Personal Search Statistics

As part of what I do, I get alerts from Google on mentions of particular items/phrases. One of the phrases I watch out for is, of course, “personal reputation management”. Over the last couple of months I have been alerted to various items and research statistics including the following:

♦  33% of people routinely search someone’s name (their name, not the name of their firm) before contacting them in a business context.

♦  Up to 77% of potential clients, partners or prospects use Google, at some point, to research the background of an individual working for a potential supplier or business contact.

♦  87% of us believe that the CEO’s reputation is an important part of a company’s reputation

♦  78% of executive recruiters routinely use search engines to learn more about candidates

♦  35% have eliminated candidates based upon information found

I can’t actually vouch for the accuracy of the research but, based upon my own experience, together with the anecdotal experience of colleagues, contacts and acquaintances, I don’t think that they are far off.

So in summary, lots of us are routinely conducting name searches on individuals that we are thinking of contacting in a business context and, up to 77% have used this method at some point. The vast majority of us also believe that the personal reputation of the boss of a firm is very important to their company.

In the jobs market, executive recruiters use name search as a “standard” tool and our online reputations are a potentially a very important part of the decision making process.

What happens if someone searches your name on Google? Are the results helping, hindering or non-existent? Give me a call (0845 2994229) if you need some help or advice.

 

Public Speaking – I’m Confused

In my role as Managing Director of De Leon, I get to deliver, and receive, a number of business presentations. 

Since I started out as a rookie 30 years ago, and on various occasions subsequently, I have attended courses where brushing up on public speaking skills has been part of the agenda.   I can recall courses where we have spent half an hour discussing how to stand!  Other courses have talked about the “voice” that you use when speaking, whilst others have concentrated on content and format.

The world has moved on and a quick search on the Internet will take you to lots of advice from all sorts of professionals on, for instance, the “5 killer things to remember when giving a presentation” or ” 3 ways to “wow” your audience”.  Many of these are USA based sites and are, quite frankly, a bit scary.

There are videos produced by super-confident individuals showing themselves in action – often talking about the art of public speaking.  But here’s the thing.  So many of them are totally contradictory!

For instance, one site says that PowerPoint is dead.  It argues that “Death by PowerPoint” has now entered the vocabulary and the instant anyone switches on a projector - everyone sees it as cue to fall asleep.  Other sites say that the combination of the spoken word together with images and the written word are unbeatable and that recipients retain X% more when PowerPoint is used in conjunction with the spoken word.

Other sites talk about the format of a presentation.  “Tell ’em what you are gonna tell ‘em, Tell ‘em, Tell ‘em what you told ’em” is the universally (almost) excepted format of choice.  However there is also video online by a very accomplished speaker saying that if you show an agenda that indicates this format then you might as well change the phrase to “Tell ‘em how you are going to bore ’em, bore ‘em, tell ‘em how you bored ‘em”!

“Stand still and don’t make hand gestures – you will distract your audience”, or,  ”move around your stage, make eye contact with different individuals at different times, use your body to emphasise points and to illustrate your enthusiasm and passion for the subject”.

As for the “voice” thing – don’t go there!  Unless you are using your “presentation voice” most of the time this is doomed to failure.  If you start a presentation when you are little nervous and keyed up then you can usually “act” a coached “voice”.  However, as you get into the presentation, you relax, you start to enjoy yourself and you end up doing a reverse “Pygmalion”.  You start sounding like you were brought up at  Eton and end up sounding like you were eaten and brought up (this joke doesn’t work quite so well when it’s written down). 

One of the great things about being middle aged is that you become less self conscious as you get older and I guess I’ll just have to keep doing what comes natual – and hope for the best! 

Philp Westerman De Leon Personal Reputation Mangement

I’m in Personal Reputation Management – How interesting!

One of my clients now runs a blog (having been a little reticent at the start of our relationship). Initially, the client used to email me with his suggested new posts for me to check grammar, punctuation and to make sure that it was, at least, relevant to his field.

We discussed the objectives of his blogging on numerous occasions and things have developed nicely for him. He originally posted stories that were often a bit like press releases that were “top and tailed” with a human element. He still does this and it is still important in terms of his objectives.

However, confidence has grown and he has also started to do a bit “off piste” blogging as well. He did one piece on what happens when people ask him what he does when he is at social occasions – such as parties, etc. The piece commented that here are those of us whose job functions can instil instant boredom and eye glazing at the first mention of what we do. Accountants, people in “IT”, Administration Managers, etc. will know what I mean.

I have a great deal of sympathy as “I’m in Personal Reputation Management” is not really up there with “I’m a heart surgeon” or “I’m a siege negotiator” is it?

I’ve tried different angles such as “I’m in Personal PR” – but that sounds like only the sort of thing that celebs and wannabes might use and the next question is usually about Max Clifford.

