Module 4-billet 2 : Managing your e-reputation?

A new science is born : managing your online reputation! Each and everyone of you are now a brand. We now live in a world where rumors can be picked by thousands of persons and transferred to others in less than a day. Is the truth important? The more persons read it, the more it becomes the truth. No business has any control over her own discourse on the social Web : we can only tell our truth and hope somebody will listen.

Do you remember the BP oil spill? Three years later, more than 157 000 movies relates the disaster on YouTube, the newer ones being less than six months old.  Tony Hayward, BP's CEO at the time and BP's spoke-person on the matter, said he would like to have is life back. He lost is job a few month later and resurfaces in May 2013 as a chairman of Glencore Xstrata. Every newsman talking or writing about this personal good news mentioned his three years old statement.

In Protecting Your Online Reputation: 4 Things You Need to Know, Charlie White present some interesting statistics :

• 78 % of recruiter use search engines to learn more about a candidate
• Social media sites are checked by 63% of recruiters

So, how good is your e-reputation ? Managing e-reputation is a new field, with a lot a new experts to tell you what to do. But I found the fundamentals are these :

1. Google yourself and look at the results. If there is something you don't like, go visit brandyourself.com and learn how to change that.
2. Stay alert about what is said about you : Google's Me on the Web is very handy and easy to use. Socialmention.com is another useful tool to keep tabs about discussions on selected subject.
3. Keep your content in one place and create links : it will better your referencing on search engines and facilitate research about you in a place where you can control the content.
4. Never forget that nothing's private on the Web!

 So, get to work !