It's a brave new world, for those of you who were unaware.
I learned, from my daughter, that most people who are younger than I am (and that covers MOST people, these days) will turn to the internet when considering whether to hire you, or not.
They'll conduct a Google-search. Searching the internet for any occurence of your name.
What will they find? Have you been a good caretaker of your online reputation? Will they find you bickering with someone on a website, like Active Rain? Will they find negative, or positive review discussing you on Zillow, or Trulia or Yelp!?
If you're not sure, you should try searching for your name yourself. If you put your name into Google's search engine... surrounded by quote marks... [ so... like this: "Alan May" ] It will conduct what's called a Boolean search finding each and every occurence of the word Alan followed by a space and then May.
Now, in my case, that's problematic, 'cause it will find every occurence of a sentence that says "Alan may decide to travel next week...." or "Alan may want to check his reviews"... see what I mean. And then, of course, I get several Google pages about a Canadian Hockey Player. So I need to search "Alan May" + Realtor... and then I'll show up.
Try your name. See what shows up... this is what your potential clients are finding. Are you pleased with what you've found? Will they be likely to hire you after reading what they've found?
If they've found nothing... (or very little)... and they found a lot of good stuff about your competition... who do you think they'll hire?
It's eye-opening, isn't it? Protect your online reputation... it's becoming more and more important each and every day.
Have you seen the little piggies, crawling in the dirt? (oink, oink, oink)
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