Professional Website Design

So, now we have a more professional design, which will greatly improve how I am viewed as a professional. What is funny is that I could still be anyone, with no credentials (I do have credentials) but the impression now gotten is drastically improved.

For anyone who didn't see the previous design, here is the design right before this one:







Compared to the new one:

Professional website

I am the first to admit and tell you that my website's current incarnation isn't that professional. In fact it needs some major work (working on that).

The question is, how do you get a professional website look without spending gobs of money?

The easiest thing to do is find a website template that you can purchase for about $50 without any changes and put it up (I recommend you do spend a little bit of money on one, those free ones are still pretty cheezy).

Of course then you might run into the problem I hit, I didn't find a single thing I liked.

My suggestion, instead of doing what I did, pick one. Just pick one and suffer through it until you do have some money to spend. Eventually you will have something to spend on it and you can probably get something decent whipped up for $400 to $500.

Having a professional looking website, will definitely do wonders for your reputation.

Holiday Cheer

'Tis the season, share the love!!

This can do great things for your reputation, all the good things you do during this season because it does seem to happen, should be shared.

Even just sending out happy wishes to as many people as you can through the networks you are part of.

If you are able to do some extra special things, like help hand out food to those not as lucky as you. If you donate to more charities and the like, you should do a press release.

When doing a press release, if you want it to help with the ranking of your site you should do an optimized press release. We can help with this if you need it.

Sharing Info about Family

Another question I have gotten asked a lot is how mommy bloggers and similar can keep their family's safe.

Safe from predators, identity thieves, the psycho neighbor who creeps you out (not really, well maybe really if you have one). Also safe from your kid growing up and trying to get a job and their new employer finds your blog about how funny potty training was.

Biggest tip - use fake names. Basically create a new virtual nickname for the person and this saves it from ever coming up in a search.

If you have used their real name, go back now and change it. It may show up in the search engines, but hopefully by the time your kid is grown and looking for work, it will be easily buried.

Education in School

Someone suggested to me recently that someone start training kids on what might happen if they share too much information on the Internet.

I think it is a great idea, especially any kid who is planning on going into the arts or politics (or be a well known person of any kind).

Imagine, some kid gets their big break, they get a part in a big movie, star in a TV show or something. Next comes the press (or the paparazzi/celebrity gossip artist) who hunt for all that great stuff to spread all over the place about you. This includes that wonderful picture of you with your bikini falling off and you falling into a pool with a beer in your hand.

While it seems to be true that many kids don't care about what people find in general, because they are having fun. Talking about their future careers, one they feel passionate about, might change their mind.

If anyone is interested, let me know, I would love to partner up with someone to get this in the schools.

Do It Yourself or Hire Someone

People wonder when they really need to get someone else to run their reputation online and when they can do it themselves.

Just everyday folks can run it themselves, it will take a little bit of time to do it, but most people just need to be aware of what they are doing and saying online to handle it.

But, it seems that those who are a little more out there, have become successful either in business or even promoting their favorite charity, start getting attacked. Most of these people should invest in some form of reputation management.

I tell people that if they really want to do this themselves they should invest one to two hours a day to managing their reputation. This includes the time to update their blog and/or social networks.

On top of this, they will need to invest time in learning what they need to do by getting trained on the best ways to do this.

If you don't have that kind of time and it is better to be spending that time working on whatever your activity is, then you need to hire someone.

Social Media Experience for Jobs

Quick note:

I have definitely heard more and more that people looking for someone to hire want them to have experience on Facebook, Myspace and more. They want to know that the people could do activities on the Internet if needed.

This also means that they go and look on the Internet for the people they are about to hire. They read the information that you have up there to see what you have done.

What are they going to find? When they read your updates and your notes to others is this what you want an employer to see.

While the Internet is where we can have fun and enjoy our lives, you must think of it as also a place that is basically putting all your actions and thoughts up in a newspaper for everyone to read.

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).

Supporting a Charity

There are so many awesome charities out there to support that you really just have to pick one.

When you do, make sure that you make it widely known that you are. Some things you can do (which will help with your standing):

Create an account on the website of the charity

Find a related blog and offer to do a post about the charity for them (with a by line for yourself)

Publicize the charity on any charity social networks (if they are already there, join in the fun). Some sample charity hubs: http://www.change.org/ and http://www.causecast.org/

In other words, really support the charity and help them reach their mission, don't just give $5 and walk away.

This will help you but more importantly, help them.

Watch Yourself

Part of keeping track of your reputation online includes knowing what people are saying about you as soon as they say it.

There are several things you should set up to do this.

First get yourself some sort of RSS reader (definition below), I use Google Reader. You want this so that you can subscribe to several feeds and be able to get the information sent to you automatically.

Then you are going to want to subscribe to the following feeds:

1) Go to Google and do a search for your brand name or your own name. Then along the top bar find the "news" link and click it. On the left side you will see a link to "RSS", click on that to add it to your reader.

2) Go back to Google and do the search again. This time pull-down the link found at "more" and the down arrow and pick "blogs". Again on the left side you will see a link to "RSS", click on that to add it to your reader.

3) Go to http://search.twitter.com/ and do another search for your name or brand. Click on "Feed for this query" near the top right and add this one to your reader too.

4) Not go to http://www.technorati.com/ and do the same search. Here you click on "subscribe" above and on the right of the results to add this one to your reader.

5) Finally go to Yahoo search engine and do that same search again. Again click on the "more" and the down arrow and pick "news". You have to hunt for the link a little bit here, it is at the bottom of the right column and you will click on the orange RSS.

This will keep you in the know for the most part. There are places you can pay for this service which will be more comprehensive but this is how to do this for free.



Definitions:
RSS - Because there are different versions of RSS, the term RSS is most frequently used as a name to mean the syndication of Web content, rather than as an acronym for its founding technology (most commonly stands for Really Simple Syndication). A Web site that wants to allow other sites to publish some of its content creates an RSS document and registers the document with an RSS publisher. A user that can read RSS-distributed content can use the content on a different site. Syndicated content can include data such as news feeds, events listings, news stories, headlines, project updates, excerpts from discussion forums or even corporate information.

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.

Pictures of yourself on Facebook

One of the most common things I have heard is that someone is looking for a job. They just interviewed with the HR department at some big XYZ company and are waiting to hear back.

What they don't realize at the time is that the HR department is doing a search on Google for their name. They are finding their facebook account, or their myspace, maybe their twitter account and reading all that stuff you were doing while in college (or highschool depending on your age).

Now, if they really see that picture of you in your underwear, next to the tower of bear cans are the more or less likely to hire you?

Word of advice, clean up all that stuff before you start going seriously looking for a job or anything where people are going to be checking you out before using you.