Antony Mayfield’s Me and My Web Shadow: How to Manage Your Reputation Online is an interested lay-person’s guide to taking control of their digital presence. It’s got 188 pages and costs £10.99 in book shops or £6.99 on Amazon.
With reports of sackings on account of Facebook profiles and careless tweeting, a lot of people are probably rather worried about the Internet and what it might dig up about them. Everybody has some skeletons in their closet that they’d rather didn’t see the light of day: those pictures from the stag weekend and that drunken debate you got into about Paul McCartney being the best Beatle*. But the Internet is dark and mysterious and it remembers everything, so what chance of absolution for ordinary people?
The answer is good news, Mayfield explains. You don’t need to be a technical genius or have to hack into Google’s servers to make sure that your online representation shows your good side. All you need is to be diligent; create a plan and stick to it. The thing is that Google is desperate for information about you – so if you make it, and it’s well-written, clearly structured, interlinked and kept up-to-date, then that is what will appear in a search result. Slurs and dodgy pictures won’t disappear, but you have every opportunity to become the de-facto source of information about yourself. Then, if you get involved in professional or social networks and offer value, people will link to you and your material, giving even more weight to your credentials as a source. As I wrote recently, yes, there will be pictures that make you look silly, possibly negative remarks and perhaps things you regret – but your online reputation is the balance of positive and negative, and tilted towards the recency of the material and its credibility. Unless you’re a celebrity under daily scrutiny by national newspapers, you’ve got the opportunity to control of all of that.
The first part of the book explains how to find out what the Internet thinks of you, through Google Searches and more specialised tools like Spezify and Social Mention. The second part sets out how you can claim and control your online identity by joining social networks, making sure your profiles are fresh and accurate and possibly starting your own blog or website. The third and final section goes into more depth on how to make the best use of Linked-In, Facebook, Twitter and blogs. At every point, there are well-considered and wise tips on best practise and other sites you might like to explore, as well as advice for problems like negative comments, people who ask too much of you or who post information you’d prefer to remain private. While Mayfield is one of the world’s leading experts on the social web, he maintains a humility and willingness to learn that is not only extremely endearing, but also makes him more credible as an advisor.
So, a thumbs-up. It’s probably not for you, of course. If you read this blog, you’re likely to be well-versed in all of this, but maybe a great present for loved ones who really ought to be more aware of their options. This book is an empowering, well-written and non-technical guide that they will appreciate.
*I once claimed this. In a drunken debate. Sorry, alright. I KNOW.
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