Brands are increasingly becoming a vital component of any company’s success. With this in mind, many companies will now be looking to their employees for career advancement opportunities-how. Can you navigate these new developments and make the most out of your brand?
You’ve learned all you need to know to begin growing your brand in all areas by this stage in the course. One of those areas will be your online presence, which will include your website, blog, and social media accounts. These assets can help you manage your online personal brand, but you’ll still need to watch it.
This tutorial will explain why it’s vital to monitor your brand and how you can do so and take action if and when specific scenarios emerge. There are free and paid tools available to help you properly monitor your brand, and we’ll go through the finest ones and how to utilize them.
Why Do You Need to Be in Charge of Your Name?
Your name is the center of your brand. If you want to be recognized in your field, you must have control of your name. People will be able to locate you more quickly if they search for your information online if you are well-known.
You’ll come across chances during your work, including persons who could recruit you for a new role. These folks now look up information on you on the internet. You want the stuff they discover to accurately reflect you and be relevant to the professional you want to be.
Outcomes that are humiliating results shared with others, or even no results might reflect adversely on your character, making it more difficult for someone to employ you or provide you possibilities. Although your internet reputation may not be the deciding factor in whether or not you are offered a job, there is no reason why you should not have control over your online identity today.
People use the Internet to look for information on others. Give them no reason to refuse you an opportunity if you don’t give them a cause to. You want people to discover the stuff that you have control over.
1. Controlling Your Brand in Search
When you do a Google search for Aaron Agius (in most countries), you’ll notice that virtually every result on the first page is desired. These results are due to the efforts stated throughout this tutorial, but you’ll see that Google has launched Authorship and Rich Snippets. These improve search results, particularly for individually branded keywords like names.
Here’s a real-world example of Google Authorship:
The graphic next to the Louder Online result instills confidence in the outcome. The representation also draws attention to the development, making it stand out even more than the results on the page above it. This is quite effective.
A screenshot from a video is another rich clip that often appears:
However, when it comes to taking control of your brand in search results, Authorship and Rich Snippets may help.
Control how your name shows in search results, including Google and Bing and search engines for significant websites such as YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook. Although Google+ is a part of the Authorship process, creating a profile on Google+ might provide additional advantages.
Create a Google+ profile and account. This provides Google with the necessary information to determine who you are and what you do. Include connections to your other assets, such as your website, blog, and other social profiles, so that Google can identify you with those accounts, and you may get more rich information in the results as your brand grows:
These steps will help populate the search results for your name.
Guest posting on prominent websites is another approach to affect your search results. Earlier in this tutorial, we addressed guest posting. You may leverage the authority of renowned websites to increase your profile if you can be published on them. Those websites are well-liked by search engines, so those articles will most likely show towards the top of the results for searches, including your name. When prospective employees, partners, clients, investors, and others are looking for information about you, a well-written article on an authoritative website might be a terrific result to have.
2. Distinguishing Your Name From Others With the Same Name
Controlling your character becomes more challenging when you have a standard or similar name or might be mistaken for another famous brand name. If this is the case, you’ll need to do something different with your brand name.
You might also use a middle name to distinguish oneself from others with the same name. You might also solely go by your first and middle names, omitting your last name. Finally, to differentiate yourself, you might use your middle and first initials, as well as your last name.
Finding a name that will work is difficult, but we’ll discuss the necessity of separating yourself from others in the world, particularly in your field, in the following chapter. You want to be recognized, and you want people to remember your name when they see or hear it.
3. Maintaining Your Website and Social Media Profiles
You’ll note that when you search for the names of individuals you like, people with great personal brands, their websites, and blogs come up high in the results, but you’ll also see their social accounts.
Because social profiles are popular websites, they score well. As a result, social media profiles are increasingly recognized as relevant by search engines, and such profiles are returned in name searches because they give valuable information to the searchers.
However, when looking for a person’s name, one wrinkle in the search results is that the person’s most recent social page generally ranks highly. The one exception could be Google+, but for someone who utilizes Twitter, you’ll typically find that their Twitter profile ranks high.
