10 Moves to Protect your Online Reputation

Hey there. Welcome to the Confident Communications podcast. I am your host, Molly McPherson. This week, how to protect your name and reputation online. Now, are you like me, if you have a meeting with someone that you've never met, but you only have a name, do you Google the person? How about if you are doing business with someone, do you go to their LinkedIn page first? Or how about a friend of yours said they bought a house and it happens to be a Cape Cod in this town before they can even explain where the house is? Have you already found it on Google? What about a friend that's dating someone and they tell you a name and a place where they work? Have you already sussed out the person that they're going to date to make sure that everything is fine? I've done all those things, obviously, in the last week. So this week's episode is about how you can protect your online reputation for when looky loos like me start looking. The reason why I wanted to do this episode on Online Reputation is because I know it comes up a lot and people have a lot of fear around it. I think, and you've heard me mention this before, that one of the biggest obstacles to using online media or social media, digital media, is fear. People are worried that they're going to do something or say something stupid online that could send their reputation spiraling. I get it. I see it happen all the time. Many of us have, and there are some very, very popular ones and very scary examples of where it's happened. I only have to say the name Anthony Weiner to get everyone in the room to chuckle and then also go, oh, boy, I don't want that to ever happen to me. Now, for those of you not familiar with the Anthony Weiner sexting scandal, the first one at least, he was using Twitter to send a link that contained a rather suggestive photograph of himself to a woman who was not his fiance. So initially, he did what many people did at the time. He denied it by saying that he was hacked. But then, of course, he had to backtrack on that because it clearly was a case of not being hacked. And believe it or not, he was able to come back from this, which is always a rule. The first rule of crisis management is don't assume that you're and down and out can do a lot of things to come back. And he almost did it if he didn't get caught doing the same thing again. But that's the example of Anthony Weiner. Justine Sacco is another name. You may not even know who she is. But you know who she is based on what she did. She was the PR consultant who gave a bad name to pr, by the way, before she was boarding a flight to New York. And I don't even remember how many years ago, I'll say roughly 2015, she was flying to South Africa. And before she boarded a flight, she sent a tweet that said, going to Africa. Hope I don't get aids. Just kidding. I'm white. Zoink. She turned off her phone and then when she landed, she turned on her phone and of course it blew up. And then her life subsequently blew up after that. Another one that I remember. And one of my favorite Texas agriculture commissioner's name was Sid Miller. Sid, such a great name, right? Sid Vicious. But anyway, he did something rather vicious online when he referred to Hillary Clinton as the C word. So that tweet was quickly deleted and then of course came back and said, I was hacked. But at the time, and I remember this thinking, this hacking example, this hacking excuse, doesn't hack it anymore. You can't say that you were hacked on Twitter. And sure enough, he ended up taking the blame for it because it clearly wasn't a hack. And he had also blamed a campaign staffer for retweeting the post, even though the post wasn't retweeted in the first place. Point is, there's a lot of examples and they're getting less and less and fewer and far between. However, they still happen. And there's other things that can happen to you online that can bring your reputation spiraling. Now, there is a benefit to checking in on your digital footprint. And since digital media is now an accepted way to do business, you must know what you are putting out to the public. It's like walking out the door in your underwear. You're exposed. So this episode is less about how not to be an Anthony Weiner and wiener your reputation, but it's more about the quick fixes that you can do to make sure that your online reputation is in order. I feel right now that I'm a one part online fixer and a one part PR consultant because I get asked this question a lot like what can I do? And again, it's fear based. But after you listen to this episode and apply these 10 moves, you will have done a lot already to mitigate any digital damage that you may have in your future by just taking control of your online reputation right now. And did I say mitigate? Mitigate if it's a problem, if you've done something or Prevent it altogether. Now, none of the moves that I'm going to give you today are going to be difficult to do. You can sit down at your computer without any direction and figure it out. Even if you're not comfortable on the computer and if you get stuck, you can always Google how to do something or watch a video on YouTube. And very shortly I'd like to add here you can join my online training program, their learning lab, for more easy to follow information. It's an online program specifically for people who are leaders, who are business owners, people that need to understand digital media, online media, social media, but simply do not have the time or the resources to figure out the basics. I do that for you. But the one thing I know right now is that if you don't do anything, you are leaving yourself exposed. It does take a little bit of commitment and a little bit of time, but I promise you, you will feel better once you start taking these 10 moves to clean up or to protect your reputation. All it takes is one night sitting down at your computer with a beer, a wine or a cup of tea and you will be good to go. Now, These are the 10 moves that you