Your online activities are no longer considered as isolated from your real life personality. This gives rise to a serious issue of managing online reputation as even a tweet containing less than 140 characters is enough to spoil your reputation. It could be a presence of a brand or your personal presence online, it is a must to manage your online reputation. Online reputation is directly linked with any activity you do online including blogging, Facebooking, tweeting and stalking for that matter 😉 This article explains 08 factors that can affect your online reputation.
What/whom you follow/like online reflect your personality and your interest. A person who is connected to associations which arouse hatred can be tagged as a person who is committed for negative causes. It could be that you just happened to follow the certain negative content but you didn’t intend to make any negative social commitment. But since your are connected to a negative association, it could simply mean that you are a person with negative thoughts. Therefore, be careful of what you like on Facebook, whom you follow and retweet on Twitter.
In the online community, we come across people who try to be controversial to attract publicity for them. It could be that s/he wanted more followers on Twitter or more likes on Facebook. However, trying to act over controversial on certain accepted public norms could lead to serious damage of online reputation. Therefore, do not try to be over controversial online as you can be tagged as a “maniac trying to attract popularity”. However, expressing your controversial opinion in a realistic manner is always welcome.
This is basically spamming your connections. Sharing interesting posts and information is welcome. However, sharing too much of content leading to spamming timelines and feeds can harm your reputation as you will be tagged as a spammer.
This is a major issue faced many social networking users who are new to the field. This is where a content is automatically posted to all your connection as a result of you clicking a link. Mostly these contents are associated with pornography and explicit content. Wikipedia says that 70% of phishing attacks occur on social networking websites. It just can ruin your reputation in a minute. Therefore, be vigilant when you click on random links appear on your Facebook news feeds and Twitter direct massages. Before clicking it check the source/URL. Most of the phishing URLs use URL shorteners and can be identified easily.
Do not try to display your ego and self centeredness on your online content. Boasting about yourself/your achievements, trying to pretend that you are perfect, attacking your enemies with your content and discriminating certain community can harm your reputation significantly. It could mean that you are not a team player and potential employers may reject you as a result.
This is a mistake we all make. Be careful of your language and spelling when you generate content online. It could be tweeting, blogging or posting on Facebook; make sure you are free of typos and grammar errors. The language you post could English or even a local language; but make sure it is free of errors. If you are not sure of grammar and spelling use a spell checker and a grammar checker which can be found easily online. Additionally, keep the content complete all the time without keep it incomplete and unorganized.
This is where using the content of others without disclosing the source of the content. It is common among internet users to duplicate content such as blog posts without disclosing the origin. Plagiarism can be detected simply by Googling few lines from the content and this could mean that you are a “thief” who stole other’s hard work to get credits for yourself. This can cause serious reputation damage. Therefore, whenever you use/refer someone else’s work online, simply disclose the source.
As you go along with the online community, there can be users posting certain questions and comments to you. It is a common practice for most of the online users to ignore these comments and posts. However, answering these inquiries can prevent reputation loss as you are being responsive to the community even though it is just in virtual world.
Please feel free to add your suggestions on online reputation management if I have missed any 🙂
