Professional website

I am the first to admit and tell you that my website's current incarnation isn't that professional. In fact it needs some major work (working on that).

The question is, how do you get a professional website look without spending gobs of money?

The easiest thing to do is find a website template that you can purchase for about $50 without any changes and put it up (I recommend you do spend a little bit of money on one, those free ones are still pretty cheezy).

Of course then you might run into the problem I hit, I didn't find a single thing I liked.

My suggestion, instead of doing what I did, pick one. Just pick one and suffer through it until you do have some money to spend. Eventually you will have something to spend on it and you can probably get something decent whipped up for $400 to $500.

Having a professional looking website, will definitely do wonders for your reputation.

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas to all and

to all a fabulous 09

Holiday Cheer

'Tis the season, share the love!!

This can do great things for your reputation, all the good things you do during this season because it does seem to happen, should be shared.

Even just sending out happy wishes to as many people as you can through the networks you are part of.

If you are able to do some extra special things, like help hand out food to those not as lucky as you. If you donate to more charities and the like, you should do a press release.

When doing a press release, if you want it to help with the ranking of your site you should do an optimized press release. We can help with this if you need it.

Sharing Info about Family

Another question I have gotten asked a lot is how mommy bloggers and similar can keep their family's safe.

Safe from predators, identity thieves, the psycho neighbor who creeps you out (not really, well maybe really if you have one). Also safe from your kid growing up and trying to get a job and their new employer finds your blog about how funny potty training was.

Biggest tip - use fake names. Basically create a new virtual nickname for the person and this saves it from ever coming up in a search.

If you have used their real name, go back now and change it. It may show up in the search engines, but hopefully by the time your kid is grown and looking for work, it will be easily buried.

Education in School

Someone suggested to me recently that someone start training kids on what might happen if they share too much information on the Internet.

I think it is a great idea, especially any kid who is planning on going into the arts or politics (or be a well known person of any kind).

Imagine, some kid gets their big break, they get a part in a big movie, star in a TV show or something. Next comes the press (or the paparazzi/celebrity gossip artist) who hunt for all that great stuff to spread all over the place about you. This includes that wonderful picture of you with your bikini falling off and you falling into a pool with a beer in your hand.

While it seems to be true that many kids don't care about what people find in general, because they are having fun. Talking about their future careers, one they feel passionate about, might change their mind.

If anyone is interested, let me know, I would love to partner up with someone to get this in the schools.

Do It Yourself or Hire Someone

People wonder when they really need to get someone else to run their reputation online and when they can do it themselves.

Just everyday folks can run it themselves, it will take a little bit of time to do it, but most people just need to be aware of what they are doing and saying online to handle it.

But, it seems that those who are a little more out there, have become successful either in business or even promoting their favorite charity, start getting attacked. Most of these people should invest in some form of reputation management.

I tell people that if they really want to do this themselves they should invest one to two hours a day to managing their reputation. This includes the time to update their blog and/or social networks.

On top of this, they will need to invest time in learning what they need to do by getting trained on the best ways to do this.

If you don't have that kind of time and it is better to be spending that time working on whatever your activity is, then you need to hire someone.

Social Media Experience for Jobs

Quick note:

I have definitely heard more and more that people looking for someone to hire want them to have experience on Facebook, Myspace and more. They want to know that the people could do activities on the Internet if needed.

This also means that they go and look on the Internet for the people they are about to hire. They read the information that you have up there to see what you have done.

What are they going to find? When they read your updates and your notes to others is this what you want an employer to see.

While the Internet is where we can have fun and enjoy our lives, you must think of it as also a place that is basically putting all your actions and thoughts up in a newspaper for everyone to read.