Cleaning Up Your Brand

With the proliferation of the Internet and blogosphere small, bombshells seem to be dripping each day from all political stripes on their candidates backgrounds.

The stakes are huge in this election (at least one federal leader is destined to step down afterward), so any incremental advantage you leverage over your opponent is fair game, and bloggers/media aren't ones to shy away from red meat.

Drip, drip, drip...

How does one get itself in such a bee's nest? Aside from doing stupid (or illegal) acts, a lot has to do with the fact that many people online, forget that the net is truly a public place that forgets nothing.

That's right: anything you post on the Internet is on here for good. So with that in mind you should really consider your reputation in the long run and how that will affect your personal brand. Will you be comfortable defending any (questionable) comments or acts 5, 10, 15, 25+ years down the road? Are your activities creating the persona your looking to portray?

Authenticity matters.

It's not only business or corporations that have a brand; we all do. And the sooner we start paying attention to the impacts of our actions in a wired world, the better off you will be should controversy later erupt.

Instead of calling the fire dept after the house is burned down consider creating a "fire prevention strategy". Call it "proactive PR". There's a reason why the crisis communications specialists get paid handsomely - urgent reputation management is not easy when your trying to put out a blaze.

But if you do get stuck here are a couple tips from monster to cleaning up your online presence:

1. Scope Out the Damage

First, determine what damaging information exists. Enter your name at Google, MSN and Yahoo and see what turns up in the first four or five pages of results. Anything troubling? Mark it for action. Then sign up for the alerts available at spots like Google Alerts; when information about you is added or updated, you’ll find out via email.

2. Request Removal

You may be able to have the material removed, but remember that much of what appears online is archived at the Internet Archive, a nonprofit initiative designed to be a resource for historians and researchers.

Just be sure to learn as much as possible about the site before making your move. If you’re dealing with an in-your-face blog, sending an email to the blogger requesting that something about you be removed can backfire. Bloggers have been known to post those emails, so be aware that your request could end up casting more unfavorable attention on you.

As for search engines, don’t bother. You won’t have any luck asking them to rig their results in your favor.

3. Hire a Cleanup Service

A growing number of services can help you manage or clean up your online reputation. Along with ReputationDefender, these services include Defendmyname and Naymz. ReputationDefender’s reports, for instance, include a “destroy” option; choose that, and for $29.95, ReputationDefender will attempt to have a particular item about you removed. “We aim to save our clients time,” Chanin says. “We can do in two or three hours what it might take you from 72 to 96 hours [to do].”

But managing your reputation doesn’t always come cheap. ReputationDefender offers another level of service for $10,000. Under this plan, the company uses a variety of tactics to improve your online rep and ensure that the positive material about you rises to the top of search-engine results.

Public relations strategy doesn't have to expensive, but it can be if you don't invest enough time on a consistent basis, to check whats being said about you.

The Internet is (and will continue to remain) a double edge sword.

Preventative PR, is your best bet in keeping that swinging blade from drawing blood.