Your digital image

Most of us think of image management as something that only celebrities need but in the age of the 'Net, we all need it because we're all so much more visible than we were 20, 10 or even just five years ago. But make no mistake, even if you have all the money in the world, image management is still a tricky thing to do.

Consider Tiger Woods: His contretemps with his wife was, to put it mildly, a bad thing for his image. To address this, Woods and or his business managers, made the strangest choice and hired Ari Fleischer Sports Communications run by George W. Bush's former White House press secretary.

Facebook Updates: What Kind Do You Write?

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Most of us think of image management as something that only celebrities need but in the age of the 'Net, we all need it because we're all so much more visible than we were 20, 10 or even just five years ago. But make no mistake, even if you have all the money in the world, image management is still a tricky thing to do.

Consider Tiger Woods: His contretemps with his wife was, to put it mildly, a bad thing for his image. To address this, Woods and or his business managers, made the strangest choice and hired Ari Fleischer Sports Communications run by George W. Bush's former White House press secretary.

Facebook Updates: What Kind Do You Write?

This is the same Ari Fleischer Sports Communications that "managed" Mark McGwire's return to baseball and advised the Green Bay Packers on the PR problem of Brett Favre's divorce. You'd have thought that track record alone would have been a warning, but it wasn't until the press started commenting about what a stunningly bad choice AFSC was that Team Tiger dropped Fleischer … it was actually faster than you can say "Valerie Plame". But I digress.

You most likely don't have Wood's wealth but you still have an image and you neglect that image at your peril. So, for that matter, do your loved ones.

You know that Facebook page your kid has? Have you checked it out lately? If you haven't, you could be in for a surprise. A friend's daughter had what could only be described as "indiscretions" posted for all to read while another friend's son, despite actually being a really nice kid, came across as an arrogant loudmouth with some serious authority issues.

The problem both kids had was their digital personas didn't represent them as much as a pop culture image they had adopted and, given their youth, they had no idea how it would look to those outside their peer group. They also had no idea how it might impact their futures when potential colleges and employers come looking for background.

But it's not just your kid's online image you should be worrying about. Your own professional online image is there for all to see and for all to analyze.

Remember my series of Gearhead articles on my Sentimeter project? Imagine if I collected all of the e-mail for, say, one month from your organization. Now I run it through the linguistic analysis engine I discussed in those articles and I map who talks to who, how often, and with what tone. Then I could see who was happy and positive and who was angry and negative.

I could also see what topics those emotions were associated with and who was involved. I could see who was seeking advice and who was giving it. I could see who was central to exchanges on key topics and who was central in distributing dirty jokes.

I could also figure out who was having casual or formal exchanges and with whom. There's a huge amount of insight to be gleaned from your e-mail and much of what is to be learned about your image online is completely hidden from you because you're not looking.

Six years ago I wrote] about a panel discussion I attended where Elizabeth Charnock, the CEO of a company called Cataphora, spoke. Cataphora specializes in analyzing corporate data and e-mail for legal cases and Charnock talked about what she called the "The Seven Ugly Dwarves" that give away people's intentions and attitudes: freaked out, angry, conspiratorial, confessional, friendly advice, personal and confused. Her company looks for the dwarves in corporate e-mail because when wrongdoing has been done, the Seven Ugly Dwarves are usually dancing attendance.