Who owns you online???

We are more connected than ever, but that also means we more transparent than ever. Company’s have been worried about their brand integrity forever, so why would it be strange to manage your own?

Taking care of your identity online is an unfortunate chore that we all should have as part of our online habits. It doesn’t take much to discredit your name online, so make sure you are in control of how you are represented, just in case someone wants to help you form that identity in a negative way. This has now happened to multiple friends of mine, so I thought I would post my tips to them for everyone.

Scary cautionary tales - Here are just 3 stories of non-webby people who, because they had such a limited presence online, one small thing made a huge impression:

Reclaiming your personal brand « Joi Podgorny

One of my heroes (shut up joi, you know you are), put together a GREAT post about “reclaiming your personal brand” - and she’s so right.

I recommend that anyone interested in keeping control of their own identity click that link and check it out. Seriously.

p.s. A few days ago an interesting individual called me “silly and naive” for believing that employers are now checking out people’s web existence in tools like youtube and myspace (check the link if you’d like to follow the dialog).  Awesome, right?  Well… here are more instances of people getting outed w/ questionable behavior from their social existence online (cheers to Ypulse for this grab).

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