If you care about your career and the people you know (aka Reputation Management), I’m simply going to say this: do yourself a favor and spend an hour reading the links below.
There is A LOT of change happening in the business world: with big opportunities and risks materializing every day.
Aside from personal gossip and business rumor, the topic of reputation management is one of the biggest areas of opportunity and risk. It is a topic that have been very involved with over the past decade: working on roughly a dozen or so projects revolving around reputation and personal name (it also included working on several personal projects examining niches of the more general problem.)
In my last two articles covering background checks and online privacy, I was voicing some of my observations about the critical nature of this beast we call the web.
Reputation Management 101
Information has been unleashed upon us: slowly changing the way we interact and communicate with each other. Our first impressions have been modified, orchestrated, manipulated, and monetized by hundreds of different business models where the common person has NO IDEA that they are being profited from.
Back in January I wrote Online Reputation Score or Credit Fiasco. This was a key article for some financial readers who controlled the business world and understood spreadsheets more than social networks, a brief analogy that helped them think about this massive swell of new “credit information.” Six month later the message is still bouncing off so many professionals: people who are looking for work, professionals trying to keep business strong, and everyone in-between.
As a resource to people in my network, I collected a variety of how-to and one page guides into my reputation toolbox, which includes some simple printable guide to Twitter, Google Alerts, and search tools.
I hope you take the time to read through these articles and resources, forward them to friends and colleagues, and take responsibility for your own future.
If you don’t, some greedy credit company will.
Formalize a reputation management plan and take control of your future.