6 Ways to Restore Your Online Reputation

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The Internet makes it easy to spread bad news quickly. If you know how to restore your online reputation, you don’t have as much to worry about.

Admit When You Were Wrong

You did something less-than-smart. OK, so where do you go from there? You can either keep acting badly, or you can admit that you were wrong.

The choice is pretty obvious when it comes to online reputation management. People understand that individuals and companies make mistakes. If you come clean, the bad news will drop out of the news and social media cycle quickly.

Eliminate the Evidence

You know all of those pictures your frat took of you during college? One of your old school brothers has now posted them on Facebook.

It’s all fun and games until someone important sees you naked in a puddle of your own sick. How do you think that will change the opinions of your co-workers, bosses, and dates? Those antics might have made you popular in school, but now people just look at those pictures and shudder.

What can you do? In many cases, you can eliminate the evidence.

Contact the “friend” who posted those pictures, and explain that he’s potentially putting you at risk. If he won’t take them down, then you can at least un-tag yourself from the photos, making it harder for people to find.

Also, consider the social impact of posting unwanted things about the people you know. If you’re the poster who everyone hates, then you’re making yourself look bad, too.

Do Something Good

Image via Flickr by angela n.

Everyone has skeletons in their closets. Chances are that your boss isn’t going to give your promotion to someone else just because of something he sees on Facebook, although, that really depends. Remember the uproar when Michael Phelps got caught smoking pot at a college party?

Assuming that the negative things about you aren’t too bad, you can counterbalance them by doing good things. When your boss finds a ten-year-old report about you streaking on campus, she’ll roll her eyes and reconsider whether you’re right for the promotion. When she sees that you were currently honored for donating time at the Humane Society, though, she’ll forget about youthful mistakes.

The good really can outweigh the bad, as long as the bad isn’t really, really bad.

Hide Negative Information

Over 50 percent of people never look at the second page of Google search results. That’s good news for anyone who wants to hide negative information — you just have to push negative links off the first page.

There are several ways to do that.

First, make as many profiles about yourself as possible. Use LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and anything else you can find. When you link those accounts to each other, search engines will think that they’re more important. That means you get to control the content that gets listed first.

Second, try to get outside sources to link to your profiles and blog posts. Google loves inbound links. Share them online so more people will click on them and pass them on to their friends. The more exposure you get, the higher your pages will rank.

If any of that sounds confusing, or if you need more tips on pushing down negative links, check out the Reputation.com videos on YouTube. They’ll give you step-by-step instructions.

Take Control

If you can spin a story right, it might not sound so bad. That’s why you need to take control of the information before someone else leaks it to the world.

Don’t sit around worrying that your work nemesis will post a video of you stealing from the petty cash box. You know he has the video, and you know he’s going to use it against you. Instead of giving him the upper hand, take control of the situation by telling the story first.

Really, what does that five-second video actually show? Probably nothing concrete. Either he can spin it into a negative story or you can spin it into something positive.

Watch What You Post Online

You are your own worst enemy. Plenty of people have been ruined on bored nights with little more than a six-pack and a smartphone with easy access to Facebook.

Before you post something online, whether it’s something original or a repost from someone else, think about how others might perceive it. If there’s any possibility that someone might take it out of context, then don’t post it. The world will survive another day without your witty remarks.

Can you think of other ways to restore an online rep? Are some things irredeemable?

About Post Author

Abigail Clark

Abigail Clark is an upcoming freelance writer. She graduated from The University of South Florida with a bachelors in marketing, minoring in journalism. When she isn’t up to her neck in coupons she is enjoying the outdoors fishing. She loves doing reviews for technology, home products and beauty products. If you would like her to do a review for you look her up on twitter @downtownabby17.
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10 years ago

There are all kinds of old sayings about keeping one’s mouth shut and you’re giving good advice.

It’s another story when your credit reports and all the databases which include information about you contain serious errors. It’s pretty hard, and often impossible to get such things removed.
My credit information has “aliases” that stem from someone’s bad typing, from someone adding former surnames of two different wives, Addresses I’ve never lived at or near – and show long dead people living with me who in fact never did. Their reputations are tied to mine whether I like it or not.

Good indeed to watch what you post, but hard to do anything about what other people post. I’ve fought for years to have these things removed and it’s damned near impossible. Credit agencies simply don’t care.

Reply to  Glenn Geist
10 years ago

Correct Glenn. In Blighty we went to see our Bank manager to get ‘credit’ until about 5 years back when something called a ‘credit reference agency’ appeared and the decision was taken ‘on line’.

Actually I’ll say no more as I feel an article coming on.

Oh dear….

Anonymous
10 years ago

I am fortunate in that my family name is uncommon – there are only three in all of North America, and I am the only one in the US – and, as far as I can tell, my combination of personal and family name is unique among the world’s six billion + people.

Google registers only about 120 hits on my name, and at least half of those predate the internet. I am fortunate in having such a small cyber footprint. I have not joined Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ or any other networking program. When people take my picture, I ask them not to post it online. The best way to maintain one’s online reputation is to limit one’s exposure.

Reply to  Anonymous
10 years ago

Now that’s what I call Anonymous! 😉

Cracking article Abigail –

I really should watch what I post…
I really should watch what I post…

I’ll keep repeating in vain hope 😉

Reply to  Anonymous
10 years ago

Very good suggestions Anonymous.

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