Does Your Personal ‘BRAND’ Need A Social Media Makeover?

"It takes many good deeds to build a good reputation, and only one bad one to lose it”, this quote by Benjamin Franklin aptly defines the irony of reputation, especially in the digital age of social media networking. Be it the reputation of an individual, social group, organization or a business, it just takes a few inappropriate posts, candid photos, tweets or ill-advised comments to malign and trash an otherwise good long reputation over the internet. Shared photos, sexting videos, angry posts or other ‘youthful’ engagements from the younger you, can have a devastating impact on your career later in life. In this day and age, social media plays the central role in offering perspectives and generalising thoughts which in reality are nothing but mere reactions given at a moment in time or questionable content provided that seemed OK at the time. Saving your personal reputation can be ‘death by a thousand cuts’ if you are not a celebrity, sports person, politician or a thought leader. These individuals have a lineup of PR Agents, Fans, and advantages that regular people don’t have. For them, even the negative publicity may work sometime but that’s unimaginable in the case of an individual, employee, or a senior-level executive associated with a brand. Your online personal reputation is one of your most valuable assets. Whether you’re leading a company, starting a company, consulting for other companies or simply establishing your authority in the workforce, you need a good, not a bad reputation - it’s critical to your personal and professional success. Having a good reputation doesn’t come automatically. It is built -- one Tweet at a time, one Facebook ‘like’ after another, Blog after Blog, Guest Post after Guest Post. Once you build your reputation, you have to manage it. This isn’t easy. The web is full of smart people, critical people, and quite a few antagonistic people who are not interested in preserving your reputation - that’s your job alone, and it requires constant attention. Managing your online reputation requires effort - Here are some simple steps:                                    There are two automatic tasks, four daily tasks, and one weekly task. The entire time you spend monitoring your social media averages out to about five minutes daily, not counting the time you might spend commenting or updating your status.                                                                           1. Automatic Alert: Google Alerts - The best type of monitoring systems are those that happen automatically. Google Alerts automatically sends you emails based on specific queries that you set up. It is recommended that you set up alerts for *Your name; *Your company name(s) or brand name; *Any common misspellings of you, your company name or brand name. (Bloggers don’t always get it right.) You can specify the exact search query (with operators), the result type, language, region, frequency, how many, and where the alerts are delivered (email or feed). Cast the net as wide as possible so you can keep up with anything that’s going on anywhere, as it happens. Tip: If you have a common name, like “Adam Smith,” then you may need to set up a carefully-curated search string to monitor personal mentions. If you subscribed for alerts on every mention of “Adam Smith” you would be completely overwhelmed with alerts. You may need to distinguish yourself from the Adam Smith of economics, the artist Adam Smith, and the golfer Adam Smith. You can do this by creating a search query with the minus sign operator for possible terms that don’t apply to you.                                                      2. Automatic Alert: Comments on Your Posts - One of the most important areas of reputation management is on your blog articles or guest posts. Whenever you write an article, you have a responsibility to keep up with that article and stay engaged in the discussion. To do so effectively, you respond to the first comment and then subscribe to all future comments so you don’t miss any. Most commenting platforms have a good system for subscribing to comment threads through email. It’s important that you monitor the discussion on your blog articles and guest posts. This is where some of the most meaningful impacts on your reputation are made. People are interacting with the content that you created and published. They will agree, disagree, ask questions, form opinions, and talk about you - not all will be favorable (you can’t please all the people all the time. Any time you publish a guest post, make sure you subscribe to the comment thread so you can be notified whenever a new comment is posted.                                             3.Daily Check: Facebook - Do a daily check on Facebook, too. You should configure your notifications so that you’re alerted to any interaction with your brand or personal identity. If you prefer, you can set up Facebook alerts to be sent to your email. If you get too many of these -- not to mention too many emails - do a quick check on Facebook. You can quickly comment in areas that you need to, respond to any important messages, and ignore everything else.                 4. Daily Check: Twitter - Do your daily check-in on Twitter. If you’ve been mentioned, retweeted, followed, or otherwise interacted with, you need to see what your notifications have to tell you. The more active you are on Twitter and the more people following you, the busier things will get. Like Facebook, you can configure your Twitter settings to email you all your updates              5. Daily Check: LinkedIn - Your last daily check is LinkedIn. If you’ve been added to people’s networks, sent a message or endorsed. The worst thing you can do is ... nothing. People hate being ignored. It is recommended that you also check LinkedIn’s sidebar notifications, which give you more insights into your LinkedIn reputation: If you become a LinkedIn premium user with a paid subscription, you can find out even more details about profile views.                        Note about daily checks:  You can conduct this daily check on your mobile device. All of the social networks have apps with robust functionality and customizable alert settings. If you find that monitoring these social mentions is eating up too much time, it is recommended to use a social media management platform where you can customise all your alerts and view all the data you need in one place. Usually, business heads and senior representatives shy away from social networks to keep a distance from trolls and cacophony of interactions. Ignoring the value of your personal profiles to not face the wrath of social media channels is not a good decision in this day and age. 

That takes care of the present and future, but what about the past?

Social Media damage going back years can have a devastating effect on an individual's reputation whatever their age or status. Remember, once it's on the ‘net’ it's on the ‘net’ forever. Social Media profiles are increasingly being used to “screen” individuals and this can come back to haunt you. "Cleaners" are digital experts in completing 'deep dive' forensic investigations into an individual's complete online presence and can remove content that is damaging to an individual's reputation. Avantia Cyber Security 'cleaners' are practicing Lawyers who have the expertise in keeping your head above water and ‘washing’ your social media profile of damaging content whilst complying with the law. They provide a confidential written report with what they have found and what they have erased. More information at https://www.avantiacybersecurity.com/social-media-washing

The author of this Article, Paul Nielsen, principal of Avantia Corporate Services (a privately owned Corporate Consultancy Practice in Brisbane, Australia) and founder of Avantia Cyber Security, graduated from Harvard University’s Cyber Risk program in 2008. Paul writes a weekly blog on international Cyber threats which can be viewed at www.avantiacybersecurity.com