With the advent of the internet, the grim fact is most of us are increasingly living out our lives online and in the social media. The fact also remains that we have little or no control over the way we appear on the internet. Internet is fragile and if a person deliberately wants to damage your reputation he/she can effortlessly tarnish your fair name.
Online reputation managers are tech-savvy persons with public relations skills. Online reputation managers deftly bury negative search results and highlight content that accentuates a client’s positive aspects.
ORM (Online Reputation Management) specialists provide their clients maximum control possible over how people view about them online.
The rise of the internet has admittedly given birth to a host of benefits and also a lot of things that are not so palatable. If someone says something negative about you it can really damage your reputation. At the same time, your online reputation also provides you significant opportunities.
It is difficult for you to handle your own online reputation without the help of outside professional agencies. Outside ORM agencies have dozens of engineers who work on each of the different products that are designed expressly to fix or enhance your digital reputation.
But, there are also certain things that you should do on your own – like have a well-conceived LinkedIn profile. You should have a Twitter handle that is your name and reflective of your attitude and activities.
It s pointless being gleeful saying I have no online reputation problems because I am not proactive on the internet. This is actually short-sighted as the internet will be useful for you only if you actively participate in it. This is something like saying I have no fear of road accidents as I do not travel on roads.
Online reputation management is a double-edged sword. It is, on the one hand, about dealing with the negative comments and on the other, about accentuating your positive aspects and personal branding.
It is indeed difficult to erase something negative once it’s online. The best course would be to directly contact the person posting bad comments and explain to him/her the situation. Oftentimes, the person concerned will agree to delete the adverse remarks.
One more good news is that if you push the negative comments to some lower pages of search results, then they will go out of prominence and hardly anyone will read them.
The ORM agency you hire must be trustworthy. You must keep yourself safe from cyber extortionists—agencies that promise to erase adverse content for a fee, and then ask for more money later to keep it offline?
Set up a Google alert for yourself and keep a watch about all mentions about you online. Do not overly use the social media channels; if you do, maximize your privacy settings.