Companies Must Watch Their Reputation

It is important that companies monitor what is said about them on the Internet.

There are two things they have to be aware of:

1) What customers are saying, including any possible upset customers
2) What employees are saying

For the first, it is important to be on the social networks so that you can respond to anyone who has had a bad experience with you or your product. You can offer to fix the problem or some other discount and this will ultimately be great for your reputation.

For the latter, you should make sure that your employees aren't giving away any secrets as well as monitor any disgruntle employees. These can be handled internally within your company, but your policy and handling must include the fact that social networking exists and people are allowed to say what they want.

It is a fine line and hard to work out, but we can help recommend policies to put in place (which should be reviewed by a lawyer as well).

Protecting Your Identity

I have had some people ask me about protecting their identity online.

You would be amazed how much information you accidentally let people know about yourself which someone could use to find you.

I few key areas to keep in mind so that you protect yourself:

• If you live in a big city it is probably ok to mention the city, for example Los Angeles. If you live in a smaller city I would change the name to some code name which you will remember.
  
• Use code names for family and friends. I have a personal blog which I use to keep track of how my kids grow and expand. However I use a code name for my daughter so her name never gets out there.
  
• Many places that you share photos on allow you to set it so only friends can see the pictures. Realize that whenever you put a photo up without some sort of protection like that, it can end up in the search engines. However you should realize that even photos that only friends can see, don't mean those friends can't copy it and put it somewhere else.

For the most part, just keep your nose clean and make sure you use commonsense when interacting on the Internet.