I am going to have to work on this and come up with a scintillating elevator pitch to enthrall fellow party guests. I’ll keep you informed.

Phil Westerman, Managing Director, De Leon

Just a quickie!

I’ve recently been working on a new account where we are raising the internet footprint of all of the members of a company’s sales team. 

These guys are some of the best at what they do and the company in question wanted to make sure that their individual online presence matched their credentials and the knowledge and experience that they can bring to bear when proposing solutions for prospective clients.

They work in a very competitive industry (sorry about the vagueness but I am bound by confidentiality agreements) and they believe that their individual names are searched by potential clients in the build up to business presentations and tendering.

We have a very specific brief to generate multiple hits of blogs (which tend to be stories about business wins and interesting applications), press releases and business profiles.

Having worked with a lot of company directors, partners and senior managers recently, it is very interesting to be working with a very different group where the “push” is coming from the company rather than the individuals themselves. We originally had a number of responses from the individual staff involved ranging from deeply suspicious through to overwhelming enthusiasm.

They are now thinking of publishing the web address of the each of their personal blogs (that we have created) on each individual’s business card and they are actively telling potential customers to visit their personal blog sites if they want to know more about what they do and the sort of accounts they get involved in.

This is an interesting development that will be increasingly relevant to our other clients.

Philip Westerman (managing Director at De Leon – Personal Reputation Managemnt

Bing vs Google

My company, De Leon Ltd, is involved in online personal reputation management (PRM). Unlike most reputation management companies on the Internet, we work almost entirely on promoting the positive – rather than taking the “defend your reputation” stance assumed by most other PRM companies.

Therefore, we spend most of our time releasing information on the Internet, on behalf of our clients, for the search engines to find and rank highly in relevant search responses.

Wrong Bing. Click image for source.

The nature of our work is that we are looking to achieve high rankings with respect to web sites, profiles, articles, releases, presentations, videos, photographs and so on, in response to a personal name search on a client. As most of us do not have unique names, we then look at other additional “identifiers” that the searcher might add to produce more targeted results. Typically these will be things like the name of the company they work for, their job function, location, etc.

Yesterday, I happened to read something about the www.bing-vs-google.com site. I went to the site and, as you do, I entered Philip Westerman De Leon.

The responses were very surprising.

Bing did not return one single response for any Philip Westerman (and there are quite a few of us) on their first page – whereas Google had me (specifically me at De Leon) in the first five responses.

In addition, Google showed details of other Philip Westermans after my entries. Looking at the results a little more closely, I could see that Bing had produced responses on all permutations of my search terms (i.e. Westerman De Leon, Westerman De, Westerman Leon, Philip Leon, etc) – but not one for the first two words i.e. Philip Westerman.

Wrong Google. Click image for source.

So, in response to a search on Philip Westerman De Leon, Bing didn’t find anything incorporating all four search terms. Google did.

On Bing, if I search Philip Westerman on its own, then it finds us all – but in no combination of all four words (i.e. Leon, De, Westerman and Philip) does it offer any Philip Westerman responses. Google does.

Of course, Google has been around a lot longer than Bing, and given that Bing has the Microsoft muscle behind it then we should be keeping one eye on it at least. But, while this very personal piece of research is clearly not a definitive answer to the question “How good is Bing compared to Google”, it does make you realise that Bing has a lot of catching up to do.

Personal Reputation Management: Let’s accentuate the positive

I am fascinated to find that still, in 2009, the subject of Personal Reputation Management on the web seems to be so focused in dealing with the negative.

If you search “reputation management” or “personal reputation management” on the web, the vast majority of the responses point to discussion and resources that address how to prevent, or deal with, negative comments, articles, news, press, etc.

For most people, their reputation is a very positive part of their lives and is made up of their achievements, their successes and their standing – in whatever field they operate. So why is “reputation management” on the web still seen to be almost an entirely defensive activity?

PR, advertising, marketing and promotions are all activities that highlight a company’s products or services in a very positive sense. The well-proven concept is to make people aware, sell the features and benefits and generate real interest such that people want to know more and go out buy the product/service.

The same applies to us as individuals as we go about our lives – “Character is what one is; reputation is what one is thought to be by others”. We succeed (or fail) in our lives, generally speaking, because of what people think of us. If we are trying to win business, or deliver a solution, manage a team or create ideas, our “success” is actually determined by the perception of others as they decide whether we have achieved whatever it is we were trying to do.

Online reputation management should be more to do with letting the world know what we do, how we do it, the benefits of dealing with us, who we have done it for and what they think of us.

As De Leon’s team continues to work positively on behalf of its clients, it will be interesting to see if the definition of “personal reputation management” evolves over time.