Three Words of Wisdom

Oops, almost missed the memetrain on this one. Here’s an oldie but a goodie: Dharmesh Shah’s Startup Triplets, with a few from Guy Kawasaki.

These are basically three-word phrases for entrepreneurs. A ton of great ones have already been voiced. Here are mine:

I hope Shah doesn’t mind my using his awesome tweet link idea. Internet memes are fun!

Do Your Homework Whenever Meeting Someone New

Admit it, you’ve Googled someone before. Maybe it was someone you were dating. Maybe it was someone you had a crush on.

But how about when you have a sales meeting and are about to meet a new prospective client?

If you are an experienced salesperson, I’m probably preaching to the choir. For those like me who are in the consulting & services business and relatively new to the sales role, I have this to say:

Do your homework whenever you meet someone new.

This applies all around the sales cycle. From following up on leads to meeting other stakeholders to getting their team introduced with yours. Throughout this process, you are likely to meet several different people (or one person fulfilling all of these roles):

  • Primary stakeholder – the person with the budget
  • Influencers – other stakeholders who have a say in this decision
  • Project manager – the person who coordinates the work between your client and your team, also often the main point of contact
  • Workers – employees from your client’s team with whom your team will have to interact

Do your homework on each of them. For a service organization, all the members of your client’s team are important and critical to your success.

Why?

The goal isn’t to stalk the person. It’s to find meaningful connections. If the person likes the San Francisco Giants, and hey, so do you, then bring it up. If you’re not a fan, then keep your mouth shut. Don’t be insincere with these connections. Use them only if they honestly exist. Otherwise, you might find yourself in a TV sitcom where you’re trying to lie and squirm your way out of a totally alien discussion. And all without a laugh track.

If there are no connections, consider identifying a key achievement that person has made and offering congratulations. Perhaps the person started a company that launched a successful product in the past. Perhaps the person wrote a book or article you’ve read. Again, don’t be overtly insincere, though a little flattery can get you a long way.

It also helps to understand the person’s background. If he/she comes from a technical background, then you can tailor your sales pitch to a more technical audience. If he/she comes from a marketing background, then emphasize potential branding and identity benefits. Use key terminology from their background.

So far, I haven’t had a case where a person has been offended or frightened by this research. In fact, many seem to be flattered by it, even expect it. Some don’t care though; they’re more interested in the deal and how it can help them.

All of this assumes you’ve already done your homework with the company, their department, and their needs. Don’t even bother researching the people if you haven’t researched their business.

Ultimately, you want to form a connection with these stakeholders. If they feel they can relate to you on a personal level, and they feel you can sincerely understand them on a professional & personal level, then they are more likely to sign a contract with you.

How?

Here’s what I do:

  1. Google (GOOG) – I start with a good, old-fashioned Google search. This usually gives me most of the information I need, such as links to a blog, Twitter account, resume, etc.

    I always start with the blog, if one exists. This gives me a good overview of the person and his/her personality & interests. Does the person have a sarcastic sense of humor? A dry wit? Does the person have any hobbies or interests with which I can relate? Has this person done anything notable that I want to call out?

  2. LinkedIn.com – If the previous search doesn’t turn up a LinkedIn profile, then I perform one specifically on this site. Most people in my industry have a LinkedIn account.

    This gives me an overview of the person’s education and career path, which tells me the language he/she speaks (technical, marketing, design, financial, etc) and how I should tailor my sales pitch.

  3. Others – I know some salespeople go further and check out Facebook, MySpace, and other similar sources. Personally, I don’t. If you aren’t a member of that person’s Facebook network, then you won’t be able to see deeper details. Also, the interests and photos included on Facebook don’t help as much as a blog or personal website. It’s tough to form a connection on a favorite TV show, especially if you don’t know how much they like it, or if their profile has been updated recently. My experience, anyways; some still do this research all the time. And practically no one in my industry uses MySpace (that I know of).

Once you have this information, share it with your team. Help them to understand the client better. This can strengthen the relationship on both sides.

There will be a few cases where such web research doesn’t help because the person keeps a private offline life. That’s fine. That’s where you’ll need to muster up your interpersonal skills and form a connection the old fashioned way. These tips just offer an extra advantage. If the information is out there, why not use it, right?

Photo by: fazen

How to Use Social Media for Market Research

Classic OPTE Project Map of the Internet 2005 Pssst, wanna hear a secret? You can conduct free market research using online social media tools. I don’t know about you, but free is my favorite price.

You may already know that you can tap into a plethora of statistics from the US government (e.g. census data, economic statistics, etc). There are also a ton of articles from Entrepreneur Magazine, INC. Magazine, and About.com. Not to mention all the great books out there.

