Sharing My Reputation Advice in a Forbes Article
Thanks to Forbes’ Amanda Berlin for including my advice in her article on managing your personal online reputation.
According to Andy Beal, co-author of Radically Transparent: Monitoring and Managing Reputations Online, personal pages on sites like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter all rank highly in Google searches. LinkedIn especially sends a positive message to potential employers, since it’s widely viewed as a highly professional network. Beal says that 78% of recruiters use search engines in their research when they screen new candidates.
You can read all of my advice in “How To Protect Your Online Reputation.”
Robert Gibbs Proves There’s Integrity in the White House
Since Barack Obama took over as President of the United States, there has been a lot of talk about transparency in the White House. At the suggestion of a friend, I mailed a copy of my book Radically Transparent: Monitoring & Managing Reputations Online to the White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs. I hoped the book would be of use to Gibbs–and it didn’t hurt that he was an NC State Alumni. 
Anyway, a couple of months later the signed copy of the book was returned to me, along with this letter:
While I’m dissappointed the book was returned, I am somewhat blown away by the integrity of the President’s chief communications guy. Not even accepting something as benign as a $20 book–less it suggest any conflict of interest–makes a pretty bold statement about his integrity, don’t you think?
Quoted in BusinessWeek Story on Reputation Management
Thanks to Rachael King for asking me to share my advice on small business reputation management for her article in BusinessWeek. Here’s an extract:
“One of the most important steps is to do an audit of what people are saying about your business,” says Andy Beal, a reputation management consultant at Marketing Pilgrim in Raleigh, N.C. He suggests doing a monthly Google search to see what shows up in the top 20 results, which might call up a customer’s comment or review on sites such as Yelp, CitySearch, or TripAdvisor. You might be dismayed to see unflattering results high in your Google search. “Google is ambivalent to the tone of the results—it doesn’t care if it’s positive or negative, only if it’s relevant,” Beal says.
If you do see a negative comment, it’s best to respond as soon as you can, within the first 24-48 hours if possible. Use a nondefensive tone and ask for more information, offer to help resolve the problem, or offer your perspective or an apology if warranted. Then, to push those negative results further down in a search, create some new content.
Protecting Your Online Identity from Impostors
In my second interview with NBC17 I talk about steps you can take to protect yourself from having your name used by impostors.
Discussing Personal Online Reputations with NBC17
I did a couple of interviews with the Raleigh NBC affiliate. In this segment, I discuss how your online reputation affects your career opportunities.
