Many times whether you are a blogger or a business owner, your name comes under fire. Or sometimes someone with the same name as you has a less-than-desirable history. In either case it is important to know how to manage your brand online, to ensure that any negativity which could be associated with your name is mitigated.
Today we look at three sites which can not only help you manage your brand but also increase your reach, potentially leading to new customers or even friends.
Social Networking, not just for kids anymore
While it is true that kids and teens seemed to be the first to jump onto the social networking bandwagon (even before it was known as social networking) many adults have also begun to realize the power of these sites.
While there are many social networking sites out there (and more coming on an almost daily basis) I’m going to introduce you to a few that you can use to not only increase your network, but also manage your online profile, or brand. In addition to managing your brand, they are also really great research tools.
The first, and most obvious, from a professional point of view is LinkedIn.
LinkedIn is a professional social network. It provides its users the ability to connect on a professional level with other LinkedIn users. If the people you are looking for are not in LinkedIn, you can invite them to join your network.
One thing I’ve found is that my LinkedIn public profile actually ranks quite high in search engine rankings. That is why I’ve chosen it as one way to positively manage your online brand.
Simply creating a LinkedIn profile, and connecting with a few associates is enough to generate link popularity for your profile. Over time it too will begin to rank in search engines, potentially moving down other listings with your name in them.
For example, if there are negative reviews of your work on the web that are ranking highly, you can help build your LinkedIn network so that it can be one of the sites which begins to outrank those negative reviews.
Another site which is good for both fun and online reputation management is Facebook.
Many people consider Facebook as more of a social site and not a professional one. However Facebook can have professional implications.
For example, many users of social networking sites tend to rely on their network for advice and opinions. In addition they may search Facebook for someone with your qualifications and then ask their network of friends for more information or recommendations.
So while they may not find you through more traditional search engines, they still could end up becoming a customer because of positive Facebook recommendations.
The final site I’m going to talk about here is a new search engine called Spock. It is a people search engine which means it attempts to aggregate all the information on the web about people, from LinkedIn profiles to IMDB profiles and virtually every other source of such information that you can think of.
Spock is currently an invite only beta program, but as a recently invited user I have to say I’m very impressed.
The first thing it did was ask me to create my own profile. It then was able to import settings and contacts from a variety of sources.
The most impressive part to me is the search, however. You can search for anything from a persons name, to an activity. For example, a search for “drunk driver” returns a list of people, celebrities and non-celebrities, who have been charged with impaired driving. If you wanted to find out about someone you simply type in their name and results are returned, with pictures if applicable.
What about the other sites?
I deliberately chose these 3 sites because I see the most potential from them. To me they have the greatest ability to influence more traditional search engines like Google or Yahoo because of both the way their are built, as well as their adoption rate. More and more people areturning to sites like this.
But they are also providing ways (as mentioned above) for more traditional search engines to access their data. And as time goes on the data found on these types of sites should be able to supplant that found from other sources, both positive or negative.
