Executive Reputation Management
"Online Reputation and Brand Management for executives is especially important for the C-Suite and expert professionals like physicians, attorneys, financial and insurance advisors. In fact, a case can be made that any and all professionals should engage in reputation marketing." --
A recent article by John Hall in Forbes titled, “The Case For Online Reputation Management: By The Numbers, went on to say this:
Major decisions often come down to online search results
Before the internet, what anyone could learn about you was pretty limited to the Yellow Pages. Reputation was mostly gleaned by word of mouth, so concrete evidence of a person’s character took, well, actually getting to know him or her.
If you’ve ever Google-searched a peer, partner, prospective employee, or that one actor who somehow makes an appearance in all of your favorite shows, then you know how important it is that the results are accurate. (How else will you ever figure out who that actor is?)
Executive Reputation Management Experts
And if you’ve ever searched your own name — this is a safe space, so you can admit you’ve done this at least a few times — you probably feel like the accuracy of those results is even more critical.
It’s part of why I write so often about topics like thought leadership and ways to build your brand. In the digital world, the web is often our first and most important impression, and finding ways to monitor, improve, and control our reputations online is something that benefits everyone.
While there are some comprehensive guides out there about online reputation management, the numbers bring the necessity into focus. What do they tell us, exactly? Online reputation affects all of us in many different ways.
Major decisions often come down to online search results
Before the internet, what anyone could learn about you was pretty limited to the Yellow Pages. Reputation was mostly gleaned by word of mouth, so concrete evidence of a person’s character took, well, actually getting to know him or her. Today, however, meeting someone in person isn’t so much a first impression as it is your chance to confirm or refute what you’ve already found online. People are Googling all the time and making critical decisions based on what they find:
- 75% of HR departments are required to research a candidate online before making a hire. Whether you’re actively managing it or not, your online reputation is becoming an important part of the hiring process. Seventy percent of employers have rejected candidates based on information they found online, and 85 percent say positive information has influenced them to make a hire.
- 90% of executive recruiters Google candidates before making a hire. And the number is even higher for executives: Eighty-two percent of executive recruiters report that a candidate’s job prospects improve when positive information is found online, while half of them have eliminated an executive job candidate because of information they found publicly available on the internet.
- 42% of U.S. adults online who look someone up do so before doing business with him or her. Forty-five percent said they have found something in an online search that made them decide not to do business with the person, and 56 percent have found something that solidified their decision to do business with that person.”
HOW MUCH IS YOUR REPUTATION WORTH?
Seriously, go through a 60 second exercise and start to quantify it. The more successful you are or have been leading up to now, the more that figure grows. All of your education, all of the years of experience and careful execution to build a good name, a good reputation.
Now here’s the pain point in the marketplace for the executive and highly paid professionals and experts: THE INTERNET CAUSED A STRUCTURAL SHIFT. GOOGLE AND ONLINE REVIEWS HAVE CHANGED NOT ONLY THE GAME BUT ALSO THE PLAYING FIELD.
Google search your name. What do you find? There are at least 10 results on that first page of Google. How many of them are about you? How many of those results are there by design, not by accident?
How about your LinkedIn profile? Do you have one? Is it optimized? Are you pro-actively shaping and influencing what is being said about “YOU” online? Are you monitoring all of the online spaces for mentions of your name? Are you building a 5-star personal brand online?
That’s ok. We already know the answer is no to most if not all of these questions and that’s why we have built a custom Executive Reputation Management service for the C-level executive and highly paid professionals and experts. Our service includes a 20 point onboarding setup checklist which includes 100’s of related subtasks related to your personal brand online. Once we have your personal brand completely setup and under management, we monitor the entire web + specific review and social sites 24/7 for you and alert you via email and SMS text of any new mentions of your name + all relevant variants of your name. We also begin to help you build a 5-star reputation online using strategies and technology tools in our proprietary Reputation Management and Marketing platform.
CLICK HERE to get started by scheduling a 15-minute phone call with our CEO, Lane Houk.