But for immediate, real-time commentary, criticisms, and opinions from your customers (potential, current, and previous), social media is the key. Here are some tools to help you.

Search

These tools take a keyword and offer detailed search results sourced from social media sites. All of them are constantly tweaking their algorithms and pool of sources, so their result sets vary quite a bit. Most, but not all, provide RSS feeds of their results too.

The benefit here is monitoring mentions of your brand, products, and/or services. Though you will have to wade through a lot of noise, occasionally, you can find useful suggestions or criticisms. These tools even allow you to engage with potential, current and former customers, which can add to the personability of your business.

I differentiate the blogosphere from social media in my descriptions below. The blogosphere is the collection of blogs on the Internet. Social media sites are social/community-oriented sites like Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, Digg, etc. For each, I’ve used the Amazon Kindle (AMZN) as an example topic.

  • FriendFeed – searches through whatever social media sources its members have added.
  • Technorati – searches through the blogosphere, but not other social media.
  • Google Blog Search – also searches through the blogosphere.
  • BlogPulse – also searches through the blogosphere.
  • Twitter Search – provides results only from Twitter.
  • OneRiot – searches just the URLs shared on Twitter.
  • Dipity – searches through social media sites and displays the results against a timeline.
  • Kosmix – creates a customized SERP (Search Engine Results Page) for each keyword with results from blogs and social media sites, including notes from human editors.
  • Addict-o-matic – also creates customized SERPs from social media sites.
  • Social Mention – searches through social media sites and includes statistics of the keyword: strength, sentiment, passion & reach.
  • Scour – searches through social media sites and includes the result’s ranking on various search engines.
  • Samepoint – searches through social media sites and includes how negative or positive that source is on the topic.
  • Whos Talkin – searches through the blogosphere and social media sites.
  • BoardTracker – searches through popular forums
  • Omgili – searches for discussions of your keyword on popular forums, mailing lists, answer boards, blogs, and even reviews on ecommerce sites.
  • BackType – searches for discussions of your keyword on blogs and social media sites.
  • Talk Digger – searches for discussions of your keyword on blogs.
  • HowSociable – provides a visibility score ranking based on the number of keyword mentions on various social media sites.
  • Google Alerts – sends an email each time a new page based on your keyword is indexed.

Ask

In contrast to searching for existing discussions and opinions, you can also ask specific questions. There are a variety of methods with a wide range of pros and cons. Some of these offer you an automatic community, while others require you to cultivate a community first. Some of these allow you to aim for a targeted community, while others are open to a mass audience. All have inherent biases based on the types of people who use their services. Fortunately, all of these methods are usually cheaper than putting together a focus group.

Be careful not to come across too commercial or promotional whenever talking to the public. People tend not to respond well to someone they perceive as a spammer. Craft your questions carefully. If you are in doubt, start by asking how people solve the particular problem your business is trying to address. They may cite your product, your competitors’ products, or other indirect competitors, all of which could provide interesting insights.

  • Yahoo! Answers (YHOO) – questions are categorized and social incentives are offered to encourage people to provide answers.
  • Aardvark – uses your extended social network to answer your questions, which may or may not be your target audience.
  • Forums – there are forums for almost every topic and industry out there; look for a few popular & active forums aimed at your target market and post your questions there.
  • Yahoo! Groups – look for a few popular & active groups aimed at your target market and post your questions there.
  • Google Groups – look for a few popular & active groups aimed at your target market and post your questions there.
  • Blog – start a blog and ask your questions there, though without cultivating a meaningful following, replies may not be forthcoming.
  • Twitter – create an account and ask your questions there, though without cultivating a meaningful following, replies may not be forthcoming.
  • Facebook – start a group or fan page for your business and ask your questions there, though without cultivating a meaningful membership, replies may not be forthcoming.
  • Hunch – this is a different kind of question & answer service that does not allow outright commercialism or product promotion, though you can ask general questions about your product category or industry; just be careful not to come off as a spammer.

Trends

Want to monitor how popular or unpopular a particular topic has been over a range of time? These tools generally return search result volumes on nice time-based line graphs. Many also allow you to drill down to the individual search result, news article, blog post, or tweet that mentioned your keyword.

The value here is in detecting a growing trend and riding the wave. If you’re trying to start a trend, this can be a good way to monitor its progress. If you’re looking for new product lines or services, this can help you identify new opportunities.

For each, I’ve used the Amazon Kindle as an example topic.

