The 7 best quotes on personal online reputation

After the best quotes on the online reputation of brands and companies, here is a selection of the seven best quotes on personal online reputation.

Quotes, amid the abundant literature on the subject, guide you through the obstacles to take control of your online reputation. Thanks to their striking nature and their authors’ experience, they offer you solutions for building your personal brand.

Our authors suggest highlighting your qualities through personal branding techniques, by creating positive and flattering content. This is a relevant strategy because, while it isn’t easy to remove content from Google, you need to stay vigilant about the content you publish and the profiles you use.

1. Quote on online reputation: “Today, in the age of the individual, you have to be your own brand”. (Tom Peters).

Mastering your communication online can turn you into a real brand. That is what Tom Peters proposes, one of the pioneers of “personal branding” alongside Peter Montoya and William Arruda. This recent notion introduces the idea that you are unique: just like a brand for a service or a product, you have to develop a marketing plan for yourself.

Blog, podcasts, video, social media profiles… These authors recommend generating desire by highlighting your strengths and qualities, so that people talk about you and recommend you!

With 86% of internet users googling other people and 57% of internet users googling their loved ones, having visibility and a good brand image on Google is far from negligible.

2. Quote on online reputation: “Your personal brand is simply the clear, strong and positive idea that immediately comes to mind for the people who know you when they think of you”. (Peter Montoya).

Peter Montoya, one of the pioneers of personal branding, expresses here the importance of having a well-managed personal brand. The traces you leave online must indeed convey a “clear, strong and positive idea” of you, meaning they should be consistent with your personality and your aspirations.

To enhance your personal brand, feel free to use the techniques recommended by personal branding: social networks (Viadeo, Linkedin…), blogs, microblogging sites (such as Twitter…), by creating flattering content.

As with a brand, the image you want to project will move closer to the image internet users form of you.

3. Quote on online reputation: “Online reputation is brand marketing applied to yourself in order to be more visible and to highlight your expertise”. (Jacques Froissant).

Jacques Froissant is the founder of Altaïde, a recruitment agency 2.0. His quote shows that reputation is not only aimed at “the people who know you”: it also speaks to recruiters.

In the age of Web 2.0, recruiters cross-reference the information in your résumé and cover letter with the information (positive, negative or neutral) that appears on the internet. 90% of recruiters thus “google” candidates before inviting them to a job interview. And 48% rely on search results to choose the future candidate.

In your job search, opt for a résumé 2.0 on a platform such as Doyoubuzz, run an audit of your online presence, or start your own discussions on forums (Hubs on Viadeo, Groups on Linkedin) in your field of activity by responding to other members’ requests: all practices that will boost your profile.

4. Quote on online reputation: “Today, if you’re not on Google, you don’t exist. Building your personal brand on the World Wide Web is not only valuable, it’s essential for your career”. (William Arruda).

William Arruda, one of the “fathers” of personal branding, highlights the omnipotence of Google. Google accounts for roughly 95% of searches carried out in France on search engines. The traces you leave on the web will indeed show up on the “all-powerful” search engine, Google.

No photo, no text and no comment should be harmful to you, all the more so because negative links can stay for a long time on the first page of Google if their popularity is significant. In order not to jeopardize your personal online reputation, be vigilant about what you publish on the internet.

5. Quote on online reputation: “A reputation is not something you clean up, it’s something you build”. (Nicolas Vanbremeersch).

If the results concerning you turn out to be harmful on Google, there is often no point in erasing them. Isn’t it said that attempts to cover up rumors always end up backfiring, as with the Streisand effect(2)? Freedom of expression is indeed very important on the internet!

It is rather recommended to adopt a strategy that lets you positively occupy the first page of Google. Nicolas Vanbremeersch, CEO of Spintank, thus shows the importance of the strategy to adopt in order to highlight positive results.

Apart from the right to be forgotten, which applies in certain cases, calling on a legal service can prove risky. To manage your online reputation effectively, it is better to create value-added content, without duplicate content and with links to add. Florence Cariou, HR at GDF Suez, suggests creating clear and concise content, and avoiding overly large inconsistencies (3). Once the internet user is trained in this practice, it is advisable to create a dialogue by exchanging continuously on the professional topics that interest you.

6. Quote on online reputation: “On the internet, nobody knows you’re a dog”. (Peter Steiner).

Sitting in front of a computer, one dog explains to the other “on the internet, nobody knows you’re a dog”. The American cartoonist Peter Steiner evokes (here) with irony the anonymity of the internet.

Despite the transparency of the internet user’s identity in the eyes of the law, comments and reactions are regularly made through pseudonyms. According to the thesis of Franck Mungeam of Gonzaga University, based on a sample of 500 comments, 61% come from a person using a pseudonym, 35% are anonymous and only 4% are signed with the author’s real family name (4).

While anonymity can be synonymous with freedom of expression, it is better to stay vigilant about the content you publish and the profiles you use. Thus, in 2013, three employees of the consulting and engineering firm Alten, who had criticized their employer on Facebook over the weekend and in private, were dismissed by their company (5).

7. Quote on online reputation: “Your reputation is more important than your paycheck, and your integrity is worth more than your career”. (Ryan Freitas).

Ryan Freitas is the co-founder of About.me, a site that lets you create your personal page and invites internet users to connect to their profile. In the age of the collaborative web, the internet takes on such importance that the personal brand image conveyed on this medium surpasses your paycheck, according to Ryan Freitas.

Reputation, which is the public’s favorable opinion of someone, can indeed help you get hired, build your visibility or showcase your worth. Above all, it follows you your whole life.

Caution regarding the information disclosed on the internet is therefore essential. All the more so because this information can stay for a very long time on the first page of Google, where the popularity of a link can keep it on the first page for months or even years.

Tips: on Facebook, remove the tag from the posting of the photograph or video so you don’t appear, and manage the confidentiality of your data… As many important steps toward integrity, which is defined as “the state of something that has preserved its qualities and its original state without alteration”, according to the Larousse dictionary.

And you, which online reputation quote do you prefer?

Sources:

1. http://www.blogdumoderateur.com/chiffres-google/

2. http://www.lemonde.fr/culture/article/2013/10/31/le-buzz-que-l-on-ne-voulait-pas\_3506528\_3246.html)

3. A. Babkine, JM. Hamdi and N. Moumen (2011). Bien gérer sa réputation personnelle. Jouve: Dunod.

4. http://web02.gonzaga.edu/comltheses/proquestftp/Mungeam\_gonzaga\_0736M\_10111.pdf

5. https://www.zdnet.fr/actualites/trois-salaries-d-alten-licencies-pour-avoir-critique-leurs-patrons-sur-facebook-39751826.htm