As we continuously plough in to the digital world, there are several issues that we need to take seriously; one of those is the understanding of reputation whilst dealing with social media. Prior to jumping to the deep end of the subject many would agree that it’s best to characterise the term social media for readers that are not that familiar with it.

Social media in its wider sense can be defined as a group of internet based Information Systems/applications which its existence and success depends on user participation and user generated content on the social environment (mainly blogs, forums, and wikis). These user generated content are text, audio, video or other multimedia which are mainly published on social networking sites such as Facebook, twitter, or LinkedIn. Others include social bookmarking sites such as Del.icio.us, or social news sites such as Digg.com.

Now that we have got that out of the way I’ll put the focus back on the subject. Every day we leave digital footprints of ourselves which is never deleted, at the same time it makes it easily accessible globally at any given period of time. Hence it is vital that we consider the issue of reputation whether you are an individual or a business owner.

Apart from us there are also other parties that contribute to our digital footprints, one obvious example that puts it in context would be if you own a business (e.g. a restaurant) then your customers are bound to talk about your business (service, food, staff, hygiene, etc) on social media as a whole. This means that whenever your business is being searched on the internet, the discussions that have been taking place about your business will come up as well.

The discussions that take place always give your business publicity whether it’s good or bad, as the saying goes “All Publicity is Good Publicity” but it’s only subject to how you or your business deals with it to turn it to your advantage. It is for this reason that it is a necessity that your business needs its’ presence on social media; if you don’t have a say or control, then the opportunity is wide open for others to control your reputation online, allowing them to have a say about your business.

In the case of individual reputation it is the same if you are an expert in any particular field (others might discuss about you or your idea/work). However it is mostly about your actions and digital foot print that you leave on social media. These are your status updates, videos, photos you upload on social sites, and comments that you leave behind. Employers these days search the internet for your digital footprint, if they find anything unprofessional (photos, videos, comments) then chances are, they will lose interest in you. You never know the opportunities that tomorrow might present to you, always be ready for it.

One highly important factor you need to consider at the moment is your Facebook and twitter accounts. Recently Facebook have changed their privacy policy allowing Google to index everything about your profile. To add to your surprise Google has also started integrating real time results from twitter, and many other social networking sites. This also means that others can view your facebook profile even if they are not friends with you, so be advised to configure your privacy settings, and think about what you post on your profile.

If you are in business, it is important that you divide your business and personal social profile. A basic advice is if have a Facebook account, and find yourself in a situation that you have your personal and business under one profile which is too late to separate, then I suggest that you categorise your friends list. This could be done by family, by high school friends, by university friends, and by business friends. This way you can have much more organised control of your profile by customising what each friend list or even each friend sees on your photo albums, videos, and status updates.

Now that we are aware of the necessity of reputation on social media, how do we go about addressing the issue? First on the list comes scanning, which is all about listening to what people say about you or your business so that you can be able to asses at what stage your reputation is?

 Setup Google alerts on your name and your business
 Bespoke dashboard, Google blog search via RSS reader
 You can also use socialmention.com for real time search, analysis & social media alerts for monitoring your company or your own name

Second comes planning, which is all about determining the type of social media you are going to use for which purpose, which also requires determining who you are networking with? Addressing this only requires simple logic; whilst finding a solution to a problem on the digital world it is always a good idea to look at things from the perspective of the real word as it is all comes down to human behaviour. For instance when you go to a party, you do not just go and stand over the wall, or even jump on the table and shout to everyone to look at you. This doesn’t need much explanation as it is common knowledge. The first thing we do is assess the crowd, and then off course all of us have got our own way of getting through the night. It is the same on social media; take time to look and assess which group/community you want to network with.

Third inline is consistency, often people think that social media campaign is like an advertisement campaign which has a start and end date. That is completely wrong, social media marketing is long term, consistency and sustainability are the major elements of it! Therefore it is essential that you allocate more than one individual who are passionate about social media that look after your marketing campaign. Your business needs multitude of voices to communicate with clients who will carry on in a sustained manner.

Finally the most important issue and the core of online reputation with social media is dealing with emergency negative media/image about your brand or you as an individual. Do not respond automatically, and emotionally, as visitors will come and see your anger. This will do more damage; people may have got a genuine problem with your service or making a credible point from a different angle when they are leaving a negative media/image. Take time out and give a measured and balanced response. All of this will be done publically so make use of the opportunity for good publicity. Always remember that we cannot control what happens to us, but what we can control is how we react to it. If your response is good then your reputation will not be related with you as an individual/your company making a mistake, but be related with the way you deal with the mistake or the argument you are making. Sometimes it might be that best response will be no response, however sometimes depending on the nature of the negative media/image you might come across tough times which might require of you dealing with it legally.

To conclude I cannot stress enough the need for vigilance. Always be on the watch as the internet constantly changes, things are much easier to correct whilst they are still immature.

“It takes many good deeds to build a good reputation, and only one bad one to lose it” Benjamin Franklin

Online Reputation Management 2010