Maintaining your website with new information is one technique for managing your search results. A blog is an excellent method to do this. By keeping your chosen social page updated and fresh, you can also control the social profile that ranks well for your name.
How to Get Rid of Less-Than-Perfect Search Results?
Finding and eliminating less-than-ideal search results is one of the most frustrating aspects of online brand management. Nobody is flawless, and in today’s society, an ugly picture, video, or article might quickly get to the top of the search results.
If you do a search for your name and discover results that might potentially harm your brand, you should get them deleted. Here are the measures you can take to take control of your online brand and ensure that people see what you want them to see by removing such listings.
1. The first step is to contact the content owner.
Let’s imagine a buddy shared a snapshot of you from college or a fun night out. You want to get rid of that picture since it isn’t your finest. Imagine you made a political blog post on someone else’s site many years ago that was essentially a rant and does not reflect well on you now.
The first step in removing these unfavorable results is to contact the website or profile owners and request that the information be removed. Explain why you want the data deleted. The majority of people will comprehend.
If you know the person’s email address, you may contact them by email. To get websites, you might utilize contact forms. You may also get someone through social media but use direct messaging to keep the dialogue secret.
Never be rude in your approach while reaching out. You don’t want to provide a motive for the individual to retain the information on their site. Some people will be challenging, but always be kind and grateful. If they refuse to remove the material, you may use the alternative procedures listed below.
At all costs, avoid becoming combative. It may result in additional unfavorable outcomes and reactions, which may negatively affect your character even more than the initial material.
2. Delete Your Own Social Profiles Or Contact Social Networks
If you wish to deactivate a social profile (maybe a MySpace one), you can do it yourself. It may be an old social media account or a forum account where you used to write things that were amusing five or ten years ago but now seem juvenile and improper. Then, if you still have access, log in and remove the whole profile, as well as any related information.
If you cannot acquire access, you may generally contact the website or social media platform, explain the problem, and the information will be removed. Keep it kind and nonabrasive, and you’ll have a better chance of getting the data deleted.
3. If Negative Comments Violate Site Rules, Report Them.
When it comes to lousy material, one advantage you have is that you can typically ask websites to delete it if it violates the site’s code of conduct. In addition, if someone says anything about you on the internet that isn’t accurate or violates the website’s rules, there is typically a way to report the item.
If that isn’t possible, you may generally contact the site’s administrators using a contact form or an email. Show them the objectionable material, cite the relevant rule from their code, and request that it be deleted.
On social media, you’ll often get unpleasant or insulting remarks. These might hurt your brand. People can usually see right through the individual who wrote it, but if it gets out of hand, the social network will most likely react if you report the information.
4. Work To Achieve Positive Outcomes To Hide Negative Outcomes
Finally, if the strategies mentioned above fail, you can still take control of your search and social media results by providing more relevant content that is more likely to rank and be noticed. You may hide unfavorable outcomes by burying good products.
Create a personal website. On a blog, keep it up to date with new stuff. Create your social network accounts and maintain them up to date with further information. These sites will begin to rank and push unfavorable results to the bottom of the page, particularly if you can create authority for them via links and social sharing.
Look for opportunities to guest blog on well-known websites. This is an intelligent method that we discussed previously in the chapter. The higher the authority of a website, the more likely it is to score high in search results for your name.
Tools for Keeping an Eye on Your Brand
Big businesses must be aware of what is happening with their image online. However, it isn’t easy to manually look for and locate every reference of a major brand on the internet. That is why there are solutions available to assist these companies in keeping track of their brand names, goods, and services.
These monitoring tools, though, aren’t only for huge businesses. Individuals may use these tools to keep track of names and other objects, such as companies they’d want to cooperate with. To keep track of job vacancies, you may wish to keep an eye on mentions of specific job names on social media. These tools handle all of the legwork for you in terms of finding information and allowing you to get what you need fast so you can act.
1. Google Alerts
Google Alerts is a Google service that is available for free. When it comes to crawling the Internet for information, Google is one of the finest. For them, Google Alerts is a valuable tool, and it does a decent job of locating names, phrases, and keywords published any place the Googlebot can access them.
