4 Little Known Tools for Managing Your Personal Brand

The idea of brand management is growing and gaining momentum among the corporate and professional communities.  Over the last two weeks I have given three presentations on the topic to business and HR professionals as well as job seekers, and received almost a dozen emails and phone calls.  Bottom line is that your reputation is everywhere and online is no different.

Just last week, Ad Week released a monetary dollar figure attached to Facebook Fan (now “Like”) Pages.  Based on Virtue’s research of their own clients, they determined the average value of a Fan is $3.60.  This is the first ROI evaluation I have found that places a value squarely on a personal network. Finally, your friends are worth something!

Having a strong online brand and presence is essential to your future success in the workforce.  I believe that over the next 12 months, job seekers will begin to be evaluated based on more than just their education and work experience. Social media and networking presence is really becoming that important.  Some companies are already considering social media factors in their hiring decisions, including Best Buy who requires 250 Twitter followers to be considered for their social media positions.

Since reputation and the perception by contacts, clients, co-workers, and companies are so important, your online brand should be closely monitored so that you can quickly and immediately be alerted to any negative comments or perceptions.  This will allow you to take action to clarify comments, concerns, or misrepresentations expressed or implied by others before they get out of control and permanently damage your brand.  It can be a daunting task, but these tools are here to help:

• BackType. BackType is a tool that monitors your brand and keywords of blog comments.  If you are mentioned, represented, or comment on a blog or page, you will receive an email alert.  This is a great way to make sure that your brand isn’t being misrepresented.  As a company or individual, I would also encourage signing up for alerts of company names, competitors and common mis-spellings of your name and your competitors.

• BoardTracker. BoardTracker does exactly what it says.  It tracks brand and keyword mentions on discussion boards and forum sites.  You control the keywords and when you receive alerts.  This is a great way to go beyond Google Alerts and really dive into your brand outside of what the Google web crawlers find.

• TweetBeep. TweetBeep is not necessarily a new tool, but one worth mentioning nonetheless.  It allows you to set up keyword alerts from Twitter sent to your email at regular intervals.  The basic service is free but if you are looking for instant and real time alerts, you will pay a nominal fee.
• SocialMention. SocialMention is another site that manages your social brand and keyword content across social networks and blogs.  Visitors can use the keyword search option for real time and immediate search or set up alerts.  One of the drawbacks to the site is that if you have a large presence on social media, Social Mention is difficult to navigate, but it does provide you with an all in one option.

Jessica Miller-Merrell, SPHR is known as @Blogging4Jobs on Twitter, is a published author of “Tweet This! Twitter for Business” and  is a leading HR blogger and new media strategist.  Jessica is a subject matter expert and provides insights in the areas of  HR, recruiting, and new media consultancy with her company, Xceptional HR.  Her newest project is Texting4Jobs, a text based job board platform recently launched in Oklahoma.