Defending Your Reputation

In a 2010 study by Microsoft, reported in the New York Times,¹ 75 percent of executive recruiters and human-resource professionals surveyed said they research promising candidates online, using search engines, social networking sites, personal Web sites, blogs, Twitter feeds, and online gaming sites, as well as photo- and video-sharing sites.  Seventy percent of those recruiters revealed that information found online led them to reject a candidate — and there is no shortage of information to be found.

The largest social-networking site, Facebook, boasts 500 million members, who collectively share more than 25 billion pieces of content each month.  For good or for bad, this type of information is not going away and nothing is forgotten.  As an example, the Library of Congress recently announced it will be archiving all public Twitter posts since 2006.

This is the new reality:  Everything we do online is recorded so we can’t escape our own history.  Youthful indiscretions, for example, may never fade, permanently tying people to their pasts, in vivid color and revealing video.

§§§§§§§§§§

For example, as the New York Times² reported, a 25-year-old Pennsylvania high school “teacher in training” posted a photo of herself on her MySpace page in a pirate hat, holding a plastic cup at a party, along with the caption, “Drunken Pirate.”  Less than a week before she was scheduled to graduate, the university refused to issue her a teaching degree because her students could find her photo online and get the impression that she was encouraging drunkenness.  When she sued, citing her First Amendment rights, the court ruled against her.

§§§§§§§§§§

This constantly evolving, permanent digital record of our lives means we’ve lost, to a large degree, control of our reputations.  The possibility of second chances may be lost as well.

For those who understand this new reality, discretion can certainly be exercised in what we post.  However, we don’t have control over what others post.  Besides, it is generally too late to delete any embarrassing information that is already posted.

Fortunately, there are several services now available, such as Integrity Defenders and Reputation Defender, that offer to protect individuals’ reputations online.  These services enable their clients to monitor the Web, delete their personal information, and influence what people see when they search for them online.

The services will also contact specific Web sites that contain offending content and ask them to remove the offensive items.  In the case of negative information that appears prominently in Google searches, these services flood the Web with positive or neutral content created using search-engine optimization technology (SEO).  In the process, this positive content pushes the negative information to a lower relevancy where it’s harder to find.

While it’s natural for individuals to focus on the implications of having a good reputation online, companies need to be even more concerned with this issue.  Why?  Because they have to persuade potential customers, employees, and investors of their integrity, every day.  And as more and more businesses are discovering, it takes constant vigilance to protect a reputation.  In fact, this effort already has its own acronym — ORM, which stands for Online Reputation Management.

For years, Fortune 500 companies have leveraged Web sites for growth, and now they have developed their own approaches to ORM, often based on trial and error.  Based on this experience, companies have identified certain rules that apply to all businesses, regardless of their size.³ Here are seven of the top ones:

1. When it comes to your reputation, always be proactive, never reactive.
2. Associate prestige and innovation with your online reputation.
3. Practice transparency in all your company relations.
4. Branch out globally; the Web is World Wide and your efforts to manage your reputation must be, too.
5. Involve your business in charitable acts.
6. Demonstrate that your customers come before your profits.
7. Attempt to create a “positive feeling” or a “distinctive experience” associated with your online reputation.

§§§§§§§§§§

Similarly, the Web site Reputation.com⁴ suggests three ORM activities that every business should adopt:

1. Research how your company is portrayed online by searching for keywords related to your business.  Also research the names of your key executives and the products and services you sell.
2. To minimize threats to your online reputation, Customer Relationship Management is a must.  Nothing creates a positive reputation better than happy customers.  A key goal would be to identify unhappy customers and
   resolve their issues before they post any negative
   comments.
3. Develop a “social media usage policy” for employees that is aimed at putting your “best foot forward.”  Rather than prohibiting, restricting, and punishing the use of social media, reward efforts that further your company’s objectives.

§§§§§§§§§§

You don’t have to go it alone.  The same service providers that help individuals repair and protect their reputations also offer a wide array of services targeted at both big and small companies.

In light of this important trend, we offer the following four forecasts:

First, the negative consequences resulting from posting personal information and photos will reshape people’s thinking about what to post.

As more and more stories spread about people who in some way have been penalized for online material, many people will learn the lesson that the content they post for their friends to see is also likely to be seen by their next prospective employer.  Public-service campaigns will educate individuals about the need to use discretion when posting.  The European Union has already initiated a campaign called “Think B4 U post!” that urges young people to consider the consequences before uploading any pictures to social media sites.

Second, within the next five years, it is likely that new government regulations will attempt to protect individuals from having their reputations damaged by digital content.

University of Colorado law professor Paul Ohm has proposed a law making it illegal for an employer to either “fire someone” or “refuse to hire them” because of after-hours activity that is revealed on any social medium, as long as the activity is not illegal.  Jonathan Zittrain, who teaches cyber law at Harvard Law School, promotes the idea of “reputation bankruptcy,” which would allow individuals to wipe their reputation slates clean for a fresh start.⁵

Third, new technologies could provide an effective solution. 

One promising approach, offered by Viktor Mayer-Schönberger in his book Delete:  The Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital Age,⁶ would be to design digital-storage devices and Web sites so that users could set expiration dates for the content they post.  Blogs, photos, and Facebook posts would be digitally erased after a predetermined amount of days, months, or years instead of existing online for eternity.  Google already offers a feature called Mail Goggles, which requires users to solve a series of basic math problems before sending e-mail on weekend nights, when their judgment might be clouded by alcohol.  The goal is to prevent people from sending messages they’ll regret in the morning.

Fourth, social norms will evolve so that the bias will shift toward not sharing information online.

A New York Times⁷ article mentions an exclusive bar in Manhattan where members must sign an agreement that prohibits them from blogging about anything that happens at the bar or posting photos on social media sites.  Other restaurants, clubs, and bars are using similar policies.  Ultimately, ordinary citizens may become more like celebrities and realize that it is a sign of status to avoid publicity rather than to seek it.