Midterm Paper Complete!!!! Steps to Manage Your Online Reputation
We are more than halfway through the semester of Exploring your Digital Portfolio and our midterm presentations were due on March 5, 2018. For my subject I chose former deputy mayor of Mendham Township Rick Blood. On February 11th, 2018 he copied, pasted and posted on Facebook, a post comparing undocumented immigrants to rabid racoons and President Donald Trump to an exterminator. The post has been circulating Facebook, alt right websites and conservative blogs since 2016. He experienced immediate backlash from residents and other committee members of Mendham Townsip. He deleted the post but was still met with an angry reception at a committee township meeting on Monday February 12th, 2018. He was asked to resign from his position as deputy mayor by several attendees of the meeting. He initially refused but by the end of the 3 hour ordeal submitted his resignation. Below is a video from YouTube with more detail of the post.
Although he agreed to resign from is position as deputy mayor he remains employed by Roxbury Township earning a salary of a $114,000 annually as their director of public works. The manager of Roxbury Township stated that his post prompted an internal review but that according to the township attorney and the employee handbook there was no reason to terminate Rick from his position. Although he did not lose his primary employment, he lost a political position that was important to him. This just goes to show you that freedom of speech can be costly to those in elected positions.
Chapter 7 of LOL...OMG gives great information to avoid negative online activity Matt Ivester gives seven steps you can take to manage your online reputation. The steps include the following:
1. Google yourself. He suggests doing this every 3 months. You should also check, Yahoo, Bing, Spokeo and Intelius.
2. Clean up your accounts and content. He suggests comparing the content that you have with guidelines you have established for what is private and what is public.
3. Update you privacy settings. This step includes helpful information and steps to manage your privacy settings for some websites that may have more sophisticated sharing options such as Facebook and Google+. He also recommends unfriending people you do not know.
4. Ask for content to be removed. This may involve asking friends or websites to remove information.
5. Update and strengthen your passwords. This should include a combination of uppercase and lowercase letters, at least one symbol and one number.
6. Set up a Google alert for your name by going to www.google.com/alerts .
7. Claim your name. He suggests registering your name as a username on all of the most popular sites that allow profiles or user-generated content. He recommends the use of Namegrab.com to get a list of recommended sites to put usernames on.
As Jaime Sinclair shared with us in her discussion about online branding: "Your online presence is a continuously updating resume."
If you don't manage your online reputation you run the risk of suffering serious consequences such as employment position denials, unwanted gossip and rumors, loss of relationships, identity theft and many others. It is imperative that you take the steps to protect yourself.
Although he agreed to resign from is position as deputy mayor he remains employed by Roxbury Township earning a salary of a $114,000 annually as their director of public works. The manager of Roxbury Township stated that his post prompted an internal review but that according to the township attorney and the employee handbook there was no reason to terminate Rick from his position. Although he did not lose his primary employment, he lost a political position that was important to him. This just goes to show you that freedom of speech can be costly to those in elected positions.
Chapter 7 of LOL...OMG gives great information to avoid negative online activity Matt Ivester gives seven steps you can take to manage your online reputation. The steps include the following:
1. Google yourself. He suggests doing this every 3 months. You should also check, Yahoo, Bing, Spokeo and Intelius.
2. Clean up your accounts and content. He suggests comparing the content that you have with guidelines you have established for what is private and what is public.
3. Update you privacy settings. This step includes helpful information and steps to manage your privacy settings for some websites that may have more sophisticated sharing options such as Facebook and Google+. He also recommends unfriending people you do not know.
4. Ask for content to be removed. This may involve asking friends or websites to remove information.
5. Update and strengthen your passwords. This should include a combination of uppercase and lowercase letters, at least one symbol and one number.
6. Set up a Google alert for your name by going to www.google.com/alerts .
7. Claim your name. He suggests registering your name as a username on all of the most popular sites that allow profiles or user-generated content. He recommends the use of Namegrab.com to get a list of recommended sites to put usernames on.
As Jaime Sinclair shared with us in her discussion about online branding: "Your online presence is a continuously updating resume."
If you don't manage your online reputation you run the risk of suffering serious consequences such as employment position denials, unwanted gossip and rumors, loss of relationships, identity theft and many others. It is imperative that you take the steps to protect yourself.
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