Recent stories of "profile jacking" on Twitter point out the necessity for corporations to vigorously monitor their on-line reputation.
The most notable of the recent stories is that of "Janet," an Exxon "employee" who began posting at the fake Twitter account called ExxonMobilCorp. Jeremiah Owyang has a great review of the Exxon Twitter debacle, and offers some advice to corporations and to the social mediasphere. And, of course, one of his pieces of advice is that "Companies must monitor their brand." Exxon clearly fell asleep on this one, and others have fallen asleep as well, including CNN and Seth Godin.
So why should you care?
I hear the following a great deal, "I don't have time for (fill in the name of the most recent social network or web 2.0 portal)." And people have often asked me why I join so many social networks if I'm not going to actually do anything with them. I have many valid reasons for doing so, and one of the reasons is reputation management. I don't want anyone pretending to be me. If you really want to have a conversation with me on Twitter, you can follow me at respres. But I am also JeffTurner on Twitter, even though I almost never update that name. I created the second account, and others, because I didn't want anyone else to use them. It's really that simple.
It's just too easy for someone else to pretend to be you on-line.
And this is not just true for social media. It's true for blogging as well. It's amazing and heartwarming to note that more reputation bashing is not taking place via blog comments. Debates on blogs can get downright stupid, so given the virtriolic tone of some of the 'conversations" taking place recently in the RE.net, I'm glad that what I'm about to describe hasn't appeared to have happened yet. The simple truth is that anyone who knows my email address and website URL, both of which are easily accessible from just about anywhere, could pretend to be me and comment all over the RE.net as if they were me. It would be very easy to do. And anyone could just as easily act as if they were you as well.
Imagine the damage a disgruntled seller, buyer. former co-worker or competitor could do by claiming to be you in on-line forums, social networks and blogs. As a Realtor®, your reputation is integral to your brand. You need to monitor that brand and do everything in your power to insure that YOU are in control of that brand. This includes using Google Alerts and other search methods to make sure you can respond to valid mentions of your brand, that is a given. But you should also make sure you own your brand on the prominent social networking sites.
If you don't see the value, you don't actually need to engage in a conversation on prominent social networking and social messaging sites. But you should certainly ensure that nobody else is doing it for you.
Comments (87)Subscribe to CommentsComment