The major feature of most web 2.0 sites is the amount of personalized content that you share with others in order to create relationships or friends. This however has become the number one reason why the online reputation management business has boomed lately. Try typing your name in google contained within quotes and see what pops up, chances are that you might find something you wouldn’t want an employer or client to see. This is happening to pretty much everyone. Even if you stay away from social media sites, what is to stop a blogger like myself from posting an article about how you contributed to this years big strip club bar crawl. An ever increasing amount of job seekers and top professionals are seeking a way to hide or get rid of these unfavorable items.
How are reputation managers fighting the situation?
Without getting into the specifics, the process usually involves a number of skills already practiced by web designers and developers. These services typically involve things like positive content creation, SEO of the content so that it ranks over the bad content, and the attempted removal of the negative content.
So should we begin offering these services?
There are a couple of reasons why a web professional would or wouldn’t want to get into this field.
Reasons for offering reputation management services
- The industry is growing, and should only continue to with new web 2.0 services popping up every day.
- Rates for these services tend to vary widely based on the type of service that is purchased however for the most part they seem to be very lucrative.
- This is a newly developing niche that should have far less competition than your typical services.
Reasons against offering reputation management services
- This isn’t the most creative work
- Taking on these services will take you away from your current niche
- You may need to find creative professionals in other fields such as copywriting to team with in order to be effective.
While these services might be outside the core services offered by web designers and developers, the shared skills and high demand have made them tempting. If you have begun offering these services or have been thinking about it, I would love to hear your take on the situation in the comments below.
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March 28th, 2008 at 9:41 am
What kind of job seeker would pay for this service? You have two cases:
1) The taboo content is removable. If you were tech-savvy enough to publish it, I can’t think of an example where you’d not be savvy enough to remove it.
2) It isn’t removable. What you are suggesting is to generate content that is both engineered well enough to appear above the negative content and numerous enough that it pushes it well downwards. So, you’ve just spent a small fortune to an SEO professional to hide content from the most casual observers (I certainly don’t just look at the first page when looking at job seekers).
Is there really high demand for this service from job seekers and professionals? I can understand businesses seeing a return on reputation management, but I cannot wrap my head around an individual needing this service.
March 28th, 2008 at 9:58 am
Adam,
It is a hot enough service for Newsweek to devote a reasonable size of its publication to. According to the articel some people are paying over $10,000 to have their online presence cleaned up… I think its a whole new world in terms of HR and people are desperate to look favorable in the Hiring Managers eyes.
March 28th, 2008 at 10:25 am
I’m not even sure what to think about that. Maybe it is because I am careful of what I say in public spaces, but I cannot imagine having content out there that damaging.
I think a notable negative of personal reputation management as a career choice is the nature of the work. Getting good press and positioning it well for a company is one thing, but burying people’s dirty laundry?
As an aside, I love the image you’ve set as the background in the comment textbox. Usually I find that kind of embellishment busy and unneeded, but this meshes in really well.
March 28th, 2008 at 12:18 pm
Thanks for the compliment. Also I agree with what you have said. I see how it could be walking a thin line regarding ethics. Where do you draw the line? What if the negative stuff out there about a person or company is actually deserved?