If so, knowing what your Google profile is, how to locate and preserve it, is valuable knowledge.

Your Google profile

First, let’s explain what a “Google profile” is.

It’s the search results when searching online for your name, business name, product name, brand, etc. It’s an online audit of your important keywords.

I heard an interesting interview on NPR where someone floated the idea of “reputation bankruptcy,” a legal action that would function much like a financial bankruptcy, forcing Internet sites to remove information about you and give you a clean online slate.

Think about this concept — a reputation bankruptcy — both from a personal and business perspective.

What privacy?

Basically the idea of privacy is dead. People can learn so much about you individually by searching online, by Googling you.

It’s the same for business. Once people are aware of your company and considering buying from you, you can bet they’ll do an Internet search to learn what others have to say about you. Or, better yet, they’ll login to Facebook or their social network of choice and ask their online friends about you.

Whether you as a business choose to participate or not will NOT determine how much information is shared about you online. People will talk about you. They’ll tell their friends and acquaintances about you.

And they’ll do it in a very public way. That’s something businesses haven’t had to deal with until recently.

The only choice for business is whether or not you will be a participant in the conversation, whether you’ll jump on the train for the ride or be left alone in the station (where staying behind in the station will likely result in financial bankruptcy).

I remember you

The Internet basically serves as a universal memory. It’s the end of forgetting.

Once information is published online, it’s there for good.

In our Information Age there will surely be new laws and ways of dealing with information overload and the fact that what you did in your teens and 20s will be publicly viewable when you’re a well-known business person or elected official in your 30s or 40s, or grandmother in your 60s.

Lessons learned

Hopefully we recognize first that what is shared online, either by us or someone who knows us, is a type of archived, indexed, searchable life history.

And second, that imperfect people will sometimes do silly or offensive things.

We’ll all learn from our mistakes, accept and apologize for them, and move on.

A little knowledge can be a dangerous thing. Let’s hope we can be mature enough to be forgiving.

And let’s all recognize the importance of integrity and transparency in all we do, in the real and digital world. After all, the digital world is now our reality.

You know the story. You’re sitting in that social media seminar as the instructor hops from one incredible new media platform to another. You want to know more, but you don’t want to raise your hand and ask, “Hey, how can I use that in my job?” or maybe, “How can that help my career?”

Sound familiar? If so, this PR Daily webinar will help answer those questions—and so many more!

Pete Codella will walk you through 17 social media sites and show you the secrets for harnessing these tools. He will explain how these incredible social platforms can improve your career and simplify your life. When this webinar is over, you’ll be the one in the social media seminars with the answers.

In this webinar, you’ll learn how to:

• Monitor what’s being said on Twitter using RSS and third-party applications
• Automate Twitter status updates and the people you follow
• Manage your agency, your client or your company’s online communication and marketing
• Set-up an RSS reader to stay current on what’s being said about you, industry news and trends
• Optimize your Facebook fan page for business; 10 tools you’ve simply got to use
• Differentiate between personal, business, fan and group pages on Facebook
• Understand how your sites stack up when it comes to traffic and search engine optimization
• Generate and read a Google Analytics report
• Search blogs for comments and commentary then subscribe to the RSS for that search so you only have to do it once
• Grade your web site and attend to actionable items to boost your traffic and sales
• Set-up a Lifestream to aggregate your content from multiple platforms to just one site
• Manage FriendFeed to aggregate content, engage online networks, join groups and search for content
• Update all your social media sites from one location
• And more!

Details

Date: August 26, 2010

Time: noon to 1:15 p.m. Pacific

Place: This is a webinar that can be accessed online from any Internet enabled location

Cost: $99 for the webinar; $129 for the webinar and a CD recording

RSVP: visit Ragan.com to register

Hashtag: #prdaily

Moderator: @msebastian (Michael Sebastian, editor of PR Daily)

The Next Steps in Social Media: How Independent Practitioners Can Increase Business and Client Value With Online Tools

Featuring Pete Codella, APR, Jason Falls and Kristie Aylett, APR

Date: July 28, 2010

Time: 1 to 3:30 p.m. Eastern time

Cost: PRSA Member $229 | Non-Member $329 | Independent Practitioners Alliance Section Member $169 (you can sign-up for this webinar and receive a membership to PRSA IPA – see the registration page for info)

Register: on PRSA.org

Hashtag: #ipaprsa

Description

As an independent public relations practitioner, knowing when and where to allocate your time in the online space is the key to accomplishing clients’ goals (and expanding your business’ reach). From Facebook to Flickr, effectively working with an arsenal of new media tools requires insight into how each tool works independently and in unison. During this virtual conference, an expert team of independent practitioners will share best practices and detailed strategies for efficiently creating an integrated public relations campaign.

You Will Learn:

• The importance of knowing where you are and where you want to be before jumping in feet first.
• Where to find and how to use free and cheap social media measurement tools.
• Ways to streamline your online activity and integrate your online platforms so they support, not compete, with one another.
• Tactics to build credibility and connections.
• Best practices for using social media to build business and attract clients.
• How to craft content to make your online presence stand out.

Learn more about the presenters by visiting their websites: Pete Codella, Jason Falls, Kristie Aylett.

My Presentation Slides

Click here to download at PDF of my presentation slides (1.3mb).

However, I have simply fallen behind in keeping up with hundreds of emails I receive each day.

The email newsletters I receive are crowding out important messages from clients, prospects and others.

So, I have determined to clear out my email inbox by unsubscribing from a multitude of messages.

I’ll be turning more and more to my RSS reader and Google Search to locate valuable information.

