Top 10 Free Tools To Monitor Your Online Reputation. With the explosion of Consumer Generated Media (CGM), ongoing monitoring of your personal or professional reputation has become a must. Consumer Generated Media consists largely of social networking websites; blogs; photo, audio and video sharing sites; discussion boards; and any other website that allows users to share their experience, opinion and knowledge. Facebook, Twitter, BlogSpot, WordPress… people update and write about anything, anywhere, anytime.
In fact, they might be writing about you. You can imagine the devastating ramifications of negative word of mouth about your company or yourself. However, you can be proactive and monitor online reputations before disaster strikes. You can monitor your name, product feedback, services, company, competitors, employers, even enemies. Here are ten free basic tools to monitor one’s online reputation: 10. Monitor the external links to your blog, corporate website or personal web page through Yahoo’s Site Explorer. 9. 8. 7. 6. 5. 4. 3. 2. 50+ Tips to Brand Yourself Online | Personal Branding Blog - Dan. Once you’ve designed your personal brand and have a personal brand name, use this handy list of suggestions to implement your personal branding strategy.
General purpose Show your expertise as much as possible.Publicize your brand-related successes and achievements.Make yourself easy to contact for thoughts and questions via email, Twitter, Skype, internet messaging, etc.Help other people in your industry such as bloggers, Twitterers, colleagues, advice seekers, etc.Give people a reason to talk about you in a positive way that also matches your brand.Follow other people in your industry and anyone else who can teach you how to spread your message.Create and apply personal design guidelines that will share the values of your brand and are reusable online and offline.Keep in mind that where you interact online also conveys messages about you, and then stick to the websites and communities that will help most in reaching your goals.
Tactics Kinds of websites you could create Blogging Author: 5 Ways to Avoid Sabotaging Your Personal Brand Online. Dan Schawbel is the bestselling author of Me 2.0: Build a Powerful Brand to Achieve Career Success, an award winning blogger at Personal Branding Blog, a national speaker and consultant on branding and a BusinessWeek columnist. There have been countless incidents in which professionals have lost their jobs, been evicted, or even been arrested for things they've done on social networks.
There has never been a more important time to discuss the many ways you can sabotage your personal brand, and how you can prevent these mistakes before it's too late. A new report by Microsoft states that 64% of HR managers think it is appropriate to look at online profiles of candidates and 41% have rejected people as a result. Your online presence — which may consist of both content that you provide (on your LinkedIn profile for instance), as well as what's written about you by people you may or may not know — is slowly becoming part of the formal recruitment process. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
Leveraging Social Media: 12 Steps To Develop Your Personal Onlin. Do you have a plan on how to leverage the social media trend in order to achieve your career objectives? Are you taking part in the online conversations that are happening on the topics that are important to you and the development of your career? Or are you on the sidelines when it comes to participating in online communities, social networks, etc? If you are not part of the conversations that are important to your career, you can’t learn from those conversations. Nor can you influence those conversations. And in the future when potential employers look online to see if you have participated, they will not see you.
You are responsible for how you are perceived online. The following 12 steps can help you take control of your online personal brand. Document Your Career Goals. Don’t sit idle on the sidelines. Currents - Branding and the 'Me' Economy. Personal Branding 101: How to Discover and Create Your Brand. Dan Schawbel is the author of Me 2.0: Build a Powerful Brand to Achieve Career Success, and owner of the award winning Personal Branding Blog. In the past few years personal branding has been discussed exhaustively throughout the Net. The difference between today and over ten years ago when it was first mentioned by Tom Peters, is the rise of social technologies that have made branding not only more personal, but within reach.
From the corporate brand (BMW), to the product brand (BMW M3 Coupe) and down to the personal brand (car salesman), branding is a critical component to a customer’s purchasing decision. These days, customer complaints and opinions are online and viewable through a simple search, on either Google or through social networks. There is no hiding anymore and transparency and authenticity are the only means to survive and thrive in this new digital kingdom. We can also have just as much presence as most startups and mid-size companies and products. 1. 2. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. Develop a Strong Personal Brand Online Part 1. Gary Vaynerchuk could tell you that his personal brand is worth millions, but he’s modest. My friend and PodCamp co-founder, Christopher S. Penn, often refers to branding by ZeFrank’s definition: “an emotional aftertaste.” ( See the The Show with ZeFrank episode here.) I have some thoughts on how one might develop a strong personal brand online, and what you might do with one, once you build it.
