Make More Mistakes

#006: Reputation management

It’s not just corporations that need to work on Public Relations.

Schenkein recognises, without reputation management: “the resulting consequences can range from inaccurate information going out to the public to a complete breakdown in communication, which can ruin a company’s reputation.”

If you’re an entrepreneur, you are your brand. You don’t have a big, powerful company equipped with a team of full-time publicists and other experts backing you. As with everything else, you have to manage your reputation yourself.

There are precious few DIY guides.As the practice becomes increasingly popular, the information will proliferate. In the meantime, there are a number of things you can do.

Learning from my mistakes

I thought I’d done a pretty thorough job, with no prompting from anyone. That was until I found John S. Rhodes’ handy list of over 21 online tools for reputation monitoring at WebWord.

I already had Google Alerts for my name as well as for key phrases on some of my sites. However, a quick look at a popular search directory proved that my complacency was unwarranted. The search turned up journal entries from when I was at school - information that’s no longer relevant to who I am now and certainly not to my professional and entrepreneurial exploits.

The key thing to remember is to cast your net wide - the breadth & depth of information online is extensive. The WebWord guide is an excellent start, but you needn’t end your efforts there.

Instead of just being aware of your current reputation and monitoring it retroactively, you can take practical and positive steps to promote your online identity as you you see fit.

One tool I’ve found useful for this is ClaimID, which purports to let you “track, verify, classify, annotate, prioritize and share the information that is about you online”.

I would also recommend creating an official online profile of yourself. In addition to allowing you free reign to describe, explain & promote yourself, it also saves time when you have ‘about me’ sections to complete online: Simply copy-paste the summary or first few lines and add a link to the full profile.

Kathleen ‘inspirewithhope’ Bright: My full profile