Personal Brand Management

Ok- I have just started an experiment on my theory for SMO as a way to handle my personal brand Joe Vangieri, Joseph Vangieri. Its now two weeks and my Google search is looking much better. I am now helping several friends with their personal brand management. We are also offering this as a service here at the PR Group.

Here is what I did :

Plaxo- Set up profile add email data base for add request. Plaxo scores high in Google search. It’s a 1^st page placement.

LinkedIn- Set up profile add email data base for add request. It interfaces wit Twitter for auto tweet on a share when you post the LinkedIn update. It’s a 1^st page placement.

Twitter- Set up profile add email data base for add request. LinkedIn update as a minimum, however relevant posts on company dev will help as well. It’s a 2^nd page placement.

Google:

Google Profile- Set up profile add email data base for add request. It’s a 1^st pager.

Picasa- Up load LinkedIn and Google profile pic on PicasaWeb for a page 1 placement.

Blogspot- Daily posts 3-4 for page 1 placement.

YouTube- Weekly video posts on your own YouTube channel for page 1 placement.

Facebook- Set up profile add email data base for add request. It’s a 1^st page placement.

MySpace- Set up profile add email data base for add request. Yes it yesterday’s news however it’s a 1^st page placement.

Search engine personal brand management tactics are often employed by companies and increasingly by individuals who seek to proactively shield their brands or reputations from damaging content brought to light through search engine queries. Some use these same tactics reactively, in attempts to minimize damage inflicted by inflammatory (or "flame") websites (and weblogs) launched by consumers and, as some believe, competitors.

Given the increasing popularity and development of search engines, these tactics have become more important than ever. Consumer generated media (like blogs) has amplified the public's voice, making points of view - good or bad - easily expressed.

Search Engine Personnel Brand Management strategies include Search engine optimization (SEO) and Online Content Management. Because search engines are dynamic and in constant states of change and revision, it is essential that results are constantly monitored.

Online Reputation Management (ORM) is the act of monitoring, addressing or mitigating SERPs (search engine result pages) or mentions in online media and Web sphere content. ORM primarily involves tracking what is written about a client on the Internet, then utilizing sophisticated online and offline techniques in promoting positive and neutral content, while at the same time pushing down those links the sponsor (in most cases business or individuals) may not want to show when their name is searched.

Rather than working to raise link results with a particular search term in order to (ostensibly) generate more commerce or page views, the goal of ORM is to push already highly-ranked negative posts off the results pages so that they are seen by fewer people, thus creating a more positive results environment for the sponsor of the effort. ORM is the specialization in prevention and repair of online reputation threats, and has less to do with directly promoting businesses.

The term arose from recognition of the importance that influencing how someone or something is perceived based on an internet search has to a business. As the amount of user-generated content on the internet grew, it began to affect internet search results more meaningfully, and the desire to change those results naturally followed.

Techniques

ORM is related to search engine optimization (SEO) and uses many of the same techniques. However, their goals differ greatly. Common ORM techniques include online promotional activity through new content creation, involvement in the social web sphere (through forums, blogs, social networking), promotion of existing positive content and building social profiles. Traditional websites and consumer reviews are also monitored. The material monitored can include both professional journalism and user-created content such as blogs and blog comments. More difficult, but nonetheless relevant techniques can include formal "take-down" requests to try to convince site managers to remove negative content, and finally, litigation.

Proactive reputation-building techniques can include responding immediately to public criticism stemming from unannounced changes to a product's capabilities and features; offering free products to prominent reviewers; and writing positive comments and reviews in the guise of customers posting to online forums or review sites. However, most sites attempt to screen out such covert plugs, and rate their contributors based on how highly others value their contributions.

Online identity management (OIM) also known as online image management or online personal branding or personal reputation management (PRM) is a set of methods for generating a distinguished Web presence of a person on the Internet. That presence could be reflected in any kind of content that refers to the person, including news, participation in blogs and forums, personal web sites, social media presence, pictures, video, etc.

Online identity management also refers to identity exposure and identity disclosure, and has particularly developed in the management on online identity in social network services or online dating services.

One aspect of the online identity management process has to do with improving the quantity and quality of traffic to sites that have content related to a person. In that aspect, OIM is a part of another discipline called search engine optimization with the difference that the only keyword is the person's name, and the optimization object is not necessary a single web site; it can consider a set of completely different sites that contain positive online references. The objective in this case is to get high rankings for as many sites as possible when someone search for a person's name. If the search engine used is Google, this action is called "to google someone".

Another aspect has to do with impression management, i.e. "the process through which people try to control the impressions other people form of them". One of the objectives is in particular to increase the online reputation of the person.

Online identity management often involves participation in social media sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, Flickr, YouTube, Twitter, Twitxr, Last.fm, Myspace, Orkut and other online communities and community websites, and is related to blogging, blog social networks like MyBlogLog and blog search engines like Technorati.

But it can also consist in more questionable practices. Hence in the case of social network services users have the possibility to buy 'friends' so to increase their visibility.

Objective

The objective of online identity management is to:

1. Maximize the appearances of positive online references about a specific person, targeting not only to users that actively search for that person on any Search Engine, but also to those that eventually can reach a person's reference while browsing the web.

2. Build an online identity in case the person's web presence is minimal or nonexistent.

3. Solve online reputation problems. In this case, the process can also be named online reputation management.

Motivation

The reason why someone would be interested in doing online identity management is closely related to the increasing number of constituencies that use the internet as a tool to find information about people. A survey by CareerBuilder.com found that 1 in 4 hiring managers used search engines to screen candidates. One in 10 also checked candidates' profiles on social networking sites such as MySpace or Facebook. According to a survey by the Ponemon Institute, a privacy research organization, roughly half of U.S. hiring officials use the Internet in vetting job applications.