Effective Internet Presence: Now required for success in business and life Ted Demopoulos 31 What’s there? Anything? Are any of the first page entries you? How about the next couple of pages? If nothing shows up, try your name in quotes. “The majority of internet users who have the inclination to query their names with a search engine do find some relevant results (60%), but a sizable segment (38%) report that a simple search does not yield any information connected to their name.” Digital Footprints, Pew Internet and American Life Project, December 2007 Next try searching on your name and other distinguishing terms just like someone else Googling you would. Try your name and where you live, your name and the company you work for, your name and your profession – be creative, just like the person considering hiring you or the chick that thinks you’re cute but is afraid you might be a dangerous nutcase will be. Take notes on what you find, and whether the search results about you, if any, are good, bad, or indifferent. Next try the Yahoo! search engine, yahoo.com. Yahoo! is second only to Google in the search engine world, although a distant second. The results WILL be much different. Again take notes. Effective Internet Presence: Now required for success in business and life Ted Demopoulos 32 If really motivated, you can also try Microsoft’s Live Search, live.com, although that’s a distant third at best. Now all these three search engines can also do images searches (that means pictures) as well as video searches. You may want to check these as well, especially if your text based searches returned lots of information on you, i.e. there is lots of stuff on the Internet about you. Maybe You Have Little or No Internet Presence? Where to start? You might start by creating a LinkedIn profile and then connecting with some friends and colleagues in LinkedIn. It’s free, easy, and cheap. Next, you might review some books in your field on Amazon and set up an Amazon profile. This is also free, but you do need to be an Amazon customer. Now head over to Technorati.com and find some blogs in your area, whether it be IT, marketing, cooking, or something else. There are blogs on almost every topic and profession, even the world’s oldest! Read until you find some posts where you can add some useful and intelligent comments, and use your LinkedIn profile’s URL. Effective Internet Presence: Now required for success in business and life Ted Demopoulos 33 OK, you’ve got a good start. Keep at it, and remember that it does take the search engines a little while to find your new Internet presence and then pay much attention. You’ve Got More than a Little Internet Presence, Now What? Keep building. Keep creating content associated with your name. Periodically try a new technique. There are lots of choices, but you can’t sit still because the Internet is changing rapidly. I’m going to try video next. Maybe I’ll hate it and quit, or maybe I’ll love it and my next gen Internet Presence will have lots of video. Regularly google yourself to see what comes up. You can also use the free Google Alerts service which will email you when Google finds new content with specific words and phrases. For example, I have an alert for “Ted Demopoulos”. And if you are an organization or business? Well you had better be googleable too. Certainly a search on your name better bring up your organization’s Web site. Effective Internet Presence: Now required for success in business and life Ted Demopoulos 34 Also a google of what you do or sell should ideally find your web presence, but that may be much tougher. Let’s say you sell bathtubs or sex. A google of “bathtubs” or “sex” is probably not going to return anything about your business on the first few pages as these terms are just too competitive. Hmmm, but what’s special about your organization? Maybe you specialize in “Antique 1700s reproduction bathtubs” or pictures of naked “bubble butt redheads” and can score highly on those and related search terms. Then again, maybe your business is regional in nature, and you can score highly with the search engines on “Boston bathtubs” or “Toledo whorehouse.” Effective Internet Presence: Now required for success in business and life Ted Demopoulos 35 How to Bury Dirt Uh oh, some bad stuff or at least undesirable or inaccurate things about you are high in the search results. Digital dirt is the term some people use. What you going do? • You can request to have undesirable things taken down, but that may or may not work. I’m sure Bosley Hair Replacement would love to have Bosley Medical Violations, an anti-Bosley site, go away, but despite Bosley’s lawsuit it’s still there. Similarly, I’m sure United Airlines, united.com, would love to have untied.com, an anti- United Airlines site, go away, but I doubt it will. • You can bury the digital dirt in the search results. This is usually the best course of action. Effective Internet Presence: Now required for success in business and life Ted Demopoulos 36 By generating lots of positive Internet content about yourself, the undesirable results could be relegated to page 40 or so of the search engines results, where nobody looks. All the techniques we discussed before work well, but some negative search results just might not go away. • If “undesirable results” just won’t go away, if for example you are OJ Simpson or allegedly embezzled a few billion dollars, there are two things you MUST do: 1. Present your side of the story. That means some of the top ten results must be yours. You might directly refute the “undesirable results” or simply present yourself in an alternate and more favorable light. 