Personal branding -

managing your
online reputation

Copyright © 2020 All rights reserved Amicucci Formazione srl - Civitanova Marche - Italy
Index - Personal branding - Managing your online reputation

Index
1. Reputation on the web

2. Learn to manage your online

reputation

3. 5 Steps to a healthy online

reputation

4. Discover how to find out what's

being said about you online

5. Improve your online reputation

with an effective linkedin profile

6. Conclusions

7. Technique - personal branding:

how to manage your online profile

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Notes- Personal branding - Managing your online reputation

“You Never Get a Second Chance to Make a First Impression”

1980s Head & Shoulders Commercial

Reputation on the web

In a world where the real and the virtual often overlap, it is
essential to take care of your reputation on the web, understand
how to make it reflect who you really are and protect it from
situations that can harm your image.

Here's a quick look at what to do to manage your online profile.

O Learn tools and techniques for managing your online reputation.

O Discover how to find out what's being said about you on the web.

O Improve your online reputation with an effective LinkedIn profile.

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Notes- Personal branding - Managing your online reputation

Learn to manage your

online reputation
Online networks, and more generally the world of the
internet, are like a huge public square where connected
people can interact, sharing information and opinions
that do not always have to do with the world of work.

Let's look at some tips for effective personal branding:

O Personal branding is not so much what we say directly about ourselves but
rather what other say about us, as a result of the image we convey;

O Don't convey a false or exaggerated image of yourself;

O Personal branding is not only for stars;

O Identify the key words that identify your profession;

O Keep your social network profiles up to date;

O Respect the netiquette of the web-based environments you participate in;

O Check your name online at least once a week;

O Establish a goal: how do you see yourself in 5 years? Where would you like
to be?

O Ask for feedback from friends, colleagues and family members to

understand how your virtual image corresponds to real life;

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Notes- Personal branding - Managing your online reputation

O Be original, find something that makes you unique, and talk about your
most interesting projects: your passions also describe who you are.

5 steps to a healthy
online reputation
Let's discover how to deal strategically with online personal branding in 5
simple steps.

Gauge your reputation

Bring your online reputation into focus. What appears when you
enter your name in search engines? Are your social network
profiles complete? Who is in your network?

Identify changes
Which points should be highlighted on your web profiles,
and which ones should be avoided? What would you like to
change? Is any part missing? Is there incorrect data that you
would like to delete, and other aspects that you would like to
emphasise more?

Identify the environments /social networks that suit you

best
Online reputation is almost totally associated with the world
of social networks. You must ask yourself: which web-based
environments identify me best? Where is my network active?
What are the most suitable platforms for displaying my work?

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Notes- Personal branding - Managing your online reputation

Create a reputation strategy

Don't act in a confused and disorganised way. How much time
do you want to dedicate each week to personal branding?
How often will you check your reputation online? What are the
most urgent aspects to act on?

Start building
Outline your web profile day by day, first adding general
changes and leaving the details for last. Use your interests
and hobbies to give a complete picture of yourself. When your
profile is complete, continue to feed it by adding news about
your work and interacting with your network.

Discover how to find

out what's being said
about you online
Search engines, and Google in particular, are the principal tools
to use to check your presence and visibility online.

Try typing in your name along with that of the organisation you work for, the
title of one of your publications, or a topic that you recently dealt with, and
see what comes out.

How many links are about you?

How many refer to other people with your name?

Do you come up on the first pages?

Are the links correct and pertinent?

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Notes- Personal branding - Managing your online reputation

Is your content linked properly, or was it taken without mentioning you

and without your knowledge?

If you don't know who linked to you, contact him to extend your network...

Improve your online

reputation with an
effective linkedin
profile
LinkedIn is a social network, used mainly in the work sphere. It has functions
similar to those of Facebook (link sharing, statuses, chat, likes ...) and is used
by individuals and companies to develop new business, find new employees,
expand their networks, get up to date and promote themselves..

Let's look at the main points of LinkedIn netiquette.

Not having a complete profile leaves others in doubt of your

professionalism. Pay attention to all fields and provide the
information that informs people about your work and your
experience in a transparent way.

