Your personal brand is your reputation. You can’t buy it, you can’t sell it. However, you can damage it by your online activity.

Your brand in life is very important because we live by our reputation. Your peers, parents, teachers, acquaintances, employer and prospective employers can all ‘judge’ or give an opinion about you based on the online reputation you have created of yourself.

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How would you best describe your online reputation? Strong? Poor? Worrying? Funny? Have you ever considered how your online reputation may look from somebody else’s eyes? Here are some strategies to follow to ensure that you don’t compromise your online reputation.

Google Search Yourself

Every few weeks do a google search of yourself. Google your name, your name and area you live in, your name and education and your name and current or previous employments. Search images, news, videos, web and articles. Click into any content you can find and take note of whether you think it is good or bad for your online reputation.

If you want to keep note of new content appearing online you can set up a google alert on your name, this way you will get sent notifications to your e-mail if any new content about you is posted online.

Buy Your Own Domain Name

You can buy your own domain name on websites like irishdomains.com. Choose a domain name and create content for the site, start blogging about something your passionate about, share a bio about yourself or your thoughts on currents topics in the news.

Protect Yourself with Privacy Settings

You should always put privacy setings on all of the content you share that you only want a small group of friends to see but, you have to accept that nothing that goes online is truely private. Social networks like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat etc. are always changing rules with regards protecting content that is shared online. So, take a look at your privacy settings on all of your social media and protect the content you share so that your reputation won’t be compromised.

Think

Your Online Reputation is not just for business, adults or third level students. Your Online Reputation is you. Google has an ever-lasting memory and your online reputation will stick like mud.

You need to keep this in mind before you share or post anything online. Before you share anything online ask yourself a few questions, Will this damage my/someone else’s online reputation? Will I regret this? and Might this offend/upset someone? It is so important to be cautious and think before you do anything online. That silly photo of you on a night out may seem funny the morning after but, it won’t be when a potential employer searches you before an interview. In other words if you wouldn’t like your boss ir your mom to see it, don’t share it.

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Jillian O’Toole,

University of Limerick,

Digital Marketing Intern,

Digital Training Institute.