Manage your online reputation

When doing an Open PhD or pursuing some form of life-long learning or academic study people will often speak of getting the degree, diploma or some certificate. I can see the value in having these from a recognized institution, but, in the end I consider it credentialism and no competition for good reputation management. If you are in pursuit of recognition for your life-long learning or academic study I suggest the better route would be a good reputation management strategy, rather than incur the cost and time of pursuing a credential from a recognized institution. In the age of the social graph, reputation is more important than credentials and will increasingly be used in securing jobs and showing an expertise in a subject area. I believe University credentials will decrease in value over the next 15 years and beyond.

Build an understanding;
Create a good understanding of online reputation management, the two queries that yield good reference toward this are;

• online reputation management
• manage your online reputation

 Regularly practice the following;

1. Follow the home-base and outpost approach, post everywhere, post often.
2. After reading a post or article and you have a comment, make it, and in the author profile link back to your home-base.
3. As soon a you become aware of a new social media site be sure to secure your name on the site, have your profile refer back to your home-base.
4. Write, produce, create resources that have some weight and add to the discussion within your chosen subject area. Be thorough, frequent, reference others and create quality!
5. Set up Google Alerts on your name and other keywords in your chosen subject; monitor these.
6. Review your traffic statistics, get a sense of why people are coming to your resources, and which keywords they are getting them to you.

The goal;
The goal of all this is to have the people you consider experts within your chosen area of study begin to follow you and make comment on your works. These people become your Personal Learning Network!