2. Know about the “undesirable results.” There are plenty of anecdotes about people who had digital dirt they didn’t know about that affected their lives negatively. For example, you might tell potential dates and employers, “I’m not THAT OJ Simpson.” If you don’t know you can’t do anything about it. Effective Internet Presence: Now required for success in business and life Ted Demopoulos 37 A Few Words About Blogs, Bulletin Boards and Other Interactive Media If there is anything negative about you (or your organization or products etc.) on a blog or similar media, you can go leave comments and directly defend yourself. That doesn’t mean you should! Everything needs to be taken on a case-by-case basis. If the negative comments are silly and not believable, you should typically ignore them. For example, when bloggers found Target appeared to be selling marijuana for $25.25 and insisted it was a public relations crisis, Target ignored them. No one really believed they were selling pot; it was a simple computer glitch. Stoners were not lining up to buy marijuana at Target. No crisis ensued. If you are at fault however, quickly and honestly step up and admit fault. Be honest and correct the problem as quickly as possible. Honesty and openness are the only way to defuse the situation! It’s already out in the open, and you can’t and shouldn’t try to “run and hide.” Effective Internet Presence: Now required for success in business and life Ted Demopoulos 38 So, Where Are You Now? In the Movie “The Jerk,” Steve Martin is very excited when his name first appears in the phonebook. He is in “print”; he’s made it. The phonebook is obsolete. “Print” is getting closer to obsolete every day, despite my love of physical paper books. If the “The Jerk” were made today, Steve Martin would be very excited when Google first indexes him. Can you be Googled? Or Yahoo!ed or Microsoft Live Searched? Do you like what comes up? Where are you in building an Effective Internet Presence? The trend is clear. More and more people are googling you, whether they are potential employers, dates, old friends and colleagues looking for you, the authorities investigating you, aliens considering abducting you, or who knows what else. Effective Internet Presence: Now required for success in business and life Ted Demopoulos 39 Beyond Googleability We’ve talked primarily about “googleability,” the ability for others to look you up on the Internet and hopefully find good things about you, whether they want to date you, hire you, buy your insect repellent, play golf with you, or whatever. We could look at an Effective Internet Presence as having three levels. 1. Googleability: People can find you easily online, and you look good! 2. Ubiquity: Not only do you google well, but you are all over the place in your niche. People NOT looking for you keep tripping over you, and hopefully lots of them dig what you have to say. 3. Thought Leadership: You have new and independent thoughts and are credible. People may or may not agree with you, but they stop and read/listen. People discuss what you’re talking about. You are widely accepted as innovative. Your Internet presence is becoming more and more important. Make it an Effective Internet Presence. Effective Internet Presence: Now required for success in business and life Ted Demopoulos 40 About The Author: Ted Demopoulos is consultant, speaker and writer who specializes in the seemingly unlikely combination of Internet Business Strategy and Information Security. “It’s all about information,” Ted says, “Either spreading it as far and wide as possible or restricting its access to those that need it, depending on the business requirements.” He has been on the Internet forever and using email since well before the term ‘email’ was ever coined. Ted has written several books on the Internet and Business, a couple of which are pictured above. He lives in Durham, New Hampshire, USA with his wife, three children, and dog who put up with him remarkably well. Signup for Ted’s free newsletter at www.EffectiveInternetPresence.com to learn more about developing an Effective Internet Presence, including upcoming teleseminars and hopefully another ebook or two on the subject. More information about Ted is available via Google, or: Internet Business Strategy: www.EffectiveInternetPresence.com Information Security: www.demop.com . innovative. Your Internet presence is becoming more and more important. Make it an Effective Internet Presence. Effective Internet Presence: Now required for success in business and life Ted Demopoulos 40 About. remarkably well. Signup for Ted’s free newsletter at www.EffectiveInternetPresence.com to learn more about developing an Effective Internet Presence, including upcoming teleseminars and hopefully. organization’s Web site. Effective Internet Presence: Now required for success in business and life Ted Demopoulos 34 Also a google of what you do or sell should ideally find your web presence, but that