Articles Gorgeous The Articles On This Site Are Simply Gorgeous… and Completely FREE!

The other day, I was incredibly bored. We all have those moments, where we could very easily think of other things to do, but don’t particularly want to. So I decided this would be the perfect time to type my name in Google and see what popped up. Is it childish? Probably. Self-centered? A little bit. But I know I’m not the first person to do this, and it’s actually encouraged for me to do this at my marketing firm. And from my boredom, I learned a very valuable lesson about online reputation.

The first page of Google didn’t reveal much. Just my Facebook, Twitter, and Formspring pages, along with those of various other women with the same name as me. I figured that the second page would have the same results. Maybe a couple of my articles I’ve written would pop up. And while I did see some links to those articles, along with a few other social media accounts I hold, what captured my attention was a rather unattractive image of me. It’s on Facebook, and it’s from a larger picture where a friend and I made obnoxious faces at the camera – harmless and all in good fun. But the way the photo was cropped made it look like a shovel had been taken to my face and my lips were forever squished.

Now, I never messed with the original picture, so I thought it was strange that this of all of my pictures would be the one to pop up. I clicked on it, thinking that the link would lead me to Facebook. But, lo and behold, it takes me to a website I have never heard of, much less been to before: radiosatan666.com. My heart sank as I discovered that the picture of me had been used in a post for a forum, where someone pretending to me stated that I had given my soul to Satan in order to become a better poet. However, the screen name was disgustingly offensive, the picture was, as stated, ugly, and the grammar in the post was awful for someone who claims to be a poet.

Up until that day, I had never really thought about reputation management. I curse rarely on Facebook, my Twitter is used to only tweets about poetry, books, and music, and I keep everything that I do post PG-13 at most. While I could have certainly toned down a few things I’ve written, I’ve been pretty safe with what is shared on my social media accounts. So for someone to pretend to be me and write such offensive material takes everything I try to do and turns it on its head. While it’s not like they stole my identity and ruined my credit or ran my bank account dry, they still did damage to my online reputation. That’s one of the few pictures that pop up of me when my name is searched. If a potential employer or graduate school should see that, while they might be able to tell that it’s someone else trying to make me look bad, they may also decide that I don’t have exactly what they’re looking for.

At this point, I’ve done whatever I can to determine who might have posted this hurtful material. It borders on cyber-bullying, as I’ve been able to figure out that it’s someone that knows me. And cyber-bullying can certainly hurt your online reputation, even though you really don’t want it to. Take my story and discover more about reputation management. Keep your profiles private and absolutely make sure that only things you want seen are on your accounts. You never know who might decide to take your information and try to make you look like a Satan worshipper with bad grammar.

So, do you feel you would want to discover more about reputation management? Would you want to find out more about how fishbat can help your online reputation? Check us out at fishbat.com to discover more!