Our online reputations are somewhat like biographies written about us online compiled in a list of links that tell your story.
The only challenge with this is that sometimes the story doesn’t read exactly the way we would have it read. Well, believe it or not, you do have the power to manage how your personal story is told online.
In this post, we’ll provide some unique tips on how to leverage your blog in order to increase your online reputation.
Share Your Own Bio with Your Readers in a Post
Your readership loves what you write and follows you with fervor—but do they really know much about you?
Maybe it’s time to share that, both for the benefit of your blog and for the ability to create more content about you that will suppress negative links in search results.
Consider pulling together a fun and interesting autobiography about yourself (not too long, though!) that informs why you started your blog, and gets a little more personal with your readership.
Provide a new image of yourself and tag it, and make sure to properly tag the rest of the page with your name and a proper description about yourself.
Enlist Your Readers to Share Your Content
Calling all readers! Ask your readership to share your blog posts on Pinterest, LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook.
Having positive links from these sites back to your blog will only strengthen your search engine optimization, and therefore your online reputation.
If your readers are true fans, they would love to help spread the good word about you.
Explain Yourself
If you are worried about how your readers feel about you based on your online reputation (and especially if they are starting to address it in your blog), consider explaining yourself for real and nipping issues in the bud.
People very much appreciate honesty and someone who is forthcoming.
We are all human, and most people can forgive most things if you give them the chance.
Poke Fun at Yourself
If you are worried about how your readership feels about you and your online reputation, pick a couple of the most damaging search results about yourself (depending on the severity, of course) and have a poll on your blog to have them guess which one is not true.
Create as the third option in the poll something worse than the other two items, which will make the other two appear to pale in comparison (but make it realistic so that readers will still have a hard time guessing).
Poking a bit of fun at yourself is not a bad thing, and showing that there are worse examples of humanity out there could help to put things in perspective.
Many people appreciate a person who doesn’t take himself or herself too seriously.
Write With Passion and Build Your Brand
You can’t get past this one. Creating quality content helps you build your brand. If your writing suffers because your reputation is, and you in turn are suffering, you will slowly start to lose your readership. Your wonderful writing is the reason people started following you in the first place, so do not lose touch with that, no matter how bad it gets.
Love what you do and write about it. Tai Lopez suggests to build a personal brand around what you’re best at. His name is recognized by millions around the world and he explains that while people can’t necessarily succeed by following his same formula, because each one succeeds in different ways, they can learn from the principles he shares and apply them accordingly.
There are plenty of services available to help you with reputation protection, branding and management. But having continuously fabulous content that people will continue to want to share with others is the single best way to use your blog to increase your online reputation.
Because every post read and shared is just evidence to search engines that your blog and the contents of it should remain a higher priority than a few pesky negative reviews that exist online about you.
In General
Your blog can be an extremely useful tool in helping to defend, dispel, or wholly suppress search engine rumors about you.
Don’t underestimate your readership and their appreciation for what it’s like to be imperfect and human—make sure to win back those who seem to judge you by being honest and forthright, and by winning them over with great content.
At the end of the day, your job is to do just that—provide great content.
Hi Erik,
This is a great article for new bloggers like myself to increase our online reputation.Thanks
Thanks for the positive feedback, Biswajit.
Hi Erik,
Great tips and I used to find it difficult to admit when I was wrong or made a mistake. I thought that you had to always be an expert in your niche.
However, I’ve found that it’s okay to admit you don’t know something. I’d rather say I don’t know something than to try to pretend that I know something.
People seem to trust you better when you admit that you don’t know everything. After all, we can’t know everything and there’s nothing wrong with that.
Thanks for these tips and I’ll definitely pass it along to help other bloggers.
Have a great day 🙂
Susan
Be honest, be real, be yourself.
That’s my motto since when I started my online venture.
It seems working, so far. 🙂
Hello
Erik,
Glad to read your post. I have read your whole post and found many important tips. I like the point write with passion and build your brand. Without, passion it is very difficult to write quality content.
Here, you share very effective tips and it is easy to understand.
Thank you for sharing with us! Keep writing this type of amazing post.
Best wishes,
Praveen verma
Thanks for commenting and sharing this post, Praveen.
Your blog is your home online!
Having your own blog online is a great way to get more exposure for yourself and build a good reputation in your market / niche.
You can share more about yourself and about what your goals are with what you are currently working on – with great details on your own blog.
What you are doing here is simple branding. And branding is a very important factor for the success of any business.
Nice post Erik!
Thanks for sharing it!
Cheers! 😀
“Your blog is your home online!”.
Can’t agree more!
Thanks for commenting, Freddy.
Great article. Building a brand requires passion and dedication. Making a reputation online isn’t that easy what if do it with passion, nothing is impossible. Many interesting tips like poking a fun on yourself were there in the article. It was a fun read actually.
Glad you enjoyed the post, Sambhav.
Hi Erik,
Thanks for this.
Sharing content is a fab idea.
P.S. I just tweeted out your article.
The power of reciprocity!
Hello Erik,
Blogging is really have changed the individuals life. Today blog helps you to build up your brand or help you to brand yourself. Sharing content is really a great way to spread your words online and I personally find it an effective way to increase traffic and visibility for my blog. Thanks for writing these great points.
Thanks for sharing your views, Vishwajeet.
Hi Erik,
Great points, For me, passion is the most important thing here, without passion, we wouldn’t survive very long! Also, agree, branding is important!
Nice post, Thanks for sharing! 🙂
Thanks for the thumbs up, Adithya.
Hie Erik,
I also like to suggest, we should add our individual creative flavour to the blog post also.
Thanks for sharing with us. 🙂
Nice add, Ketan. Agreed!
Very good tips as you are here in the article. I’m really looking to create an authority and you just give more than a light. Sensational!
Good luck, Fabiana and thanks for visiting!
A good read indeed. These are the basic tips which needs to be kept in mind while you are about to start blogging. Thanks a lot for sharing such a resourceful article. Worth visiting your site.
Thanks for the feedback!