Have any of you taken a similar approach to your email inbox? Have you found the number of emails you receive unwieldy, especially after being out of the office for a few days or weeks?

I have, and now I’ve taken steps to reclaim my inbox.

This guide by Marketo provides one of the most comprehensive, easy to understand outlines for using social media for business that I have seen.

I highly recommend downloading the PDF from their site.

His thoughts and presentation are available on his blog and I am embedding his shared presentation below.

I recommend reviewing the presentation to get an idea of where we’re headed with all this talk of social media and its implications for business.

And just so you know, I was fortunate enough to work on the conference programming with Ragan and Cisco. I couldn’t be happier with how it turned out.

Strategy versus tools

Let me explain why I believe social media strategy and tools go hand-in-hand.

There’s great value in understanding the myriad of social media tools. My pre-conference workshop, 17 social media tools to help communicators save time and money, was focused on highlighting more than 30 different tools.

Communicators need a personal familiarity with the tools before they can apply them to business.

However, existence of the tools alone will not guarantee success in implementation.

There must be an objective — a specific, measurable outcome — in order to know if social media tools are useful.

Building furniture

For example, I’m a woodworker. I have built a handful of bedroom sets for family and friends. Possessing woodworking tools and purchasing supplies does not mean I’ll automatically end up with a bedroom set.

Having the tools and a knowledge of how to use them is only an indication that I could create bedroom furniture if I wanted.

Using plans and diagrams I can apply my woodworking tools and skill set to the project of creating a bedroom set.

Using social media is like using woodworking tools

Social media works similarly. You must have the tools and an understanding of how to employ them. You must also use the tools within an established framework, according to an existing plan, to produce the desired outcome.

I heard some presenters and Social Media Summit attendees suggest there’s no such thing as a social media strategy, that all social media entails is a set of tools.

I heard others harp on setting clear communication objectives before focusing on social media tools.

I believe in our day of integrated marketing communications both a strategy and solid social media toolkit are necessary. They work together to create successful communication campaigns.

What do you think?

Details

10 Steps to Social Media Success in Business

Social Media Listening, Measuring and Engagement

Date: June 17, 2010

Time: Noon to 1 p.m.

Place: Utah Cultural Celebration Center‎ – 1355 West 3100 South, West Valley, Utah | map it

Cost: $20

RSVP: register and pay at ChamberWest.org or email rsvp[at]chamberwest.org to register and pay at the door

Description

You’ve heard the buzz about social media. You’ve probably received invitations to join LinkedIn networks, ‘like’ pages on Facebook and follow someone on Twitter. But what does it mean and how can you utilize social media tools to accomplish business purposes?

Join Salt Lake City’s first Social Media Club chapter president, social media consultant and public relations professional, Pete Codella, as he shares examples and outlines ways to listen, measure and engage through social media.

About Pete Codella

Pete is Accredited in public relations. He operates Codella Marketing and NewsCactus, an online newsroom software provider, and co-hosts the Online PR Podcast.

Pete is the co-author of Integrated Marketing in the Digital World and creator of Using Social Media as a Tool for Public Relations, a course he taught online for the University of California, Irvine Extension. He is a 15-year veteran, award-winning, strategic business communicator.

In 2009 Pete co-founded and served as president of the Social Media Club of Salt Lake City, then chaired the first Social Media Club-sponsored awards program, the Utah Social Media Awards.

Pete holds a B.A. from Brigham Young University. He blogs at PeteCodella.com and can be found on Twitter @codella.

He’s a former singing gondolier at The Venetian in Las Vegas, a fortunate husband and proud father who enjoys spending time with his young family and their energetic weimaraner.

If you’re interested in having a Southwest Visa card where your purchases earn you frequent flier credits, and you’re willing to say I referred you, we could both get a free flight!

I use a Southwest Visa card for business purchases and like getting free flights for the things I’d be purchasing anyway. Rewards are always nice. And the Visa folks aren’t evil like American Express (based on my experience).

You have to call 1-888-230-6865 to sign-up and give the agent three pieces of information from me in order for my account to get the credit.

If you’re interested, let me know and I’ll send you a private message with the details.

It’s just more convenient and less expensive than Blockbuster or Hollywood (are they still in business?), and we don’t mind driving to a Redbox location to pick-up and drop-off the movie (something we didn’t have to do when we used Netflix).

When we first started picking up DVDs from Redbox, I was thrilled to learn I could go online and reserve a movie then pick it up at a Redbox location of my choice. I love the online portion of Redbox’s service.

I even suggested to Redbox a while ago that they allow me, a Redbox.com user, to tell my social networks about the movie I was renting for the night by providing tools to share the fact that I had rented a movie from them. Something like ShareThis.com where I could, with the click of a mouse, share the details on Facebook or Twitter.

I’m pleased to say that now Redbox does offer that. I don’t know when it changed, but I did notice how easy it was when I rented a movie for tonight to share that information with my social network.

Also, on their home page, Redbox offers links to their Facebook page (although they still have the old “Fan Us on Facebook” text even though Facebook pages don’t get “fans” any longer), Twitter account, and even a link to download their application for iPhone. And who doesn’t love iPhone apps, non iPhone users aside?

Since I have always been impressed with Redbox, its business model and now its integration of social media tools, I thought it worthy of a congratulatory blog post on this beautiful May Friday.

Another brand that has impressed me lately in how it utilizes social media tools is Domino’s Pizza. With its new recipes, website and marketing (I get email and text message offers from them regularly) it has done a lot to win back my patronage.

Do you have examples of consumer brands that are using social media effectively? Please do share.