Managing Your Online Reputation: Pukka Tips

Techcrunch editor Michael Arrington believes that the era of trying to manage one’s online repu­ta­tion is almost over:

Trying to control, or even manage, your online repu­ta­tion is becoming increas­ingly dif­fi­cult. And much like the fight by big labels against the illegal sharing of music, it will soon become point­less to even try. It’s time we all just give up on the small fights and become more accepting of the indis­cre­tions of our fellow humans. Because the skel­etons are coming out of the closet and onto the front porch.

I can kind of see what he means. Yes, it’s quite likely that bad reviews of you, your business and your dog will appear on the Web, and there won’t be very much that you are able to do to prevent or correct that. Indeed, we will need to become thicker skinned and more for­giving of people’s indiscretions.

However, there are multiple flaws in the argument.

Pretty much the show-​​stopper for me is the total con­fu­sion between ‘online repu­ta­tion’ and ‘bad things some people say on the Web’.

What is (for example) TV chef Jamie Oliver’s repu­ta­tion?

His food and res­taur­ants tend to get fairly good reviews. He’s cam­paigned to improve the nutri­tional value of children’s school dinners, a popular move in the eyes of pretty much everyone except pie man­u­fac­turers. His shows keep getting com­mis­sioned, so are pre­sum­ably popular. Recently, he’s appar­ently been having a hard time con­vin­cing the US of the virtues of healthy eating, but got sym­path­etic stories and an appear­ance on Oprah as a result.

But then… it took me about two seconds to find this, this and this (sweary, not-​​so-​​positive websites about JO). And quite a lot more where they came from.

So what to make of that? Chirpy chap or mockney tw**?

The main way we gauge someone or something’s repu­ta­tion online is by Googling them. As Clive Thompson wrote ages ago in Wired:

Google is not a search engine. Google is a reputation-​​management system. And that’s one of the most powerful reasons so many CEOs have become more trans­parent: Online, your rep is quan­ti­fi­able, findable, and totally unavoid­able. In other words, radical trans­par­ency is a double-​​edged sword, but once you know the new rules, you can use it to control your image in ways you never could before.

So, if you’ll allow me to take Google as the arbiter of repu­ta­tion, when you search for Oliver then the top result, after the news, is his own site, followed by his restaurant’s sites, followed by his other brands. There are no negative ref­er­ences on the first four pages of the Google search for his name. And having dis­covered that, if you then bump into one of the bad sites, then you’ll take what they say with a pinch of salt. They still exist, but it is the mix and sum of the data we can acquire, their proven­ance, their cred­ib­ility and how Google sorts them which goes to form an online reputation.

What Oliver is doing by creating all these sites and content is called managing your online repu­ta­tion*. And it quite clearly still works.

picture credit: tom­matsch

*Oliver’s been blogging since 2003, which is pretty impressive by any measure.

Share this post:

Possibly related:

• PG Tips
• Principles for Online Communities
• Online Brits Still 1.0