Gone are the days when people only rely on traditional marketing and branding strategies. With the internet into play, things have changed tremendously for high-end individuals. The Internet has brought unlimited ways to build a personal reputation for individuals and businesses.

Whether you are working as an executive or running a small business, you can now have various easy to build personal reputation online. Of course, there is a lot of importance in building a personal brand. As an individual, it serves you as your business card and it should be carefully crafted. 

If you want to control online results for your name, then there are a few things that you may have to do. To build a strong online reputation, you must consider being professional on the internet. Of course, you will have to separate your personal lifestyle. As an executive, you don’t want your party pictures to be floating around the internet. 

For individuals, it has become even more important to build an online reputation before stepping out into the professional world. If your online reputation is damaged at some point, then you must go through the process of repairing online reputation

To lift your personal online reputation, you must work on all the creative ways to improve your online reputation. Google is not only a search engine for individuals. It works as a reputation influencer and sorts out all the key information and lets the best and highest ranked sites sit on top of the search results. 

Now your search results are also location-based so if you are targeting a specific state or city in the US, then you will be able to get better results. Let’s have a look at how you can easily build a strong personal reputation. 

Smart ways to build online reputation for individuals

Nowadays, your online reputation can have a huge impact on every aspect of your life. Whether you are a business owner or working as an executive, your online reputation will play a huge role in your professional and personal life. 

There’s one simple reason to build your online reputation and place your name on the first page of every search engine. More than 90% of the people don’t care to check the 2nd page of a search engine. 

From finding a new job to landing a potential contract, your online reputation as an individual is going to play a key role. Let’s have a quick look at how you can build personal reputation. 

Know your personal branding goals

Before you go on publishing content about yourself and trying to work with SEO, you must have a set direction. You must know your personald branding and reputation building goals. What do you want to put out there? How do you want people to see you? What line of the profession are you in? 

Think about everything and craft a strategy so you can generate focused content. If you are focusing on your personal branding goals and reputation building goals, then it will become a lot easier for you to craft a perfect online reputation strategy. 

Moreover, you might want to review things first. If you have never done anything to improve your online reputation, then you can always start from scratch. However, if you have been ranking and doing things in the past and wish to change the direction, then you will have to craft a new strategy. Here’s how you can lay out a personal reputation management strategy

Start by Googling yourself

You can always start by typing your name in Google. This will give you a clear idea of where you are standing at the moment. Start by doing a quick Google Search. You can use different variations of your name. 

You can also include your profession as well when checking your current online reputation. Or, you can also include your location. Try using these different variations of your keyword:

  • Your Name 
  • Your Complete Name
  • Your Name + Profession
  • Your Name + Location
  • Your Name + Profession + Location

After doing thorough research, you will find a list of results appearing on the first page of Google. From here, you can target the ones you don’t want on the first page.

Once you have set your direction, you can then move on. This quick search will also give you the right keywords you should be targeting to improve your online reputation. 

Creating Social Media Profiles

The next step is going to be creating social media profiles. This is where you need to be very professional when you are trying to build personal reputation. Make sure to keep them strictly professional. 

Try optimizing your social media profiles like LinkedIn to portray a professional image. If you are an executive, then you must focus on creating professional social media profiles. 

You need to post positive things about yourself. Make sure to upload recent positive photos and accomplishments you have. Moreover, your posts should be focused on the work you do or the ideas you have about your profession. 

More than 85% of the US population use social media actively to communicate with each other. Around 90% of employers in the US go through social media for an employment background check. 

So, whenever you are creating social media profiles, you need to keep these stats in mind. Social media is playing an important role in everyone’s life these days and you should use it to your advantage. 

Creating a personal website/blog

The next step is going to be creating a personal website or a blog. To do so, you need to register a domain with your name. After registering the domain, you can pick a simple and SEO-friendly web design for your website. 

This personal website should act as your portfolio. Moreover, it should have your complete biography so everyone can know what you have been doing and how you have reached to the level where you are right now. 

Apart from it, you need to publish regular blog posts and share your thoughts about the profession and life. One thing that you must focus on is publishing content by targeting the list of keywords that you previously obtained. 

Generating & Posting Content Regularly

Now that you have created social media profiles and a website and multiple blogs on blogger or medium, you can start generating content and posting blogs on a regular basis. 

This is where you need to target all of your keywords and you need to be sure that you are posting blogs related to your profession. You need to put your voice out and share your ideas. It will help you improve your brand image. 

Your content should be optimized properly. You will have to include those keywords that you have collected before so you can improve your online reputation. Apart from focusing on basic SEO tactics, you need to generate content that attracts an audience. Your content should be engaging and it should help your readers as well. 

Be a true professional when communicating

There is something that you need to be careful about. It is important for you to be a true professional when you are communicating on social media or everywhere online. 

If you are communicating with people in the comment section of your social media posts or blog posts, you need to be a true professional. Make sure to help people and engage with them when talking about a specific topic. 

If there’s someone opposing your thoughts or ideas, then you must engage in constructive debate. Make sure not to get hyper or do anything rash that can sabotage your online reputation. It is important for you to stay very professional whenever you are communicating with your audience. 

Get rid of media that is damaging to your current online reputation

One more thing that you should be very careful about is the media items including videos and photos. When you are trying to build your online reputation, then it is extremely important for you to focus on getting rid of the photos or videos that you may have posted a long time ago. 

If there’s a picture of you that isn’t in line with your current online reputation, then you should consider deleting it. In a similar way, you should delete the video or a picture that is damaging your current online reputation. This is something that you should be very careful about when you are building personal reputation from scratch. 

Keep monitoring your name

Once you have set up your social media profiles, website, and blogs, then you need to start monitoring your name. Make sure that you are monitoring your name on a regular basis and checking out the results that are coming on top of the search engines. 

You already know the keywords you are targeting. It is important for you to monitor those keywords and focus on improving your search results. By monitoring your search results every week or month, you will be able to alter your strategy according to the results. 

Get help from professionals

The strategy for building and improving personal reputation is very easy. You can simply follow the steps that we have shared and you will be able to improve things in a couple of months. However, if you are unable to fully utilize the strategy and want a professional hand, then you can always consult with our experts on building a positive online image online. 

At CrunchPress, you will be able to receive a free consultation from our reputation management expert and you discuss the issues you are facing while implementing the perfect online reputation management strategy. 

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