  • Google Trends – displays the keyword search volume and news articles over time, including search volume within geographic regions, cities, and languages.
  • bing xRank – displays the keyword search volume over time, including related keyword phrases, news, videos, and images.
  • Trendrr – searches through a range of social media sites and displays the keyword search volume on each over time.
  • BlogPulse – searches through the blogosphere and displays uses of the keyword over time.
  • Trendpedia – searches through the blogosphere and displays uses of the keyword over time.
  • Hashtags – searches through Twitter’s hashtags and displays uses of the hashtag (if it exists) over time.

Competitive Research

Once you’ve got a list of competitor companies, it is possible to research on them. You can find out a ton of information, including who works there, what kind of roles they’re hiring, and opinions on the company from former employees, current employees, industry analysts, and outsiders.

This kind of information can help you estimate the direction and next steps of your competitor, though it doesn’t offer a view of how customers perceive them. For that kind of info, use the search tools listed above. You can also check up on your own business, of course.

For each, I’ve used Amazon as an example company.

  • LinkedIn – provides employee listings (current, former, & new), related companies (acquisitions & subsidiaries), general company information (location of employees, number of employees, stock charts, etc), employee demographics (recent promotions, common job titles, common career paths, top universities, median age, gender percentages, etc), and job listings.
  • Jigsaw – provides employee listings (name, position, contact information, etc) and employee statistics (number of employees in different divisions & positions).
  • CrunchBase – provides general company information (using wiki software), key employee profiles (current & former), company acquisitions (acquired company, date, & amount if known), company investments (company invested in & date), dates of significant company events, traffic analysis of company website, and list of news articles from TechCrunch, Techmeme, and other sources.
  • ChubbyBrain – provides ratings & reviews of companies made by members of this site, key competitors, mergers & acquisitions, funding rounds (investor, date, & funding raised), and ratings & reviews of investors by members of this site (portfolio breakdown & companies funded).
  • Glassdoor – provides ratings & reviews of companies made by members of this site, salary information based on job titles, information about interviews with various companies, and job listings.

Do you know of other good tools for social media market research?

Photo by: curiouslee

Checking Your Twitter Reputation

Have you checked your Twitter reputation lately?

A reputation is an ephemeral thing based on the collective opinion of others. But nevertheless, enterprising individuals have built a variety of tools to compute your Twitter reputation. If anything, it’s a fun way to evaluate your tweets.

TwInfluence
This tool measures the “combined influence of twitterers and their followers, with a few social network statistics thrown in as bonus.” That means the influence of your followers’ followers (your second-order followers) are also factored. TwInfluence is perhaps the most academic and thorough reputation measurement tool currently available. As of this post, my rank (and reach) is 43,527 (81%), my velocity is 4,499 second-order followers/day, my social capital is 6,585.3 +2.2 Very High, and my centralization is 13.20% / 0.0 Average – Resilient.
Twitter Grader
This tool aims to measure the “power, reach and authority of a twitter account” by using a proprietary algorithm that considers factors such as number of followers, power of followers, updates, update recency, follower/following ratio, and engagement. As of this post, my grade is 93 out of 100.
Twitalyzer
This tool analyzes the last seven days of Twitter usage and provides a measurement of impact, engagement, generosity, velocity, clout, and influence. As of this post, my rankings are – impact: 0.3%, engagement: 25.0%, generosity: 100%, velocity: 1.3%, clout: 0.3%, and influence: 0.2%.
Klout
This tool uses “semantic analysis to determine what a person talks about and then measures how influential they are on that topic.” As of this post, my score is 15 out of 100. According to Klout, I am a casual user and “don’t take this Twitter stuff too seriously.” Heh, true.
Twitterholic
This tool scans Twitter’s public timeline “for new twits to tweet. A few times a day, we calculate individual statistics for each twittering twit in our database,” whatever that means. As of this post, my rank is 158,477.
Twanalyst
This tool is a tongue-in-cheek tool that analyzes a profile’s last 100 tweets for readability and types of tweets. As of this post, my Twitter personality is popular, inquisitive, & cautious, with a chatty & coherent style. I am a parrot. (Interesting; I used to be a writer.)

What’s your current Twitter reputation?

Pyramid Scheme Scamming in Bookstores

It almost happened again.

“Good evening,” the gentleman in the hat said.

“Evening,” I muttered with nary a glance in his direction.

“You have your own business?” he asked.

“Nah. Just looking for a gift for a friend,” I replied. Then I walked out of the business book section.

Years ago, a seemingly nice guy struck up a conversation with me while I was browsing through the business book section. Not wanting to be inhospitable, and always eager to expand my business network, I chatted with him about my dreams of entrepreneurship.

I did occasional freelance web development work back then. He said he had his own business and needed a new website. So I gave him my card.

