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How do your
stakeholders, competition and the media check your
reputation? More and more often, it is being done
quickly with the click of a mouse. That’s right, all
someone who wants to know about you has to do is type
your name into a search engine and voila! Out comes some
very interesting information.
Have you
“Googled” yourself recently? Every executive should take the time
to check his/her listings in the search engines (and
those of their companies) frequently. Now that blogs and
other non-mainstream media outlets are being picked up
regularly by search engines, there is a greater chance
than ever that you will appear on somebody’s radar
screen when they run a search.
Even better,
you can now
sign up with Google for alerts on keywords
in the news (currently in beta testing - see
related article on Google
News.)
The service is free and offers an opportunity to stay
current on your industry or area of expertise. This is
an excellent way to stay abreast of current developments
and to monitor your personal or corporate online
reputation.
The viral
nature of the Internet and blogs can create havoc if a
piece of news (whether real or not) goes unchallenged
for a length of time. Take for example a recent case
where an erroneous report of an NFL player’s injury
quickly spread from the Internet to conventional mass
media. In less than an hour, large media outlets were
reporting on a player injury that simply was not true.
What could happen if something like this occurs to your
company?
Here are a
few suggestions to keep you in touch with your brand’s
reputation.
First of all, check the major search engines
and look for all keywords that represent you, your major
executives, and your company.
Next, check
them again once a week, or have somebody do it. Also
subscribe to a service like Google’s described above.
Subscribe or
read the weblogs and RSS feeds that cover your industry.
There is a
secondary benefit to all this, as you will be keeping a
better feel of the pulse of your business, keeping track
of new developments and competition, and possibly even
becoming involved in the burgeoning online interactions
that are occurring in the community at large.
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