As discussed in the class with Forrest Sawyer, reputation management is not very different from branding management (a more elaborated comparison can be found here). However, most of the technologies available to corporations for digital branding are not easily available to be used for personal branding.
The importance of a strong digital presence
During our talk with Matt Ivester last Friday (May 16) we discussed the potential risks of having “inappropriate” online content associated with us. For example, we discussed how some researches show that 70% of recruiters would reject candidates based on their online footprint. Some of the reasons mentioned for rejections were the detection of online content connecting the candidates to: alcohol & drugs, bad communication skills and discriminatory content.
The class discussion also covered how to mitigate some of the potential risks such as controlling the privacy level on Facebook and deleting inappropriate content. Other solutions to mitigate other risks were discussed and are covered in a deep extent in Matt’s book: lol…OMG!.
On the other hand, we also discussed the potential benefits of having a strong online presence, not only to let you pass the background checks for job opportunities, but also to differentiate you positively from the competition by having an impactful digital image.
Technologies for digital presence
Nowadays an important part of a CMO’s agenda is to take care of the company digital presence. Companies that don’t pay necessary attention, pay a high price in terms of image, such as in the case of KitchenAid and Obama’s grandma death in 2012 or when Gaps angered Sandy’s victims.
To assure the proper online presence, companies use a series of technologies and techniques that have been evolving constantly as described in the Marketing Technology Landscape Supergraphic compiled by chiefmartec.com. Modern analytics and big data technologies applied to branding allow, for instance, deep insights of how companies engage through their online platforms with their customers to improve their digital presence and provide recommendations on how to improve such interactions.
Opportunities in the personal branding market
Even tough there several solutions for companies, more advanced options (i.e. beyond SEO) for personal branding are limited if you don’t have your own website allowing code insertion. For example, there’s few options for doing web analytics over social media profiles or for assessing the impact of your contacts’ actions in your image. Therefore, it sounds like a good space for entrepreneurs to explore…
In terms of analytics, currently it’s not possible, for instance, to use Google Analytics (GA) to analyze your Linkedin, About.me or Facebook profiles to capture metrics such as loyalty and recency. Currently, you need at least a blog to use GA, but the effect won’t be the same. In the same way, GA’s competitors like FoxMetrics or KissMetrics cannot analyze social media profiles. Users only have acess to the statistics generated by the social network, which in general are not real analytics tools.
Other solution missing for digital reputation management is an assessment tool to analyze the reputation of your contacts and how it might after yours. For example, you may be connected to people on Facebook that like pages that promotes sexual or religious discrimination or connected to professionals on Linkedin that may be involved on corruption cases. The last actual contact with such persons may have happened a long time ago, maybe prior to their inappropriate acts, but since it’s not possible to check all your connections actions over years, you may end up being linked to people that can hurt your reputation by association.
The future…
Social networks were created just a few years ago and their role in people’s reputation in the long run is still unpredictable. For example, some of the current teenagers posting/sharing massive content online may become future CEOs of large companies in a few decades. By there, maybe the content they are posting may become highly unacceptable; therefore, damaging their professional reputation and the reputation of the company they represent.
Thus, I believe there’s a bunch of opportunities for entrepreneurs to solve the current challenges for personal online reputation and all the challenges just have started to become visible…