Your reputation speaks before you do, especially when it comes to someone Googling your name to find out more about you. Maintaining a good reputation online offers numerous positive impacts on both your professional and personal life. Here’s how to utilize a positive online reputation to improve your ability to seek out opportunities in life.
What Does it Mean to Have a Good Reputation?
Your reputation has nothing to do with how you perceive yourself, and everything to do with how others view you instead. Who you truly are may vary from how the public views you.
Sometimes the things we say and do are used by others to form opinions on what type of people we are, regardless of if they have met us face-to-face or not.
Whether that perception is positive or negative, depends on the things we say, do and show. Needless to say the scale can tip in either direction, but why does it matter?
What Happens When You Google Your Name
When you Google your name, what type of search results do you see? Are your search engine result pages (SERPs) filled with content, links, articles, images, social media profiles, blogs, etc. to help promote a positive brand for yourself? All of those factors come into play when you build a reputation.
If you’re lucky, your Google search results will help show others how trustworthy, reliable and like-able you are as an individual. However, not all are so lucky.
Some people might find themselves associated with negative content online. This could be the result of anything from an innocent comment that was taken out of context, to negative reviews and articles that might be defamatory towards your name, and in result, your reputation as a whole.
Why You Should Care About Your Reputation:
Taking the time to understand what type of reputation you have can help you control and promote a positive online reputation and brand that can be used to help you in life instead of hurt.
Maintaining a positive online reputation offers several benefits for anyone, whether it be business owners, executives, college students, employees, or an individual looking to clean up their online search results.
Make a Better First Impression
Improving your online reputation can be extremely helpful for students applying to college, job seekers looking for a new career, and even your average Joe looking to impress someone who might do a quick internet search on their name before a first date!
Your first impressions matter, and can make a huge difference on someone’s ability to trust you or your business.
Help Your Chances of Getting Into College
According to the U.S. News & World Report, Harvard University attests that even students with the highest test scores may lose out on their final acceptance letter due to inappropriate social media posts.
“Experts say that colleges want more than just a student with good grades and impressive test scores – they want someone of high character.” – Josh Moody, U.S.News Reporter
Appear More Professional
The same goes for young professionals applying for a new job.According to recent studies, 84% of employers recruit using social media, and 43% of employers screen their job candidates with the use of social networking sites and search engines like Google.
Network More Effectively
Entrepreneurs and executives can also greatly benefit in their professional career endeavors with the help of a positive reputation.
When your Google search results are created specifically to highlight your largest accomplishments and best work, new clients, customers and other professionals will be able to see just how impressive you are the second they search your name.
What is the Cost of a Bad Reputation?
A bad reputation can cost you your job, clients, customers, your relationship and even your friends.
If you there is information online that might be hurting your credibility, that information is available to the general public at large. Everyone with access to the internet has the ability to look you up online. The type of search results they find, will affect their ability to view you as a trustworthy and libkalbe source.
A Negative Reputation Can Cost You Money, Relationships, and Opportunities
For example, you might be a business owner that has undergone a reputation crisis due to a fake review that negatively impacted your business.
Reviews can drastically affect the likelihood of new customers to invest in your products and services. Fake reviews can have huge negative effects on small businesses, and can even be the determining factor between success and failure as a whole.
In this case the business owners entire reputation would be affected by that one review which unfortunately affected other customers ability to trust the owner.
Negative Impacts on Your Professional and Personal Life
A negative reputation may also affect your personal relationships.
Online dating has become one of the most popular ways to meet a significant other, especially in 2020.
You can meet someone and get background information all in the same place – your phone. If someone you meet online Googles your name and immediately finds links to your public social media profiles, they might find personal information you didn’t know was out there for others to see.
What you post, like, tweet, and comment might be hurting your overall reputation. Sometimes people have a tendency to overshare online without knowing. This could have a potential negative effect on your personal life, risking your ability to find new relationships online.
Lower Marketing Costs with a Good Business Reputation
Reputation management is a new form of online pr that blends branding, advertising, and marketing all into one place.
Instead of spending thousands of dollars outsourcing to multiple companies to create ads, manage your social media profiles, create blogs and posts, etc., reputation management gives people the ability to improve their search results organically.
The world of business is constantly evolving towards the standards of quality over quantity, and Google agrees. Building and maintaining a positive online presence can greatly improve a business’s success.
Improving your online search results lowers expenses and costs on marketing and advertising, giving you the organic search results you’ve always been looking for, but didn’t know how to achieve.
Business reputation management put the keys back in the hands of business owners, and the ability to work with great reputation management professionals to help create the online search results businesses need to regain stability on the road of economic development.
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