Note: Continuation of 7 Key Principles of the Social Web
Online reputation is not much different from our traditional idea of reputation. It is a qualitative metric that represents social proof of your expertise.
Online reputation, however, is much easier to build (and you can do it much faster) because of the hyper-connected nature of online experiences/interactions and the volume of information being exchanged. However, online reputations are often only as strong as the communities that support them, and only in infrequent cases are people able to translate their online reputations to the ‘real world’.
Building an Online Reputation
There are numerous different ways to build an online reputation. Talk to a dozen different branding experts and you’re bound to take away a dozen different strategies to try out. Here are some of the most common recommendations:
- Set some goals: Before you start building a reputation you need to set some goals for yourself. Who do you want to be known as, what do you want to be known for, and what do you want to accomplish with that reputation?
- Establish an identity: Once you have your goals figured out, next step to building a reputation is building a self. The identity can be a corporate or personal website with a portfolio or resume. The purpose of this identity is to allow people easy access to who you are, what you’ve done (who you’ve worked with and what you accomplished), and what services you offer. This identity is the platform you will use to build a reputation.
- Seek relationships: The web has gone social. Traditional marketing and ‘brand broadcasting’ are out and conversations and relationships are in. Reach out to the competition and collaborate with them. Don’t just get to know people, get people to know you.
- Build credibility: There are approximately 900,000 pieces of content created every day. Why should someone listen to you? Credibility breeds attention. Dustin Wax has notes on a panel I recently participated in with some great advice of his own on how to build credibility on the web.
- Create visibility: Monitor trends and follow industry standards to make sure you have as much visibility as possible. Use search engine and social media (optimization and marketing) to your advantage.
- Start and participate in conversations: Identify the blogs, websites, networks, forums, communities that are most pertinent and start and participate in conversations. Leverage those conversations to reinforce your credibility and relationships, and funnel it all back to your identity and reputation.
- Be a thought leader: The term is so overused that it has become a meaningless buzzword. However, if you have the will and the foresight, establish yourself as a thought leader and work towards building a following.
Also check out Chris Brogan’s Free eBook on Personal Branding [PDF]
At the same time, however, reputations are just as easily destroyed online as they are made.
A business’s reputation will be based on an almost infinite amount of information sources,” Bell said. The Internet “is a huge database of unstructured information. So when opinions start to butt up against each other, you get a bad-news petri dish. It can start to evolve and extend beyond what was the traditional range of bad news. When everyone is a publisher, the likelihood of libel increases a millionfold. Accountability has fallen by the wayside.
Perils of an Online Reputation
- Anonymity: The web offers people the ability to be completely anonymous and take no responsibility for their actions. This lack of accountability leads to uncivil behavior and vicious verbal attacks that wouldn’t exist if there were stronger authentication methods.
- User-generated misinformation: The web’s promise is that of a completely egalitarian society with complete freedom of speech and free exchange of information. The problem with such a system is that it is often difficult to ascertain the veracity of the information being shared. The problem with 900,000 blog posts being published every day is that it becomes increasingly difficult to sift through all the content to determine what people are saying (and how much of it is true as opposed to rumors).
- Permanency: Once something negative about you has been said and gets picked up by an outlet with substantial exposure (which tends to happen on the web because fact-checking isn’t always a priority), there often nothing you can do to fix it. Once published on the web, information (or misinformation) exists forever.
Elixir Systems offers some actionable advice for reputation management [PDF] using their three-step process:
- Monitor: Monitor and track what is being said online.
- Analyze: Analyze how the visible information affects your brand and reputation.
- Influence: Influence the results by participating in the conversation and eliminating negative sites.
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