Are You Monitoring Your Online Reputation? [infographic]

When's the last time (if ever) you “Googled” your name or the name of your business?  It may sound a bit egotistical to do so, but it's really important…..especially if you own a business.

Conversations are happening online 24 hours a day, you or your business may be mentioned in some of those conversations…..some good, some not so good.  It's important to keep your ear to the internet and be on the ready to respond when someone mentions you or your business.  Not only is it good for you to keep tabs on your online mentions, it shows customers that your active online and willing to join into their conversation.

One of the most basic things you should be doing is setting up custom alerts so that you are notified when yourself, your business or a key business term for your industry is mentioned online.  Custom alerts are great because instead of you scouring the internet searching……the notifications come right to your email inbox.

The next thing you should do is perform a Google and Bing search on your name and the name of your business.  In the results, are the Facebook photos from your Spring break trip to Cancun 6 years ago showing up on the first page?  Don't laugh, it happens all the time.  You want to make sure that when people perform a search on you or your business, they see is what you want them to see.  (check out the infographic below)

If there is anything in the results that you don't like, you will need to try and remove that info from the search results.  It may come down to changing the privacy settings on some of your social media accounts, or contacting another website and asking to have information about you removed.  If none of these are possible, you'll need to try and push those results off of the first page by creating better, more positive content to replace it.  A great place to start your online reputation management management is with BrandYourself.com, it'll help you keep tabs on your onine reputation.  Another good resource for learning how to build your personal brand online is personalbrandingblog.com by Dan Schawbel

If you're ready to start keeping tabs on your personal and business's online reputation, it starts with checking to see what is already out there.  This infographic by BackgroundCheck.org is a nice visual as to why you should be “Googling” yourself every once and awhile to make sure you're online reputation is up to snuff.

Managing your online reputation infograghic

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Gary

CEO at 3Bug Media
Gary Shouldis is the founder of 3Bug Media, a web marketing company that helps businesses create 360 Marketing Strategies to dominate their market. His blog is read by over 20 thousand small business owners a month and has been featured in the N.Y. Times Small Business, Business Insider and Yahoo Small Business.