To use Google Alerts, you’ll need a Google account and a Gmail address.
The first alert to set up is the one for your name, which you selected to create for yourself in the previous chapter. Put your name in quotation marks. This guarantees that you only get notifications for your actual name, rather than cases when your first name occurs in one place on a website, and your surname name appears in another.
The default settings for getting notifications are adequate. Once a day, you’ll get alerts from anywhere your name is referenced online. You may arrange the messages to go to your email as they happen if you want, which is good if you don’t receive many results.
You may then use Google Alerts to establish a list of terms and phrases that you wish to keep an eye on. For example, it might be different spellings of your name, company names, job descriptions, etc.
Google Alerts has several restrictions. You only receive notifications for material that Googlebot can access. Thus information hidden behind passwords, such as on social networking sites, is not detected, and you may not be aware when you’re referenced on such sites.
2. Radian6
In 2011, Salesforce bought Radian6, a standalone monitoring software company. You may use the tool to monitor mentions of your name and other terms throughout the web on millions of different websites, including Facebook and Twitter. It also keeps track of things like blog comments and forum postings, among other things.
Radian6 may be used with Salesforce to detect brand mentions and incorporate them into a sales effort, but it also offers value for people with personal branding ambitions.
You may enter the same information as in Google Alerts, such as your name, company name, etc. Then you may keep an eye out for such keywords and phrases being mentioned. On a dashboard, you’ll have access to the data.
You may leave to respond to a particular remark on a blog or in a forum discussion when you perceive a chance. You may respond to a new job ad and do everything else we’ve covered in this tutorial.
3. Mention
Another social media monitoring tool is Mention. It’s a stand-alone program that functions similarly to Google Alerts but goes above and beyond a free service. However, with Mention, you can receive your first alert for free, allowing you to monitor mentions of your name throughout the internet, even on select social networking platforms.
The program also provides statistics and reports on the number of times your notifications have been mentioned. This is beneficial because it helps you establish targets for the number of times your name should be said each month or quarter, and it also allows you to measure your success.
Increased exposure to your name is one of the aims of personal brand management. Your awareness will grow as you write more blog entries, guest posts, and comments and posts to blogs and forums. With Mention, you can monitor all of those interactions, including the number of shares your material gets, which is extremely useful when you have a great post.
4. Talkwalker
Another monitoring tool is Talkwalker. Like the other tools, you may input your name, but you can also add related subjects. As a result, you may be able to work in the industry in which you now work or want to work in the future.
You can obtain real-time information about your industry with Talkwalker to react to the latest events and trends. For example, when something popular appears in the stream, you can instantly respond with social network updates or a blog post to remark on it. You may also utilize the program to keep track of current trends and rapidly pitch popular websites for guest pieces since they’ll be seeking hot subject topics for their sites.
5. HootSuite
HootSuite is a full-fledged social media management system. You may not only monitor various social media mentions of your name, but you can also use the application to manage each of your social accounts by sending updates, answers, and more.
Hootsuite allows you to consolidate your social media activities into a single platform. This is an excellent tool for locating and forming connections with individuals you wish to communicate with on social media. First, use social media to interact with your target audience. Then, follow up with those who react and continue communicating with them to develop a relationship.
On your blog, make top lists. For example, write a post titled “Top CMOs In Online Retail,” for example. Then, when you share the message on social media, include the names of the people mentioned in it. After those individuals re-share and engage with the content, keep replying to their updates and leaving comments. Don’t be obnoxious, but use HootSuite to stay in contact and monitor your connection.
6. Moz Fresh Alerts
Fresh Web Explorer is a component of the Moz software package, and Moz Fresh Alerts is a part of it. Fresh Alerts are designed to deliver more accurate results than Google Alerts.
In this piece, Moz makes some excellent tips for their tool. First, they suggest that you use the tool to develop linkages. For example, you may use Fresh Alerts to find out when someone mentions your name in a blog post, forum, or other public place and contact them to ask if they would link to your website. This creates a traffic-generating link to your site and boosts the total amount of links to your site, which is still a significant SEO element.
