TIME ran an article on Tuesday about repairing a damaged online reputation. What was once strictly thought of for celebrities, online reputation is now relevant to everyone, and particularly physicians. Many patients use the internet to research their doctors or potential doctors. Although most physicians never think about online reputation until they’re faced with negative content, the best time to think about your web presence is before you’re faced with content you want to bury.
“Common Web users have similarly begun to realize that skeletons from their past are popping up on Web browsers. While online-reputation-management companies have been around for a few years, the demand for their business has been accelerating exponentially. Fertik says his company’s revenues have soared 600% in the past year alone, driven in part by clients looking to keep their data private, as well as by the uptick in customers looking to escape negative Web reputations. These days, the sort of person hoping to ditch a bad rep is almost as diverse as the Web itself, from college students to small-business owners, divorcés to young professionals. As for the most common problems plaguing customers, Assante and Fertik say they see a lot of issues pertaining to a vengeful ex or financial troubles from years ago.
“The set of problems has become a lot more complex,” Fertik says, describing not only the ways people become tied to negative information, but also how that data then floats to the top of the Web. “As social media and mobile media exploded and data mining has gotten more sophisticated, people have a lot more points of vulnerability.”
There are free ways to build up positive online content, and those tactics are particularly useful during your ‘peacetime’.