Comprehensive Guide on Personal Reputation Management

19 mins read

In a time when almost everyone has access to the internet, people can get acquainted with you by a simple Google search, and in this way to take a decision to meet with you face-to-face or not. Personal reputation management for individuals gives you an opportunity to manage your online brand and present yourself more accurately and positively. 

Here are some hints to assist you to create and manage your personal reputation effectively, and avoid appearing in the news stories for all of the wrong reasons with negative consequences for you.

Why Does Reputation Matter?

In the beginning let’s clarify why you should take control of your personal reputation, even if you are not a celebrity. Your reputation is one of the most important resources and merits you have. A positive image will open up new opportunities – a new job, a promotion, new contacts. Your good reputation matters. 

So, your aim should be to manage what you want others to see when they ‘Google’ your name, a search results page full with links that show you from the best possible side. That will show who you are and what you’re famous for.

Try it now, ‘Google’ your name, and find out what comes up in the search results. Take into consideration that first page of results, which is the online equivalent of the cover page of a publication – aka your ‘headlines’.

Do you like what you have found? Would you deal with yourself? Would you trust yourself? Does it really represent who you are right now? 

When people think of personal reputation management, they always think that it’s a business for celebrities or politicians. But, all people have a reputation. And that matters. 

Issues can stick around for a long time on social media accounts and can cause you a great disservice. It’s not just celebrities and famous businessmen that need management. Everyone needs to control what is being told about them online.

Benefits of Personal Reputation Management

No one becomes prosperous without personal reputation management. Once you intensively manage your image, you’ll see lots of opportunities to become more successful.

Here are some of such benefits:

  • You define your life. Personal reputation management is similar to creating a company’s brand. What’s your “UTP,” or what do you want to be famous for? Who is your “target audience” or, what kind of people do you want to attract and communicate with in the future? 
  • Success attracts success. Once people perceive you in a certain way, similar types of people want to do business with you or just want you to be part of their community. 
  • Security. When you manage your personal brand, your reputation takes care of you. A good reputation can provide you a job, a partner, friends, social fame and respect, money — virtually everything that most people indicate as success.
  • Contacts. An outstanding reputation helps you to meet people and visit places that are closed off to those who have no reputation or who have a negative reputation. Through a great reputation, you can get social access to people who have power, influence, and more.

What do you want to achieve? Whatever it is, your personal positive image will deliver it. But first, you need to understand how to deal with it.

What Does Personal Reputation Management Mean?

A good personal reputation management strategy is very important to prevent when to solve the consequences. 

There is a good explanation of Online Reputation Management and how to use it in the right way to help your personal brand. It includes a set of practices that help you build or strengthen your digital image.

In general, the strategy is based on the next points

  • Removal of the negative or undesirable information about you;
  • Monitoring the internet;
  • Managing negative content in real-time;
  • Creating and distributing a positive image (improving).

Receiving good results depends on timely and coordinated actions that include these four aspects.

How to Manage Your Personal Brand

Here are some tips to help you create and manage your personal reputation effectively, and avoid being mentioned in the news headlines for all of the wrong reasons.

Consider Your Personal Brand and Goals

What people will “google” you and what do you want them to show? This is your personal reputation, and it’s important for everybody who wants to have a positive online image.

Make a list of positive merits, traits, and images you want your online image to show. For example, you might want to be seen as an expert in your industry, family person, blogger, volunteer, successful founder, or all of the above. Whatever your perfect image and brand are, first specify it.

Also, define and set your goals. Think about how many followers you want to get in the next 3, 6 months? Maybe you want to enhance your image and change your job, or receive a visa, or attract investors or something else.

Read more: How to Build a Personal Brand

Create and Fulfill Social Media Profiles

Improving your online reputation requires attention to social media. Create an account on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest, or anywhere else that’s relevant to your personal and professional occupation.

Build social media pages out, post a recent positive photo of yourself, share your projects and a bio that features elements of your desired brand image. In addition, you should also check your settings to ensure all of your personal information and photos are private and that you disable tagging. Take a few hours and do a social media cleaтing. Overlooking one old photo from the party that you are tagged in can vary with your image now and influence negatively your plans.

Claiming your social media accounts is an easy way to own a valuable google page, in addition, to protecting yourself from fraud and mistaken identity. 

The next step is to improve your profile and verify your account. Remember, the number of followers is growing significantly after receiving a blue badge on Instagram or Twitter. A blue badge provides you with more credibility to your account and by default increases interest in your personality. Check out more how Instagram verification and a Twitter blue tick will help you in boosting your personal brand.

Create a Content Posting Schedule

Now that you have several social media pages and an idea of the work you have cut away, it’s time to think about a posting schedule. The best days, times, and frequencies with which you should post will differ based on your target audience, industry, and platforms.

An important aspect regarding a posting schedule is to make as a habit a posting at certain times on particular days. Occasional and infrequent posting is never good for retaining followers and their engagement. You should make your audience know what to expect from you. Another important idea to understand around social media is how each platform varies. For instance, what you post on Instagram should be different from Facebook. For instance, your Facebook audiences will expect longer and more professional type of content and fewer posts, while Instagram audiences will appreciate and engage better with shorter posts and quality images. Finding the balance between what to post on each social media will come with familiarizing yourself with the different platforms.

