Online Reputation Management

Two Worlds, One Face: The Interplay Between Offline Identities And Online Reputation Repair

In public matters, your real life self and your online self are intertwined, and maintaining a sterling reputation is a concerted affair between the online and offline halves.

However, the issues faced by these two facets are literally worlds apart. Online, managing and repairing your reputation is easily quantified through search engine results pages. Real life has no such luxuries but has a greater overall impact. While you can easily see the results of an online reputation management campaign, an offline campaign can only be perceived indirectly. It is by the effects of the offline campaign, however, that the online campaign gains traction.

Offline reputation management lies mainly in determining how people see you or what you do in real life. This involves all manner of traditional word-of-mouth marketing and promotional and public relations events, many of which would bring to mind businesses or VIPs rather than regular people. These principles, however, apply to everyone, and can be as simple as watching what you say or do in public.

While indirect, offline reputation management has a profound effect on how people perceive you and how favorably they would talk about you. Face-to-face interactions still retain a lot of depth; people can judge others surprisingly well when meeting personally, and making a good impression whether people believe that you are worth getting to know. Moreover, how people see you online is affected in part by how they know you in real life, and vice versa. People are more likely to comment favorably about you in social media if you if they like you in real life.

Whether for yourself or for your business, taking care of an offline persona is an equally important way to protect your reputation and plays an independent yet complementary role in online reputation repair.

FURTHER READING
http://www.billmcintosh.com/reputation-management-is-just-as-important-offline-as-it-is-online/