must do now. And these are going to be quick and again, they're going to stick. Number one is you want to audit your name. Audit your first name and last name together. Put your middle name in there, put your married name in there, your maiden name in there, along with your company, your job. Because remember, at some point in your life you will be Googled or you have been googled multiple, multiple times. If you Google yourself, you're going to see what other people see. Now there's a caveat to this. If you are googling yourself on your computer using Google, Google knows that you are Googling yourself. And it is going to give you the Google hits and links that you want to see. So if you have your own website, it will probably bring up your own website or it might bring up your Facebook if your Facebook happens to be open. So what you can do is go to other websites like DuckDuckGo, or you can use Google incognito, and that allows you to look at something without any footprints or fingerprints on there whatsoever. Or you can completely sign out of computer or use a different computer or if you're at a computer from work, but whatever. But just know that Google does track you and they know who exactly who's on that computer. But take the time to look and see what people see when they Google your name. Okay, the next move is claim your Name and what that means is you want to go to all of the major social media sites, you know, URLs, domain search and try and claim your personal name on all of your social media sites and make sure it's as close to your name as possible. The same applies to your business. If you own a small business, go to Google and claim it. If you do it, this will ensure that you get, well, the SEO credit that you receive for your business. Also that you get the proper ratings and reviews, but also so no one confuses you with another business that has the same name. Now when I mention claiming your name on social media, what that means is if you go to Twitter or Facebook or Instagram, you want to use your name that's closest to you. Especially if you're a professional, you want it to be as close to your first name and your last name. And where this is important, especially on a site like Twitter, that's a very professional site. When people want to tag you on another tweet or you're included in a mass tweet together, people will read your handle, which is Jane Doe or John Doe, if it closely resembles your name. It's like just reading your name. But if you have something a little goofy in there or something that's just kind of funny haha, or maybe it relates to a sport or where you went to school or something that you're a fan of, people aren't going to know it's you. They're going to have to click it to find out, well, who's this person? And it also may reflect differently on you if the name represents something completely different. So you can put whatever you want in the bio about all the things that you love or what you're a fan of, but try and keep your name just about your name. The next move is listening. And what listening means in the online world is monitoring. So you want to monitor your name, your business name, as often as you can, or at least try to automate it. One of the easiest ways that you can do this is by using Google Alerts. A Google Alert allows you to monitor anything that you want. You can put your name and you can put your company name next to it, any subject matter that you want, that you want to follow. Now, for My example, Molly McPherson, I have a Google Alert. Now, unfortunately, Every time Molly McPherson's the Pub in Savannah, Georgia puts something out online, I get a link to it, which is fine because I travel to the Savannah. But also anyone with my name might creep in here and there. But Google's starting to learn who you are. So definitely everyone should have at the very least a Google alert with their name. Or if you own a business or a company, or if you're a leader in a company, put your name along with that company name. Because anything that gets posted online, you are going to get alert and you can set up the alert to receive it daily or weekly, whichever frequency you want. Google will allow that. Now that was three is monitoring and four is automating it. Now there are a lot of other programs out there that you can do it that's paid. But I think for the average person, you really don't need to do that unless your company is paying for a paid service. And in that case that would be something that you could do for a number of your front facing employees is have a paid service that monitors their name. The next move, number five is check your privacy settings on social. Check in frequently and find out what your privacy settings look like. So they will allow you. Each one will allow you to see what it looks like from the outside. If someone were to look you up on Facebook or look you up on LinkedIn, you can see the view that they see. Facebook has a lot of updates and sometimes it will default you out of your privacy settings. So take the time to check to see what your settings are. Remember, if there's a globe, a full globe, that means it's public. When you see two heads, that means it's just going to your friends. And if you want to get real, real specific about it, when you post something to Facebook, you can see the icon and it will remind you who exactly this post is going to. So Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, make sure that you understand the privacy settings. And I've said this in previous episodes, that on Facebook it's usually private for people because it's just their friends. But a business page should in most cases be open. Twitter I consider to be an open platform. Most people should just have their tweets open. Instagram, a lot of people use it as private. It's just like another version of a Facebook. I personally have it open because it's my business account. LinkedIn has different tiers that you can use. The paid tier with LinkedIn, LinkedIn Premium