It turns out that I have so many thoughts, that I’m going to break this post up into 3. This will be the first part: Branding Basics. Why Build a Personal Brand? You might already know the answer to this question. The easiest answer is that you might want to be memorable, and you might want to transfer your real world reputation into the online world. A personal brand gives you the ability to stand out in a sea of similar products. Hints About Brand in General What’s the difference between Coke and Pepsi?
Remember that trying to develop a personal brand involves differentiating in a Coke vs. Personal Brands: Sweat It Out | Personal Branding Blog - Dan Sch. What’s the best job you could land as your first foray into the working world once you’re out of college? The answer isn’t the coveted paid internship at Google. It isn’t investment banking on Wall Street, although you may be tempted when the sequel returns Gordon Gecko to the big screen. And, avoid “consulting” since consultants don’t actually do anything. This advice is brought to you by Guy Kawasaki, courtesy of last Sunday’s New York Times. Since the current CEO of IBM started as an intern there, I’m not sure the Google spot would be a bad choice.
Because I know so many people “starting over,” in their careers, I can see how valuable Guy’s advice is – no matter when you collected your last college degree. Title doesn’t mean that they’re the leader Another way to put it is: get close to VITO, the Very Important Top Officer, as my mentor Tony Parinello calls the person at the top of the company totem pole. This advice comes with a warning! Personal commitment Author: The BrandBuilder Blog. Kleiner And Bessemer Put $8.65 Million Into ReputationDefender. The line between online security and reputation is blurring. ReputationDefender is a new kind of online security startup that helps you monitor your reputation on the Web and take actions to make sure that when someone Googles you they see you in the best possible light. Last year, ReputationDefender raised $8.65 million from Bessemer Venture Partners and Kleiner Perkins, which it is announcing today.
The round came in two tranches, with $4 million form Bessemer in May, 2009 and another $4.65 million from Kleiner in August, 2009, with Bessemer participating again. David Cowan of Bessemer and Ted Schlein of Kleiner now have board seats, along with angel investor Mike Maples who led the Series A in 2008. Privacy might be dead, but that doesn’t mean you can’t do anything about it.
“Information security has to evolve form protecting hard drives to protecting identities,” says Cowan. It is still early days and there is a lot of work ahead. How To Defend Your Reputation. Mike Arrington has a timely post up today titled Reputation Is Dead: It's Time To Overlook Our Indiscretions. He says: Trying to control, or even manage, your online reputation is becoming increasingly difficult. And much like the fight by big labels against the illegal sharing of music, it will soon become pointless to even try. It's a good post and a really good discussion to be having right now. I agree that controlling your online reputation is becoming increasingly difficult. I care deeply about my reputation and have defended it vigorously when others have said things about me that are untrue. Here's an exchange on Hacker News that happened a few weeks ago. This person fnid2 has an axe to grind about me and has been doing it frequently at Hacker News.
So while I agree 100% with Mike that defending your reputation is getting increasingly difficult because of social media, I also believe that social media is the key to defending it and maintaining it. Why Silicon Valley needs the Unvarnished truth. After 15 years of covering Web startups, it’s not often that one strikes a chord in this jaded journalist’s heart. But one new Silicon Valley company strikes me as not just timely, but necessary. It’s called Unvarnished, and it aims to collect reviews about people. This has caused predictable alarm among people who have reason to worry about their reputations. Michael Arrington hinted at the existence of the startup Sunday, calling it a “Yelp for people.” He argued that “reputation is dead” and that anything anyone might have to say about anyone else amounted to nothing more than youthful indiscretions or the gripings of disgruntled employees.
That’s nonsense, of course. Long experience has taught me that where there’s smoke, there’s fire — and that people have a way of falling back into old patterns. From what VentureBeat has learned about Unvarnished, it’s far from an online version of the “burn book” in Mean Girls. Bringing Brands to Life! - Humanizing Business Communications fo. Welcome to the last article in this series on creating a writing and interviewing system for capturing content from subject matter experts. For several years, studies have shown that lack of time is the biggest challenge B2B marketers face. If that's true for you, it makes sense to start putting time on your side, right? And that’s what'll happen when you have a dependable content writing/interviewing system at your fingertips. In Part 1 of this series, you learned the importance of having an interviewing/writing system in place to capture content. Part 2 taught you how to create a dependable interviewing/writing system.
