Larry G. Linne - Brand Aid: Taking Control of Your Image—Before Everyone Else Does

Long before the Internet, when the world was just a series of villages and larger towns, before the technologies and advancements that made interconnectivity possible were ever conceived, your reputation was based on what you did and how the people around you perceived your actions.

Without highways, transportation, cell phones, and meaningful communications mechanisms that consistently linked one town to another, your reputation was confined to a small geographic area and a relatively constrained number of people.

That meant a fresh start was nearly always possible for those with the daring, means, and wherewithal to strike out for a new destination.

Flash forward to right now.

We are all residents of the Internet, the worlds largest communitywhere everyone could very well learn your name, age, political affiliations, religious beliefs, and other salient personal detailsall courtesy of the dawn of the Digital Age.

Without any announcement or fanfare, the Internet has changed what it means to have a reputation.

A new beginning, a reinvention of self, is not possible in this era in the same way it was before. The Internet (almost) never forgets. Make a mistakeno matter how young you were and how exemplary youve been sinceand youre in the digital stocks of the Internets town square forever, on the receiving end of judgment from next-door neighbors to strangers thousands of miles away. Mistaken for someone else? The Internet doesnt care. You could wear the virtual equivalent of a Scarlet Letter in perpetuity.

The Internet, for good or for ill, has totally and irrevocably changed the landscape of interaction and interconnection without announcing it. Theres no going back. Its a one-way ratchet, where your digital reputation will get more important over time, not less important. Its a dynamic, shifting world and like it or not, its one you must get smart aboutand quickly.

The Internet is most peoples first preferred source when it comes to information, a Pew Research Center study demonstrated. Whats more, other research shows that almost 90 percent of people never go beyond a basic sniff test when looking for information about you, and they rely on the meager data they find first when making decisions about you.

Heres what that research says to me: people are looking for you and, for better or worse, what they find is your new digital rsum. Its your personal brand.

So have you Googled yourself lately?

Thats what the people in your lifeor who are presently on its peripheryare doing. Whether its the girl at the coffee shop who got your number, a prospective client, a hiring manager finishing her due diligence, candidates for employment, the PTA president at your childs school, or a landlord verifying your detailsthe possibilities are endless and the ramifications are simply too important, too crucial, to take lightly. They have a real, meaningful, and measurable impact on your lifewhether its personally, professionally, romantically, or economically.

And what happens if they find the kind of information that the Internet is so good at serving up: incomplete or obsolete data, or half truth, innuendo, suggestion, or falsehood? Or what happens when they find information about someone who shares your name and think that theyre finding information about you? What happens then?

Well, then comes the thundering silence.

The sound of your phone not ringing is almost the worst thing to hear. Everybody is looking you up online, and everybody is relying on what they find. And when they see something that makes them suspicious, they dont bother telling you theyve found something worrisome. They just dont call you back. They assume that smoke equals fire, and they go looking for another candidate, another vendor, another date, or another provider.