Tim has written up a short article for Engtech regarding reputation management the article an Introduction to reputation management is well worth a read if you use or are planning on using the web for any thing other then personal stuff, or if you plan to get married!
Tim has previously written a longer series on reputation management for Webdigity forums a few months ago, and has been using the term and discussing personal branding for several years. He might not have been the first to use the term but he was certainly one of the early promoters of something that is steadily heading towards being mainstream.
We grabbed a quick interview with Tim who is normally the only writer on the Venture Skills blog about where he thinks Reputation management is going…
VSkills Team - So reputation management what’s it all about in a nutshell?
Tim - Well I think the Engtech article summed it up, but basically its the creation, monitoring and manipulation of a personal brand or image, in many cases reputation management is simply the separation of personal and professional images.
VSkills Team - Should we all have separate brands for personal and professional persona’s?
Tim - No. But many of us have skeletons in the closets or simply have things that perhaps are fine within our personal circles but are not always suitable for our professional lives, a good example is Facebook and Myspace where we may post pictures or make comments that are fine for a Friday night but would not go down well in a board room or to an interview panel.
Vskills Team - So what skeletons do you have in your closet?
Tim - I have a large range of amazingly well painted small wargame figurines which I am selling on Ebay slowly over time.
VSkills Team - Is that really a skeleton?
Tim - No but they do fill up my cupboard! hence why they are going.
VSkills Team - Lets talk about the flip side of this as an employer do you “investigate candidates”?
Tim - Of course because of the field I work in I look for candidates who are willing to engage and even for freelancers I look for people with a online record and some forum activity a “clean” person or some one with no online presence in our industry is well frankly a bit “dodgy” a bit like when the police on the TV series know that a persons an evil mastermind because they don’t have a record.
VSkills Team - But if everyone is manipulating there results how will we spot the good from the bad
Tim - The same way we spot fakes within society today, a mixture of they will trip up, or their story doesn’t match their posts while it is easy to massage the SERP (search engine ranking pages) at least the first couple manipulating bad posts out of existences is difficult to achieve.
VSkills Team - Do you think your brand is doing ok?
Tim - Yes I’m pleased with the way I portray myself on-line, though I think it does mimic how I behave offline, hopefully I’m seen as the fun guy I am 
VSkills Team - Fun guy, you mean Ogre right?
Tim - Yes but a fun Ogre!
edit by Tim: Cheers guys that was fun but we didn’t cover much so I thought I would add a couple of things that have come up in conversation
Creating a brand is important
A brand or image is still you and I’m not suggesting that people create new personalities online as has been commented on rather that you simply offer 2 separate images one for your professional life the other more personal.
Do you have 2 websites
This was an interesting question but no I only have one Tim Nash web site timnash.me.uk though I obviously have other sites I’m a web technologist after all. There is however no reason why you should not have two web sites one personal one non.
Usernames
What if some one is using your name or username? this is an interesting question and the answer is up to you, I guess in most cases you will have to live with it, though make sure you record your profile in your claimID account.
Other coverage of the Engtech blog post can be found on the ClaimID blog.
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