Don't criticise or comment negatively, particularly in oc-

cupational or interest groups.

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Notes- Personal branding - Managing your online reputation

Respond to requests and messages, actively participate

in groups with comments and sharing, and don't share only
resources that are about you and your work.

Enrich your profile, especially your work experiences, with

photos and pictures of projects or work teams.

When you ask another LinkedIn user to connect with you, write
a brief message that explains the reasons for the request,
especially if you don't know him personally.

Enter keywords that describe you in several sections of the

profile: in this way you will be found more easily when another
user types in your speciality.

Want to learn more? Search on the Internet...

O LinkedIn Profile checklist

O Personal Branding Canvas

O Google Legal

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Notes - Personal branding - Managing your online reputation

Conclusions
In any social structure, from your office to your company, from your district
to your city, you can't be connected to everyone, but only to those who
share something with you: because they are your neighbours, have the same
interests, play the same sport, work in the same field.

The web is public, but that doesn't mean that your messages are actually
read all over the world - however, they can reach everyone who is in one of
your groups.

Personal branding on the web consists of managing your online profile and
identifying interest groups within environments such as LinkedIn, Facebook,
Twitter, and other more specialised social networks or your company intranet,
and then within these groups, building and cultivating your circles: in other
words, contacts with those who will actually read what you publish and will
want you to read what they publish.

Publish interesting, respectful messages within these groups that enhance

your reputation, and always keep your profile up to date.

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Technique - Personal branding - Managing your online reputation

Personal branding:
how to manage your
online profile
Do you want to improve your online image?

Read how to succeed in your goal when using these three popular tools:

Google
O Alert

O Legal

LinkedIn
O Privacy

O What to publish, and what not to

O Linkedin profile checklist

O Vizualize.me for Linkedin

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Technique - Personal branding - Managing your online reputation

Google
With the Google search engine you can check what is said about you on the
web. Enter your first and last name in the search bar, and see which and how
many web pages are returned. The pages may be articles, social network
pages, company pages, publications, etc.

The results presented by Google could be too generic or incorrect. To point the
search in the right direction enter your name between quotation marks (you
will force Google to search for the terms consecutively and not separated)
and use the operator OR to offer the opposite alternative as in the example.
In this case, the operator “–” was also entered to avoid certain terms in the
search results.

Google Alert
After noting how and where your name appears on Google or on the web in
general, do you want to be notified if it appears again?

When Google indexes the page where your first and last name appear, would
you like to receive an email with a link to the page in question?

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Technique - Personal branding - Managing your online reputation

What options are there? You could use Google Alert. The service is free and
easy to use...

If you have a Google account you access the service logged in, and use a
simple interface to set the criteria that interest you.

For example, you can define:

1 the keywords for the seach;

2 the frequency of reports via email;

3 the source (blog, news, video, financial sites);

4 the language and region/nation of origin of the page,

Google Alert will monitor the web for you, notifying you with an email when
pages appear that match the words and operators entered for the search.

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Technique - Personal branding - Managing your online reputation

Google Legal
In line with the requirements of the new GDPR legislation (European but with
global impact), the UK Information Commissioner* published information
about the GDPR “right to be forgotten”.
In response to this, Google in common with other large data companies
instituted updated procedures** to comply with this:

In both Google and other Alphabet products like YouTube, content that could
violate the law, such as articles or video covered by copyright and reused
illegitimately, or inciting hatred for example, is

is also analysed and can be removed where necessary.

*https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/legal-removal-request?complaint_type=rtbf&hl=en&rd=1
**https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-the-general-data-protection-regulation-gdpr/individual-
rights/right-to-erasure/

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Technique - Personal branding - Managing your online reputation

LinkedIn
Privacy
While Google lets you check what is said about you on the web, Linke- dIn lets
you create and manage your public profile.

Here is a list of aspects that should not be overlooked.

O Manage disclosure of activities

O Personalise your profile’s URL

O Decide whether to make your list of connections known

Manage disclosure of activities

Use the highlighted tools to take care of updates, profile modifications, groups
you’ve joined or new connections.

