A week or so ago I decided that I should surf a little bit around Goggle on my name… reputation mangement.  I wanted to know what might be said about me.  And I have recently had a few friends (I’m not going to say “old friends” because they don’t appear old) contact me because they found me through searches and social networking.

I search my name on a fairly regular basis, and have Google alerts set… but I found a few people with my name of which I wasn’t already aware.  I knew about Wendy Lane Bailey, a singer from Lousiana that currently resides in NYC.  But what I didn’t know was that there were 10 other Lane Baileys on Facebook… and another 5 or so Bailey Lanes.

So… point?

These are all upstanding folks that I found… or appear to be.  And that is good.  And I pretty much dominate the google search for Lane Bailey…  You have to dig through a lot of me to get to these other guys and gals.  Googd for me, maybe good or bad for them.  I’m not going to judge that.  Several of them emailed me that they were well aware of me because they had Googled themselves (me…).

I also invited all of these folks to be my friends on FaceBook.  No need, but I just thought it would be cool to know a whole bunch of people with the same name.  Maybe we could all get together somewhere for dinner and hand the waitress a dozen credit cards with the same name… Fun times.

But what if one of the people I found WASN’T a good person? That would be where reputation management would come in.  Currently, I seem to be able to grab LaneBailey or Lane.Bailey on most social networks or other places I join.  There have been a couple where I haven’t.

So, you need to control your online presence…

I know that if I am looking to hire someone, I am going to Google them.  What if there is something that turns up in that search?  What if it isn’t accurate, but plausible.  Obviously, a 25 year old female in Colorado, I’m not going to be an issue.  They aren’t going to think she is moonlighting a 43 year old guy in Atlanta selling real estate.  But you do need to be aware of someone else with the same name.  If for no other reason than to be able to answer the question if it arises.

And in another life (before real estate, and still outside of real estate) I have used JeepOnRock for emails and screen names for years.  If I have run across another Lane Bailey in real estate, or with issues, I would have used JeepOnRock as well as my first initial to make sure that I could control my name as much as possible.

Just a tip for the day…