Personal Branding Blog - Dan Schawbel

Today, on Facebook I was asked to post my contribution to PRWeek because paid subscription is required. Note that the title they gave it was “Controlling your reputation is vital,” which isn’t as strong as the title for this post. Being you are my audience and should get special privileges, below is the article I wrote, which touches on the new form of reputation management, what you can do starting today and a future “mobile” outlook. I started preaching this a few weeks ago. This is a very important article, with a few tips, but it acts as a “RED ALERT” notification that you need to do something to protect yourself.

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When it comes to building a strong corporate, product or personal brand, the internet has become the Holy Grail for connecting with customers, friends and co-workers. In this digital age, you must decide which face you want to show to the world. Every action you take can be heard, seen and damage your brand in an instant. You can treat the internet as a personal prison or a world of everlasting opportunities.

Companies, as well as people have actually lost control of their brand, as blogs, podcasts and social networks have given permission for the masses to start conversations about you, whether positive or negative. A quarter of internet users visit social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn (TNS, June 08’) and there will be 145 million people reading blogs by 2012 (eMarketer, May 08’).

The new state of the web calls for lightening fast messages, which was first popularized by the Twitter microblogging service. Despite the growth in messaging, you can keep track of your reputation on Twitter with TweetScan.com and you can set up Technorati and Google RSS feeds for your name or company name. This labor intensive method can be scaled with online reputation management providers.

Messages are traveling at the speed of light

To make matters worse and to raise your anxiety, livecasting and life streaming video websites are starting to become mainstream. Yes, even Hollywood producers like Steven Spielberg have broadcasted online. What started out as Justin.tv, which entitles anyone to broadcast their life, has given rise to other services, such as UStream, Seesmic, Qik, Utterz and Kyte.

Now from your mobile phone, you can take a picture or record a video and have it streamed right to a branded webpage seamlessly. These live feeds don’t enable you to freely edit or copy and paste. Any action you take now can be on the internet live or be recorded for distribution. AT&T now offers JuiceCaster, which allows you to accomplish this same feature for a small fee.

Mobility SCREAMS reputation management

The mobile web will become the number one access point to the internet in the future. As people live life on the run and start to live a life of connectivity and engagement, cell phones will hold our reputation. For example, you could be sitting in an interview and have a recruiter hold their cell phone out to you with your Facebook picture or a blog entry that negatively portrays your brand.

You could be littering by a street corner and someone could be broadcasting that live on the internet. With the power of embedded video, that single clip can be moved and mashed up and appear on 1,000 different websites in a single day. By 2012, there will be 975 million mobile users (Computerworld, May 08’) and 30% of European social network users access them through a phone (Telecom Paper, June 08’). If you want to achieve success as an individual or a company, you need an online presence, but at the same time, you must nurture it and maintain it. This is the biggest challenge of the future and one that companies will devote significant budget to.

You cannot escape these conversations, only see them as an opportunity to face the truth, be honest and monitor your reputation constantly. The days of corporate marketing spin are coming to a close. Your name, picture and logo are all you have now. It’s time for you decide how to best represent yourself, so when people talk about you, they understand and can relay that message to others.

Stop what you’re doing this moment. Conduct a search on your name. What do you find? Is what you discover factual or inaccurate? Develop a strategy to monitor your reputation, communicate with the people who write about you and always be true to your personal or corporate values.