WebWord

It is becoming increasingly important to manage your reputation because reputations are the true currency of the internet. If your reputation is poor, you won’t sell products, you won’t easily establish personal relationships, and you won’t be able to get a job. What other people say about you is far more important than what you say.

There are three levels to consider:
1. Awareness: You have a reputation and it is an “object” on the web
2. Monitoring: You can watch and follow your reputation online
3. Management: You can take action to adjust or update your reputation

Many people simnply don’t have awareness that they have reputations. For example, many students share images and stories that cast them in a very negative light. This information shapes reputations. In the past, distributation of this information was limited, limiting the possible reputation damage. Similarly, the life of the information was also limited due to literal media decay, forgetfulness, or simple lack of storage.

Today, the story is quite different. Nearly every bit of digital information online is permanently stored and it is widely available, if not widely distributed. For older generations, this is quite shocking. For younger folks, it is a way of life. I would offer that older generations are too conservative in this respect while the whippersnappers allow too much free flow. The balance has not yet been struck.

No matter how you slice it, too many people are carelessly exposing personal information. This includes material such as financial information, political views, personal relationships, and career changes. There’s so much that we expose. For the sake of clarity I’m going to stop short of diving deeply on this. Suffice it to say, we give a lot away for free.

A hidden factor of reputation management is knowing what others are saying about us. That is, most people only think about what they are saying and doing, versus what others are saying. The crucial fact is that it is impossible to manage your reputation without understanding what others are saying.

With all this as background, here is my list of reputation management tools. My assumption is that you have a list of keywords or phrases to follow. This would include your name, including variations on your name such as nicknames. You probably also have a list of URLs to monitor as well. Keep them handy. Further, if you are a business owner, recognize and keep in mind the words and labels associated with your products and services. You might also consider other material to monitor such as geographical information, former employees, professional associations, and the like. The bottom line is to think about your associations and where you fit in the world.

1. Search Engines

2. Blog Search, Blog Pulse

3. Del.icio.us

4. Technorati

5. Alexa

6. RSS feeds

7. Domain Name Check

8. MySpace, Facebook

9. Google Base

10. eBay Profiles and Items

11. YouTube, Google Video

12. Amazon Wishlist

13. Credit Score

14. Wikipedia References

15. Google Answers, Yahoo Answers

16. Truth Laid Bear

17. PubSub

18. Google Alerts

19. Blogdigger

20. Blogstreet

21. Consumating

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 29th, 2006 at 11:38 am and is filed under Usability. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.