You learned in Part 3 the two important steps to take to prepare for the content interview (including two checklists you can customize). In this last article, you’ll learn a simple technique to direct the expert to answer your questions in a way that’s meaningful for your audience. A common trap A lot of interviewers fall into the trap of not asking follow-up questions. Uh-oh. Another 11 Little Secrets. I was inspired by my friend Chris Penn’s “11 Little Secrets” post this morning to come up with my own list here and encourage you all to do the same on your own blogs. It’s always interesting to see what makes people tick, especially if their little secrets can be helpful to someone else. The model is simple. To quote Chris: We strive desperately to look for the next big thing, the next big secret, the magic wand that will make everything better.
What we tend to overlook – or most of us, anyway – are the little secrets, the little hacks and tweaks you can make to your day, your year, your life to help things operate better. Bingo. 1. Why does this matter? Negatives: No more bacon, and the prospect of dying of mercury poisoning. 2. Personally, I’ve recently gotten into Conn Iggulden’s novels about Genghis Kahn and Julius Caesar, and that isn’t bad brain candy as far as I’m concerned. Reading engages different parts of the brain that, in turn, contribute to the processing of information. 3. Use SEO to ruin a good brand name: 3 easy steps. In our first post on SEO and Branding, we explored how the competing demands of search engine optimization (SEO) and brand strategy can make decisions like naming rather difficult.
Here is the basic problem: core branding principles tell us that when naming a company or product, go unique or go home. But some basic mechanics of search engine optimization – having key words in your domain name, content, and incoming links – favour the plain English approach. On other words, a rose by any other name might smell as sweet but would be impossible to find on Google. Here are a few options to help you be in two places at once, along with the pros and cons of each approach. The do them both strategy. Pros: Instant Google juice. Cons: You better be damned sure that you are happy to be in the deodorant business.
The plum pudding strategy. Pros: No awkward gluing together of words. Cons: The temptation to force a keyword into your brand name can result in some pretty terrible brand names. Mommy Meanest? Mom Bloggers Highlighted on Today Show | Momfluen. In case you missed it, here is the excellent segment from this week’s Today Show highlighting Alpha Mom’s Isabel Kalman, Blog with Integrity founder Susan Getgood and Momma Said’s Jen Singer on the topic of momblogging, controversy and trolls. Mom Bloggers have been in the media a lot lately, with articles in mainstream media publications from the New York Times to the Detroit Free press stirring controversy and bloggers signing deals with major motion picture companies. It’s not surprising given the jaw dropping statistic that over 23 million women check in regularly on mom blogs. Bottom line: mom blogs are not just a passing phase, they are a mainstream media movement, with all the problems controversies and issues typical.
Isabel and Susan do a good job highlighting that the support and empathy that exists within this very same community is far more remarkable and noteworthy. Perhaps that is what distinguishes the “Mom Bloggers” more than anything else. What do you think? BlissDom, Disclosure, Super Bowl ads and a new survey | Marketin. Apart from my rather hectic return North on Friday (which you can read about on Snapshot Chronicles Roadtrip), BlissDom was absolutely great, and I wish I could have stayed longer. BlissDom and Disclosure As promised, here is a PDF of the complete slide deck from the “You Should Know Better” general session on Friday morning. Kristen Berman from Intuit covered best accounting practices, Liza Barry-Kessler gave an overview of the legal issues facing bloggers in their small businesses, and I talked about disclosure as a best practice and the FTC guidelines on endorsements and testimonials.
We were lucky that Stacey Ferguson was in the audience. I don’t want to dive too deep into disclosure in this post but one thing most definitely bears repeating: the FTC does not dictate how you should disclose other than it must be “clear and conspicuous.” That’s why best practices are so very very important. Best practices demand that you do MORE than the FTC requires. 3 Tips for Managing Your Online Reputation. 4 Steps for Managing Social Media Attention. 4 Steps for Effective Online Networking. Social Media & Beyond. State of the Nation. Jessica Smith in real time., I have not experienced this yet but. Business Names and Brandable Domain Names For Sale | BrandBucket. 20 Essential Social Media Resources You May Have Missed. Free Press Release Submission Websites : Free Press Release List. How To Make Your Personal Brand Visible With Social Media « Jeff. 9 Secrets of A Successful Online Video Social Media Marketing St. 8 Strategies To Convert Your Free Social Media Content Into Cash.
10 Ways To Put Your Website Content In Front Of More People and.