will allow you to float around LinkedIn anonymously and you can leave no footprint whatsoever. But be warned, and I know a lot of people don't know this if you're using the free version, if you don't set the settings properly, properly within like the premium, people will know that you're looking at them now, that necessarily isn't a bad thing because some every time someone searches me at some point, like every month or so, I'll look who's searching me and I'll try and figure out why. I wonder why they're doing that. It's great intel, especially if you run your own business, because you want to know who's looking you up. Okay, the next move is a profile check. Look at your profile on the social media networks. Are you including too much information? Remember on Facebook, if you tell Facebook where you live, where you went to grade school, where you went to high school, where you went to college, what your favorite teams are, what your favorite movies are, what your favorite books are, they're not doing that for fun. They're doing that to track you so they can advertise to you and so they can funnel different posts to you. Me, I scrub all of that because I don't want Facebook to know. Because I figure if someone really wants to find me, they're going to know who I am and they're going to be able to find me. An SEO tip. When you write your bio on your website or LinkedIn or anywhere else, you want to write it in the third third person for SEO. Because if it's in the first person, if you say I do this and I do this and this is what I like to do, the SEO, the search engine optimization, can't pick that up. They don't know who I is. But if your name's on there, you're going to be included in more SEO searches. The next move is scrub your social. You've heard me talk about it in the past on this episode. How many people get caught up with bad tweets from their past? It happens to a lot of athletes that when they were in the minors or they were in high school, they posted very stupid, immature things. Specifically on Twitter. That seems to be the social network for previous dumb tweets. But you can use programs that do mass ejections of old sites like Tweet Deleter or Tweet Delete. It will allow for a mass deletion. I'll include the links in the show. Note to both, but make sure you take the time and go into your social media accounts and scrub them. It doesn't take that much time, but one bad post can do a lot of damage. 8. Check YouTube for any video that you may be a part of and you have no idea. So go to YouTube in the search bar, put your name in. Put any iteration of your name because you never know what video is going to pop up that you're a part of. I did this for my kids and my daughter happened to be on a video and I had no idea how she. How it filmed or how it even got there. And I wanted her to get rid of it and she couldn't because another girl posted it and then this girl moved away. So now my daughter's gonna be on this YouTube video for the rest of her life. Now, I don't think it's gonna impact her getting a job, you know, 15 years from now because she made a video about a balloon that to be posted on YouTube. But you can see how it can be troublesome for some people. The next move, number nine is have your passwords and know your passwords. Have them at the ready. Because if something goes bad or something goes wrong and you need to remove something, you want to be able to find the password immediately. At the end of last year, I had an episode about the top 10 communication fails. And one of the fails that I had mentioned it was the state of Hawaii. The emergency management office accidentally posted a tweet of a test. But in the tweet it said that North Korea was sending an inbound missile. And that tweet stayed open and public and online for a long time. It turned out the reason a couple days later they found out is because they didn't know where the password was to Twitter to be able to delete it. The same thing can happen to you. Not that you're sending a tweet about an incoming missile, but you get the idea. You want to be able to shut down all of your social if you can, all at once. And you can usually do that if you run through a social media platform or dashboard like a hootsuite or Sprout social. They have kill switches on there that you'll be able to shut down all your social media at once, but at the very least, know exactly where your passwords are and that other people know where passwords are as well. And then Last move number 10 is be vigilant and consistent by checking your name regularly. Consistency is the key to anything in life on social media. If you post consistently, you're going to get a lot more organic reach with exercise. If you exercise daily and you're consistent with eating well, you're going to lose weight. It's as simple as that. Consistency is the key to anything. The same applies to protecting your online reputation. Check in as frequently as you can. Set a date once a month. Maybe the last Friday of every month. Put it on a to do list. Just google your name, check in on your privacy settings, see how you're doing, and be sure to get the viewpoint and the visibility of how people see you online. Well, that's all for today's episode of the Confident Communications Podcast. Thank you so much for listening. I made this list of all the moves you need to protect your online reputation. Pretty easy to remember, but just in case a few of these tips didn't stick, you can download a cheat sheet directly from my website to use as a physical checklist or a coaster for your drink. Just head over to my website mollymcpherson.com reputation that's mollymcpherson. Com backslash and then type the word reputation. For more tips, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple, itunes, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I want to help you become a modern age communicator in your industry and help you build a crisis proof reputation for you and your business. And you just did. Bye for now.