Karma and Your Brand Reputation - Personal Branding Blog - Stand Out In Your Career

Karma and Your Brand Reputation - Personal Branding Blog - Stand Out In Your Career Anything that is posted online can always come back to haunt you in the future. Im starting to see bloggers who feel that they can become more successful when they taunt and bully others in a public setting. These individuals, whom I wont name, can justify their blog posts based on facts uncovered online. The problem is that they dont consider how perception and brand reputation work in the online world. When you attack someone else, even if they deserve it, your visitors will have a different view of who you are as a person, and a brand. Almost every time that you make a private situation visible to the world, it makes you look bad. Think before you publish two examples I want to keep these two examples anonymous on this blog, but if youre really interested in knowing which company and blogger Im referring to, you can google each quote. I wont link back to these posts because I dont want to draw too much attention to them and increase their standing in search engines. 1. The spam agency In this example, the blogger has resorted to embarrassing this company because of reoccurring spam emails. Instead of setting up a email policy to automatically delete the messages or place them in a spam folder, he has exposed private matters to the public in a malicious fashion. The bloggers is probably a very nice person, with a big heart, but his post sends a negative message to both his community and to outsiders whose first brand interaction was this post. He indirectly states that if you spam him, you will also receive negative press on his blog. It comes off as a threat, whether he meant to or not. If he does it once, why wouldnt he do it again? Whats worse is that hes not only hurting this companys reputation, but hes pushing his followers to support him. He also exposes email addresses, which opens this situation up to personal attacks. I tried to warn them, but apparently they didn’t believe me when I said that I would call them out. So, I officially start my boycott today, of PR_Agency until they vow to change their ways.   Don’t hire them.   And PLEASE link, share and retweet this post, so that when folks search for “PR_Agency,” the Google gods rank this post highly. If anyone has a lot of time on their hands and wants to email my friends at PR_Agency, here are their email addresses: first.last@pragency.com. 2. The plagiarizer Sometimes people just dont know any better and try and take the easy way out. In this instance, one blogger copied material from other bloggers, without citing their name, and a link back to their site. Any blogger would be upset if their content was stolen, but please remember that you cant be successful by copying someone else. This blogger should have emailed the plagiarizer instead of publishing a post, which attracted much more unnecessary attention. The bloggers goals were twofold: stop the plagiarizer from continuing to re-post and to teach him a lesson. Whats worse is that other people started latching onto this story, including one of my friends, who I had to tell to not write about the incident. Why spread this negative energy, when you can make it a private matter, correct it, and help him improve. Im sure the plagiarizer didnt understand the rules of social media, so tell him! Also, the blogger not only used the plagiarizers name, but his picture, which makes this even worse. You see, Michael doesn’t actually write his own material â€" he steals it from other people. Michael, I understand that this is the one  post that you will not want to steal and re-publish â€" copyright violation is serious stuff, so please do get in touch with me before my lawyers get in touch with you. This is an early appeal; the later ones will be far less polite â€" you know it makes sense! Public versus private The common theme between these two examples is that you need to choose when to communicate publicly versus privately. If the situation is personal (you have an issue with someone else), then send an email explaining your view of the situation and a solution, without getting too emotional. If youre rating a product online, then you should be an honest critic, and it wont hurt your brand if you publish your review. When it comes to rating, grading, or forming public opinions of other people, you have to have good etiquette. Honesty versus arrogance If you read some of the comments on these two blogs, youll notice that people are thankful and are more trusting of the bloggers. Theres a fine line between being honest with your followers, and being arrogant and malicious. Youre better off focusing on the positive than the negative because what goes around comes around. Youd be surprised how few people will trust someone who exposes a private matter on their blog. If the PR agency is really bad, then they will eventually go out of business. The plagiarizer wont end up receiving attention because hes not delivering unique content, which is required for social media success. Your turn How would you handle these situations differently? Would you be tempted to blog about them or send a private email?