Have you ever wished you could see yourself through the eyes of others? Well, now you can - on Facebook, anyway. Once you think you have your privacy settings the way you want them, you can check to see how your profile looks to one or each of your friends. Here's how:
Once you're logged into Facebook, click on "Account," in the top righthand corner, then "Privacy Settings," on the drop-down menu. Near the center-bottom of the page, click on "Customize Settings," and make any adjustments you want to make. When you're finished, click on "Preview My Profile."
At the top of the page, type in any of your friend's names, and you'll see your profile the way it looks from that person's account. You can do this with one friend, or try it with as many friends as you want to, if you have different settings for different friends. If you're unhappy with how much or how little you are sharing, simply go back to "customize settings," and make your adjustments, then try again.
Jennifer Pointer (e-mail) is in Tulsa, OK. She promotes a simple, a low-tech approach to effective online profile management, search engine optimization and social networking.
Egosurfing (usually referred to as Googling yourself and sometimes called vanity searching, egosearching, egogoogling, autogoogling, self-googling) is the practice of searching for one's own given name, surname, full name, pseudonym, or screen name on a popular search engine, to see what results appear. It has become increasingly popular with the rise of popular search engines, as well as free blogging and web-hosting services. It is sometimes combined with third-party tools when several people egosurf together, or with Pimp My Search when people create their own search engine, or accessed by SMS through services which people SMS their name to a number and an "egosearch" is performed on that name and returned (egotexting).
Similarly, an egosurfer is one who surfs the Internet for his or her own name, to see what, if any, articles appear about himself or herself.
The term was coined by Sean Carton in 1995 and first appeared in print as an entry in Gareth Branwyn's March 1995 Jagon Watch column in Wired.
The Daily Flip has additional information, including how to use Technorati for monitoring your brand online"
Jennifer Pointer (e-mail) is a trainer and tech writer in Tulsa, OK. She promotes a simple, a low-tech approach to effective online profile management, search engine optimization and social networking. Her weakness is the mocha frappuccino.
As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words. There is no place that this is more true than with online profile management. Years of developing an impressive personal resume or business reputation can be undone with one unfortunate photo, posted either by a competitor, or just by a friend who "thought it would be funny." So, how can you monitor what photos of you and your business are being used online?
Google Images is the best way I have found to quickly see photos tagged of me and by me. Be sure to turn the "safe search," off, as this will keep the most damaging photos (if there are any) from displaying. Also, be sure to use all variations of your name and business name, enclosed in quotes (to filter out unrelated searches containing online one word in your search).
Another site that is good for monitoring photos posted online is 123people.com. A lot of the information offered on this site is partial info that you have to pay to "see the rest of," but the photo section is still free, and will pull up photos from the social networks and other websites tagged with the searched name.
Jennifer Pointer (e-mail) is a trainer and tech writer in Tulsa, OK. She promotes a simple, a low-tech approach to effective online profile management, search engine optimization and social networking. Her weakness is the mocha frappuccino.
BoardReader.com is a search engine for online discussion boards and forums. The results will often display good links that are not in the first several pages of a Google or Bing search. There is also an advanced search option.
Omgili.com is a, "...forum search engine lets you find communities, message boards, discussion threads about any topic. Omgili's advanced search features make it the best search engine for forums out there." There is also an automatic feed service, with free and paid options.
Jennifer Pointer (e-mail) is a trainer and tech writer in Tulsa, OK. She promotes a simple, a low-tech approach to effective online profile management, search engine optimization and social networking. Her weakness is the mocha frappuccino.
This week, we're discussing digital profile management. As we discussed yesterday, hiring professionals to monitor your online reputation, can be costly. For some individuals and small businesses, using the free resources available online can be a reasonable alternative. Yesterday, we talked about using Google Alerts, which are primarily for news and niche websites and blogs. Because Google's is crawling more and more sites, now, you will get some hits from some of the social networks, like FriendFeed, and occasionally Twitter and Facebook fan pages, but these hits are not as reliable.
One way to start tracking what is being discussed about your and your blog or company on the social networks, is to use SocialOomph, which focuses primarily on Twitter, currently one of the most popular, and most real-time social networks. Actually SocialOomph does a lot of stuff, but my favorite feature is the @MentionsMonitor. To use, it login to SocialOomph, then look for the "Monitors," section:
Then, click on Manage My Tweet Keyword and Tracking Alerts. Check the "Email me a keyword alert digest," and choose your frequency. Then, in the "Keywords" box make a list of the terms you want to track. Each keyword should be on a new line. You can use regular text, @TwitterUserID's, or #hashtags. Here's an example of what a list might look like. Here's an example of what my list might look like:
You can log back in any time to change or update this list. Once your alerts are set up, you will automatically receive e-mail digests whenever any of your keywords are mentioned on Twitter.
Jennifer Pointer (e-mail) is a trainer and tech writer in Tulsa, OK. She promotes a simple, a low-tech approach to effective online profile management, search engine optimization and social networking. Her weakness is the mocha frappuccino.
Hiring professionals to monitor your online reputation, and what people are saying about you can be expensive, although in some cases, it may be well worth it. For those involved in political campaigns, or highly-competitive industries need to know in real-time what people are saying about them, so they can react swiftly and appropriately. However, if you're an individual or small business on a shoe-string budget, you can do a fairly good job of monitoring your own reputation using some free tools that are available to you online, and this week, we'll be discussing managing your "digital profile."
The easiest and best way I've found to monitor what is happening with my own name and the names of my blogs on other websites and blogs is Google Alerts. It's quick, easy to use, and becoming more and more comprehensive as Google's crawlers become more advanced. Here's how to set up your Google alerts.
You do not need to necessarily have a Google account to use Google alerts. Just go to Google.com/alerts, and you'll see a screen like this:
Fill in the fields, and the appropriate drop-down fields. I use the "as-it-happens" under the "how often" drop-down box for immediate results. I recommend enclosing your search terms in quotations, i.e.: "Jennifer Pointer." If you enter: Jennifer Pointer with out the quotations, you'll get all of the results for either name, and in my case I found out the hard way that there are A LOT of Jennifer's and Pointer's (nothing like getting hundreds of search results for German short-haired Pointer dogs to learn that lesson the hard way!). For more information on using good search terms, see Online Research - Search Tips.
You will need to respond to the confirmation e-mail sent to you by Google to activate the Google alert. If you are going to have more than one alert (you probably will, if you have a blog, and several variations of your name or blog name), you may want to go ahead and sign-up for a Google account so you can log in, and manage all of your alerts at one time.
Jennifer Pointer (e-mail) is a trainer and tech writer in Tulsa, OK. She promotes a simple, a low-tech approach to effective online profile management, search engine optimization and social networking. Her weakness is the mocha frappuccino.
