Monitoring and PR planning
Tip 1: Know and monitor what's out there
Knowing potential clients and employers will likely search your name at some point, the obvious first step in better managing what they'll learn is to see for yourself what's coming up.
Thad Kahlow, managing partner of Business OnLine, recommends doing a search of your name on each of the major search engines as a start. "But it's also good to know what's happening from a standpoint of the user-profile searches," he adds. "So, if you go to a website like pipl.com, you can begin to see what kind of information is gathered about you, all the way down from where you've lived (it's a little bit scary, actually) to your education -- a bunch of stuff that you may want to be cognitive of that's being collected on your behalf that can be fairly telling."
Of course, once you know what's out there, it's equally as important to keep track of any additions or changes. Senior strategist John Faris of Red Door Interactive recommends doing this through services like Google Alerts, Twitter Search, and Technorati, a site that helps bloggers keep track of the global online conversation.
"The easiest thing in the world is a Google Alert," says iProspect's COO John Tawadros. "They're the best at indexing and getting things quick, and that's where the lion's share of the population goes to find things. I think if you start out there, then you're in good shape."
Tip 2: Develop a personal PR plan
Once you're familiar with and keeping track of your online footprint, the next step for individuals looking to take more control, according to several of our experts, is to develop a personal public relations plan.
Kevin Ryan, CMO of WebVisible, says that having a good solid action plan -- or disaster plan, if you will -- needs to be top of mind for every individual marketer, just as it is for every brand. And, Ryan says, the first thing that's crucial in developing a solid plan is to ensure you have a solid presence.
