As Warren Buffett said, “It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently.” Now that’s food for thought in itself, right?
Today, brand management is primarily focused on the online sphere. Social media and reviews can make or break a customer’s perception of your business. And, if you’re the face of your brand, your online reputation will naturally go hand in hand.
This means that the online activity of you and your brand can have a massive impact on the finances of your organization and its future as an authoritative business. That’s why it’s so important that companies prioritize protecting their online reputations. It’s not hard to find examples of businesses being negatively affected by misjudged social media activity and bad publicity online caused by a poor personal reputation.
So, let’s cut to the chase and talk about how your online personal rep can damage your business and the steps you can take to avoid it.
Is There a Difference Between Personal and Business Reputation?
If you’re the face of your company, your personal and business reputation go hand in hand. Everything is intertwined.
Nowadays, every business is expected to have an online presence. It’s practically impossible to differentiate your professional and personal reputation. This means you need to be vigilant and ensure that any information fed to the public is accurate and represents your business appropriately.
Why is this so crucial? As an entrepreneur, especially at the beginning of your business journey, your personal online reputation will be at the forefront of all of your professional interactions. It will be what puts you in front of the right people, and it will be the face to the name of your brand when you’re networking.
Likewise, it’ll be what you’re judged on when negotiating financial and investment opportunities and the first thing people think about when considering whether to do business with your company. For this reason, personal and business reputation go hand in hand. You want to make sure you’re proud of the way you’re representing yourself, as it will also represent your business.
What is Personal Reputation Management, and What Does it Mean?
These days, people are more likely to be exposed to running into crisis management. This is due to the web being a free space where everyone has the opportunity to express groundless opinions. You can prevent your online reputation from affecting your business when you have a good personal reputation management strategy, including input from us at BRANDefenders.
When talking about these strategies, references from Online Reputation Management(ORM) come into play. This consists of a series of practices that can help strengthen or build your online image. In short, these practices are based on a set of four criteria, which are:
- Negative content removal
- Monitoring the web
- Managing a negative narrative in real-time
- Creating and spreading a positive brand image
Good personal reputation management results depend on how timely, coordinated, and integrated these aspects are in the strategy.
How to Protect Your Personal and Online Reputation
The requirements for preserving your personal reputation management are exactly the same as those for protecting your business reputation management. However, it’s important to note that not everyone can undertake such a complex process, which is why professional reputation management companies often rely on this time and effort.
And to be honest, the best thing you can do in situations that could severely affect your brand’s authority is to enlist the help of such specialists. Here’s how BRANDefenders takes care of proceedings:
- Monitor the internet for any negative content about your brand. The first step is to understand how your online reputation is perceived. This is done by scanning all areas of the web, including search engines, forums, social media platforms, etc.
- Act quickly to remove any harmful links or outdated content that could harm you. The Right to be Forgotten can be exercised here, as it provides you with legal protection over your personal reputation management. It’s a concept that grants individuals the civil right to request any personal information removed from the internet.
- Protect your personal data. Avoid disclosing sensitive data about your brand. This could compromise your legitimacy, reputation, trustworthiness, and authority.
Can You Measure Your Own Online Reputation?
Alas, the internet does have many positives. While it can single-handedly tear down the foundations of a business with one negative comment, it also comes in handy if you want to build the brand back up. (Obviously, you’d rather not have to do this, but if a situation ever arises, at least you know there are ways you can bounce back.)
The world wide web offers various tools to measure your online rep. And though some are more useful than others, it’s worth familiarizing yourself with them just in case. Some of the top ones include:
- Hootsuite
- Mention
- Reputology
- Branseye
These tools work by allowing you to measure both your online and social media presence because they collect mentions about your business. Remember the monitor the internet strategy from earlier? You can catch things early by being active on these management platforms, which means if you do come into trouble, you can call upon us at BRANDefenders to catch and squash any problems before they spiral out of control.
How to Improve Your Online Reputation
Digital marketing is imperative when it comes to improving and sustaining your online reputation and personal reputation management. In short, you need to focus on and follow the fundamentals.
Some concrete tips that help you to do so include:
- Increase your presence online. (Positively, of course.) Make sure you separate your personal account from your brand by using a business account. However, you should ensure that the images and content you can promote professionalism and trust. Use these same criteria for emails, too, and always make sure you maintain a professional tone.
- Create your own personal website or blog. This online space will allow you to get your thoughts and opinions out. It will also help you highlight your own job experiences.
- Be present on social media. You should prioritize social media platforms due to their scope and popularity. These include LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Google, etc. When you are present on these platforms promoting a positive, authoritative, professional, and trustworthy personal persona, you ensure coverage in all areas of the internet.
- Differentiate your content while still keeping it consistent. Making use of SEO best practices is a must in this one. Make sure you have created an editorial calendar and only share positive content to build a positive image.
- Manage your privacy settings. When your privacy settings are managed, it helps you indicate whether you give the web consent for using, collecting, and disclosing your personal info. That’s why choosing and setting the settings that you feel comfortable with on all online services, devices, browsers, and social media accounts is essential.
What are the Benefits of Having a Positive Online Reputation?
BRANDefenders, knows the benefits of having a good digital reputation, but do you? In practical terms, it can provide you with an abundance of advantages. Some of them include:
- It can increase your professional success.
- You can attract the attention of other professionals who are interested in the services or products your brand is promoting.
- You can increase your chances of building and sustaining relationships with influential people both within your industry and related to it.
- You can enhance your brand authority and engagement to help you reach target reference customers.
- You can improve and enhance your competitive positioning as a brand.
- You can ultimately increase your revenue.
Having and maintaining a positive online reputation will allow you to enhance your personal and corporate image a lot quicker, as opposed to just word of mouth.
Do You Need Help Protecting Your Online Reputation?
Suppose you’re looking to remove any negative online content against you. Whether personal or brand-related and publish positive content that re-launches and re-establishes your digital image, you’re in the right place. BRANDefenders, makes that happen.
Focused on end-to-end branding solutions and having the ability to remove this unwanted content, they take pride in the work offered to clients. They have also created proprietary legal techniques that hide the copy or listings from search results and insulate your brand from future repeated rankings of negative articles.
So, what are you waiting for? Get in touch with BRANDefenders today and protect your personal online reputation.