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Are You Sabotaging Your Reputation and Business Online? |
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Contributed by S McIntyre
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Sunday, 30 September 2007 |
How you conduct yourself online can adversely affect you as a business
person, professional or employee/employer. No one wants to be seen in a
negative light so how you handle yourself online is very important.
How you conduct yourself online can adversely affect you as a business
person, professional or employee/employer. No one wants to be seen in a
negative light so how you handle yourself online is very important.
Your words on screen can be seen by thousands of people every day.
Search engines crawl and spider everything or almost everything. Even
if you went back to edit your posts days later, it's possible search
engines have already cached the pages that can be viewed like archives.
The damage is done.
Lately, I've seen way too many topics on work at home forums become
personal and heated debates. Angry words attacking the person's
character and rebuttals injecting just as much sting like two children
fighting on a playground. Many of us can get caught up in our emotions
without thinking twice and without thinking about the repercussions.
This is ill behaviour and it will hurt you and/or your business. What
would this look like to your potential customers, business partners or
employees/employers? Would you want to do business, employ/work for
this person/company?
A recent example of this was a new member joined the forum and right
away started off on the wrong foot. This person continued to spiral
herself into one confrontation after another with a different member
each time. For me, I would not want to do business with her. Why? She
has proven not just yesterday, but today and tomorrow that she cannot
conduct herself professionally, she cannot walk away without stabbing
words, throwing insults or being catty. She sabotaged her reputation
inadvertently. You shouldn't let typed words on a screen get the better
of you in the heat of the moment, but you can still say your peace with
tact and without tarnishing your reputation in the process. You can
walk away, calm yourself down, think rationally then come back and
respond using carefully thought out words. You can also make it an
one-on-one by taking it off the public forum and into a private
conversation.
If you want to enforce a positive image online, you need to act
professionally, take responsibility for your actions and be accountable
for them. You don't have to be boot camp serious all the time; you can
let your hair down and still have fun. You can still express your
opinions.
It's remembering there are a lot of eyes reading and you don't want to
give anyone any leverage because you slipped up. There's nothing worse
than having your words hold you hostage because of what you said in the
past.
S McIntyre owns Work At Home Space, a free work at home resource offering telecommuting jobs, articles, health and wellness and other work at home related issues. You can also visit her blog Healthy Perspectives, featuring an array of health topics, nutrition, fitness and recipes for maintaining a healthy and well-balanced lifestyle.
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Last Updated ( Thursday, 11 October 2007 )
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