According to Moz, you may also monitor rivals and the performance of your material and uncover publication and guest post possibilities.
7. Twitter Search Tool
Last but not least, don’t forget about Twitter Search. When you’re connected to your Twitter account, you may use the search tool to look for any name, term, or phrase that has been discussed on the platform.
You can watch your mentions in your Notifications stream, but you’ll need to utilize Twitter Search and search for “your name” to track essential words of your name. Keeping it in quotations ensures that you get the correct results for your search. You may also lookup the URLs of your website and blog. You’ll be notified whenever one of your pages or articles is shared on Twitter without mentioning your Twitter handle.
Negativity: How Not To Deal With It
When you’re building your brand online, you’ll run across some negative individuals who respond negatively to your articles. Using social media sites such as Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook provides you with a platform, giving others a forum to express their thoughts about you. It may even happen on your website and blog.
You must put yourself out there by sharing your opinions and generating material to establish your brand. What you have to say will be well received. They will find value in what you contribute, but others will be critical, which will be tough to deal with.
Trying to “fix” a negative person’s sentiments about you and your stuff online is the worst thing you can do. They’ve made up their minds about you, and what you’re doing, so there’s a slight chance you’ll persuade them differently. Instead, you’re sparking their passion and demonstrating your willingness to interact with them by responding to their input. This allows them to continue to have a good time on your account. They’re trying to elicit a reaction from you, and when you respond, particularly with intense emotion, you’re giving them precisely what they want.
In other cases, you may be the recipient of constructive criticism. There is a distinction between folks who hurl unfounded accusations at you and those who provide you helpful advice. People have fought against criticism when this form of input is given in an improper setting, which may lead to big blowups and highly public and humiliating situations.
There’s a story about a couple who operated a restaurant. They appeared on a prominent television program and received helpful feedback. Unfortunately, the pair saw it as harmful and retaliated. People began to remark on the couple’s Facebook page after fighting back against the program. The pair was enraged and retaliated with a volley of remarks. This piqued the interest of others following the team online, and the online brawl became international news.
Here are a few more instances of individuals, including celebrities, experiencing social media meltdowns.
This is a clear illustration of how not to deal with negativity. Never retaliate in the face of helpful criticism. You may decide whether or not to utilize the feedback, but you should never fight back, particularly in a public venue such as Facebook or another social networking site. You don’t even want to fight back in your blog’s comments section. Again, you’ll never “win” these arguments or persuade the other party that they’re wrong and you’re right.
How Do You Deal With Negativity?
Ignoring negativity may be the best approach to deal with it. But unfortunately, negativity is frequently directed at you by a loud minority of the audience. Some are just specific individuals who make other people feel miserable. The crucial thing to remember is that they aren’t the folks you’re looking for. You’re not providing them with the material. You’re not attempting to get anything from them or create bonds with them.
Ignore the naysayers and concentrate on the ones who matter. When you let go of the negative individuals in your life, you can focus on what matters, including constructive criticism from those who care about you.
Negativity may be dealt with in a variety of ways. On Twitter, singer James Blunt had a high-profile response to nasty individuals who connected with him. The artist used a mocking tone in response to the nasty comments on social media. It was well-received, but it was a dangerous move. James Blunt was able to have a good time without really criticizing the individuals to whom he was reacting. Outside, spectators observed what he was doing, and it was highly received. It revealed a little bit of his personality and the fact that he didn’t take himself too seriously.
Taking this strategy is, once again, dangerous. When it comes to criticism on social media, the silent approach typically works best. There’s so much danger in responding to it, but if you have success engaging in unpleasant online contact.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I manage my brand?
A: The best way to do this is by checking out the About Me section of your profile. If you would like to learn more about how you can manage and improve your brand, feel free to check out https://www.branding101.com/.
How do I make sure my brand stands out?
A: You need to find a way that is not too aggressive yet memorable. Try something like The Creative Gentleman. It’s short and catchy while also being somewhat unique in its own right.