Don’t be a jerk on Twitter
The Triangle Business Journal asked me for my keys to success on Twitter. It pretty much boils down to this: don’t be a jerk!
Sharing my Advice with Inc. Magazine
Inc. Magazine asked me to share my opinion on how to handle a reputation attack by a determined detractor:
With a determined detractor, there’s only so much you can achieve through legal channels. A lawsuit should be the last resort. Troutwine and Moberg should have taken stock of how effective these attacks really were. I would have reached out to prospective customers who initially had interest but decided not to go with Veritas and asked them why they didn’t choose the company. If the attacks truly warranted a response, they could have created a site with a name like truth.veritasprep.com. Anyone who searched for Veritas Prep would see that.
Read the full article here.
USA Today Shares My Thoughts on a “Determined Detractor”
Two USA Today journalists found themselves the targets of a calculated reputation attack…
The activity is the work of what online reputation expert Andy Beal calls a “determined detractor.”
“It’s like a machine gun approach. They’re trying to generate as much online content as they can,” he said. “The person who’s behind this, we can give them a lot of credit here and assume they’re very sophisticated about reputation attacks.”
It can cost $10 to register a domain name, but $50 to pay for a proxy service to hide the owner’s identity, as was done with two of the websites. A third was registered to a non-existent address in Pueblo, Colo.
“This is the work of somebody who knows what they’re doing. They have some experience of covering their tracks. This is probably not the first time they’ve done something like this,” said Beal, CEO of Trackur, an online reputation tracking service.
American Express OPEN Shares My Reputation Tactics
I’m a big fan of American Express’ OPEN network of advice for small businesses, so I’m thrilled that my advice is included in this article: How To Successfully Manage Your Online Reputation
“The biggest mistake people make is failing to realize that there’s no distinction between their personal and professional reputation,” says Andy Beal, co-author of Radically Transparent: Monitoring and Managing Reputations Online and CEO of Trackur, a company that makes social media monitoring software. “You, as the business owner or executive, are an extension of your company’s reputation. I see a lot of individuals who think they can make a distinction, but consumers don’t.”
Read more over at the OPEN web site.
Sharing My Reputation Advice with The New York Times
Lots of great advice in this New York Times article on protecting your online reputation and privacy. Including some tips from me…
Run keyword searches of your name, address, phone numbers and other identifying data and see what turns up. Don’t stop after the first few pages of search results. While they will be the most influential, the embarrassing or forgotten tidbits can show up on page six and beyond, warns Andy Beal, co-author of “Radically Transparent,” a book about monitoring and managing online reputations, and a consultant who says he has helped people get information removed from the Web.