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Technique - Personal branding - Managing your online reputation

Personalise your profile’s

URL

Decide which fields to define

as public (that is visible to any
LinkedIn user, regardless of
whether they are already one of
your contacts).

Decide whether to make

your list of connections
known

The list will be visible to those

already present on it, and to any
other user of LinkedIn.

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Technique - Personal branding - Managing your online reputation

What to publish,
and what not to
LinkedIn offers the ability to “become a connection” of not only professionals,
but also companies and agencies who it would be difficult to get in contact
with.

All your connections, whether companies or individuals, can view your activity
and, in particular, what you share and publish on the social network.

These activities enrich your profile and add another facet to your online
professional image. So it’s important to know what to share, and to un-
derstand the best time to do so.

Sharing on LinkedIn can include:

O simple “statuses”, namely a short text accompanied by a link to update

the network on the progress of an interesting project;

O a picture or photo, maybe snapped during a conference or a course;

O a repost, that is, re-offering a share made by another user.

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Technique - Personal branding - Managing your online reputation

Some useful tips

O Avoid spam
Don’t post content that’s only for promotion and that doesn’t provide
useful information or advice.

O Don’t lie and don’t exaggerate

Talk about your work with naturalness and simplicity.

O Decide on schedules for sharing and updates

Avoid long periods without sharing, or publication of too much content in
a short time.

O The best times and days to share on LinkedIn

Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays from 7:00 to 8:30 AM and from
5:00 to 6:00 PM.

Linkedin profile
checklist
The LinkedIn profile represents an essential point of online personal branding.
The site’s excellent indexing allows profile pages to appear first in search
results when they contain the first and last name.

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Technique - Personal branding - Managing your online reputation

So it’s important for your profile to be complete and consistent with your
image.

Here are some aspects that make a profile effective.

1 Picture

2 Headline/Title

3 Summary

4 Experience

5 Skills/Abilities

6 Education

Profile photo
The profile photo is the most immediate way to make yourself known. Upload
a high-resolution photo, look polite, smile, avoid having others in the photo
and don’t use cropped pictures.

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Technique - Personal branding - Managing your online reputation

Headline/Title
Describe your work and key skills here. If you’re not clear on which terms to
enter, look in your profile for the duties and roles that recur most frequently.

It’s important to be clear and to convey the essence of your work in a few
words.

Summary
Concisely describe here your professional background, key areas of expe-
rience and the projects you’re particularly proud of. The goal is to give a clear
overview of your history and of what you can do.

It helps to use bullet points to break up the text and increase clarity.

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Technique - Personal branding - Managing your online reputation

Experience
Enter at least three recent jobs here, with descriptions of the role and the
tasks assigned.

You can insert photos, images, documents, links, video and presentations for
each experience.

Skills/Abilities
Enter the skills that you developed during your work experience.

Your connections can give an endorsement or confirmation for each skill

entered. This increases the credibility and professional value of your profile.

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Technique - Personal branding - Managing your online reputation

Education
This section is reserved for educational experiences such as high schools and
universities, but also postgraduate courses, studies abroad, summer schools
and other courses in general.

It’s important to enter any certifications you have to increase trust in your
skills.

Some useful tips

O Make sure your profile is clear in its entirety. Concentrating too much on
different sections can make you lose sight of the general optimization of
the profile.

O Write in first person.

O Ask yourself if you can summarise any content when the profile is complete.

O Insert elements of uniqueness such as projects, abilities or experiences

that make you stand out as particularly distinctive.

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Technique - Personal branding - Managing your online reputation

Vizualize.Me for
linkedin
Vizualize.me is an internet site that
transforms your social network
profile into an infographic.
By accessing the site through
LinkedIn you can view your profile
in a different, higher-impact
graphic format.

Visualize.me transforms the

information and data entered on
LinkedIn into graphics, timelines
and colourful objects...

With a few clicks you get the

colour version, graphically
appealing and always ready for
updating from your profile.

The infographic created can

become an actual CV.

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