I ran across this slideshow on Slideshare, yet another social media outlet. It presents some tips and tricks for navigating through the social media and social network world as well as managing your online reputation.
It also contains several statistics regarding hiring/firing pracitces and what employers look for. It is definitely worth taking a few minutes to view.
Barry Hurd discusses his interest in an “Internet Persona” as well as employee management with regards to social media in his blog post “Online reputation expert? I have a question for you”.
He brings to attention a problem that he describes as reaching “a point of explosive conclusions”.
The Problem: Reputation management as a whole has become a crisis point. There are companies charging thousands (or tens of thousands) of dollars to clean up search results, move critical information around, syndicate positive information, and
The Crisis: a majority of these firms lack understanding of brand impact, search engine problems, public relations nuances, legal ramifications, and everything in-between. The band-aid solutions that are being employed are like using duct tape to keep the Titanic from sinking. Eventually the clients relying on those businesses will succumb to an incredible spotlight of publicity they didn’t want.
Although his post sounds more like a pitch for a business venture, he addresses an interesting issue. Social media does not come with easy fixes, problems or solutions. Because the World Wide Web is, well, a web, there are many, many connections that just one post, sentence or even phrase can affect. One person’s opinion regarding an organization can easily become misconstrued and become viral…it can easily do harm rather than good. It can also have the opposite effect, which is what many companies hope and attempt to do by engaging in the use of social media and in encouraging their employees to do so.
Social Media: An Overview