
BrandsEye: Hook up with this company to get stats and other information on where your business or blog reputation stands online.