Research each account that you have for the perfect frequency of posts for SEO and write them down into your schedule. With this list, create a posting schedule that keeps each account active with positive, useful content, particular to your field. This will help build protection around your name and reputation that protects you from negative information.

Read more: What is a Content Calendar & How to Create It: Templates, Tools, Ideas

Choose the Publications Where You Want to Be More Active

Blogging does miracles for your online reputation. Frequent, useful blog posts with good quality will show your expertise in your chosen fields and begin to represent you as a thought leader. But it’s not necessary to create your own website or blog, register your domain, and do other technical stuff. You have PRNEWS.IO for such service, one of the best personal reputation management companies. 

If you need a reliable personal reputation management service, you have come to the right place. Our aim is to make online reputation management easy for everyone. Here you can easily choose where to be published and what content you want to distribute, which keeps you in control and include positive content promoting and removal of all negative content together. You may use the next service for ​​personal online reputation management:

  • media publications about you;
  • crowding out negative news with positive;
  • boosting an Instagram account or Twitter profile.

Become an Expert

Becoming a professional or a thought leader in whatever industry you work in professionally will help improve your image and push down existing negative information about you. Attend seminars, get a degree, take courses, and otherwise continue educating yourself in your field. Share your opinion, look for speaking opportunities and establish a voice in the appropriate professional community. Remember, it’s all about content and first-page online links. The more high-quality content you are creating, the higher the chances are that you will take control of the first page of your Google results with websites or platforms that you manage.

When you become a recognized professional, your recent posts and articles will rank higher on Google, helping improve your front-page image while also boosting your career prospects, in many cases, helping you advance in your respective field.

Moderate Comments about You

On your articles and social media posts, set the settings so you can screen comments whenever possible. If not, work with any comments that you receive and respond to them in a positive manner. It may be worth consulting with a PR expert about addressing negative comments in public view.

Double-Check Everything

Just as you shouldn’t push the like button on posts you don’t want to be associated with, don’t write anything online without fact-checking it first. Posting outdated or fake news stories can easily blacken your credibility which in turn serves to damage your image. When it comes to publishing fake facts online, people don’t forgive it. Fact-checking sources will help you avoid damaging your reputation with a thoughtless post. Check all the handy personal online reputation management tools.

Separate the Personal and the Professional

If you don’t have separate personal and professional accounts by now, it’s time to think about them. Networking with professional people is a positive thing for your career and it shouldn’t be avoided in the name of privacy. 

With the growing trend of social recruiting (recruitment based on social media accounts), a professional LinkedIn page could be the key to your career boost. So it’s crucial to manage the visibility of your private photos and selectively choose what you want to show on your professional profiles. Keeping your personal and professional online marks separate is always a good idea. 

Monitor Mentions of Your Name

Set up a Google alert to get notifications on your name whenever something about you appears online and you’ll be able to work with it quickly. This is especially useful for business owners who are monitoring for new testimonials and client comments. Also, this is a great way to get industry news relevant to your professional interests. Setting up alerts is a great way to let Google do the leg-work for you and not waste your time in a manual search of the relevant news.

Be Transparent

Transparency is crucial these days. The modern world distributes information about everyone and everything just a click away, and people who aren’t transparent and honest are usually neglecting. It doesn’t mean that you have to share 100% of everything that is happening to you. Set your limits, but at the same time post actively regarding your field. On the web, bad links and press are often constant, rightly or wrongly. In addition, everyone has an immediate chance to speak out and to be broadcast across social media. So you too should use this chance, but wisely.

Content Marketing Platform

  • 100,000+ media publications;
  • get backlinks to your product;
  • scale work with content distribution.

Wrapping Up

Personal reputation is the matter of every adult person living in society. But it’s also a true advantage. Done correctly, personal brand management gives you power, good chances, opportunities, and ways to develop.

Managing your reputation doesn’t need to be expensive or time-consuming. It’s the simple actions of claiming your personality, being present, and staying aware.

FAQ: Personal Reputation Management

What is personal reputation management?

Personal online reputation management is giving a focus to what is visible associated with your name in a search engine’s search results and trying hard to positively impact what is visible at the top of search results.

How to personal reputation management?

Here are 9 tips to improve your online reputation management:

  • Become well recognized. Building and establishing trust in your business can protect you from online vilification campaigns.
  • Be transparent. Share wisely the good — and the bad– about your life, your company to build trust.
  • Monitor what people post about you. You can’t protect your brand if you don’t know what people are saying about you.
  • React quickly and politely. A tip “Thank you for sharing with us this issue. We’ll fix it and will get back to you as soon as possible.” is better than a late response with even more helpful and detailed information.
  • Address criticism. Don’t ignore negative comments, responding quickly shows you care about your clients.
  • Pay attention to your Google results. If the words “scam” is mentioned close to your brand, it is time to react. A strong SEO strategy can empower your image by pushing down negative feedback.
  • Learn from your critics. Criticism can be the chance to learn more about your audience and craft better content in the future.
  • Learn from your mistakes. If you’ve made a mistake, analyze it and take action to fix the problem.
  • Ask for help if necessary. If your online image management efforts are not enough to correct or restore your brand reputation, you shouldn’t hesitate and waste your time, request help from the PR experts.

Latest from Blog