He set up a meeting to discuss his website. When we met a week later, he pitched me a dizzying business model of soliciting friends and helping them set up their own business too, just like he was going to help me do. No talk of a new website at all.

As soon as he sketched out a bunch of boxes on a napkin that vaguely resembled a pyramid, I stopped the conversation. “Look, I know what you’re trying to pitch me. You’re trying to pitch me a pyramid scheme.”

He looked at me incredulously. “What?! This is not a pyramid scheme!”

I thanked him for the coffee, got up, and walked out. As I left, I noticed a gentleman in a suit sitting a few tables over. He glanced at me, then turned away immediately. It was too late. I recognized him. He had been in the bookstore when I first met the pyramid scheme guy. He was even wearing a suit back then, which was why I recognized him. (A guy wearing a suit in Silicon Valley sticks out like a sore thumb, lemme just tell ya.) Mr. Suit had been standing behind me while I was talking to Mr. Pyramid Scheme at that bookstore.

This time around, I glanced around the business book section as I walked out. There was an older gentleman standing near the gentleman in the hat.

A case of a master and an apprentice? Do they always work in pairs? Or just a mere coincidence?

It’s entirely possible I am wrong about the gentleman in the hat. He could have been just a friendly guy wanting to chat.

In my experience, however, only salespeople attempt cold leads like that. It’s like cold calling, except in a bookstore. In fact, it’s pretty smart of them to prey on readers perusing business books. They’re targeting people with a potential entrepreneurial streak. And with the lure of easy money being strong – especially in an economy like this – I wonder how many bites they get.

This has even happened to me on the plane. That’s another smart spot for them to target. They have a captive audience. On some flights, the chances of its passengers being there for business is high. So I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s another target zone.

I could be wrong, but my gut sensed something fishy at the bookstore that night. If I lost out on a potential legitimate business connection, oh well. I’d rather make my connections through other means than to waste my time being sold another pyramid scheme. Life is too short to waste time like this.

Has this ever happened to you?

Photo by: goose3five

Customer Research Fun

You know what’s fun? Talking to your customers.

I don’t know about you, but I relish every chance I get to sit down and talk with them. Sometimes they’re full of ideas that can evolve my business significantly. Other times, they offer helpful criticisms and relevant complaints that can improve the way we do things. Even the most bitter complaints are useful – they teach us What Not To Do.

Plus, during the non-business-related general chit-chat, I learn something new about my customers each and every time. About their lives, their aspirations, their view on life, or even their favorite TV shows. All of it is delightfully fascinating to me.

This week is all about meeting with customers and doing market research. I’ve only conducted a few personal interviews so far, but already it’s been amazing. Customer research FTW!

Photo by: Stig Nygaard

Amazon Kindle for Textbooks

Amazon Kindle 2 Wish I could say I called it first, but it was an obvious idea from the start.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Amazon (AMZN) “plans to unveil a new version of its Kindle e-book reader with a larger screen and other features designed to appeal to periodical and academic textbook publishers.”

Beginning this fall, some students at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland will be given large-screen Kindles with textbooks for chemistry, computer science and a freshman seminar already installed, said Lev Gonick, the school’s chief information officer. The university plans to compare the experiences of students who get the Kindles and those who use traditional textbooks, he said.

Five other universities are involved in the Kindle project, according to people briefed on the matter. They are Pace, Princeton, Reed, Darden School at the University of Virginia, and Arizona State.

Lucky students! I wonder how they picked these universities.

Not everyone feels this way though. Frederic Lardinois of ReadWriteWeb doesn’t think students will use a Kindle for their studies, mainly because taking notes is different (he says “clunky”) on a Kindle and laptops exist as a viable electronic alternative. He’s made good points, though I respectfully disagree. Here is how I think it will play out:

Some students will rush to buy it, some will totally avoid it, and some will watch their friends use it and perhaps pick one up after an intelligent evaluation. As the Kindle becomes synonymous with education and books, these students will graduate and continue using their Kindles outside of college.

Hey, that strategy kind of sounds familiar. Apple (AAPL), ahem.

Who will avoid it?

  • Students who like the tactile feel of a heavy textbook and using a highlighter & pen to take notes
  • Students who don’t want to pay the upfront cost of a Kindle
  • Students who just don’t like the device (too ugly, too unusable, etc)

Who will buy it?

  • Students who determine that a Kindle and its e-books are cheaper than purchasing used textbooks
  • Students who like the latest tech gadgets and toys (don’t underestimate the size of this group!)
  • Students who have to carry around enormous textbooks and don’t want the added weight

I suspect that those who buy a Kindle will adopt new ways of note-taking as well. Students are adaptable and sharp that way. Maybe they’ll use Kindle’s built-in note-taking features. Maybe Amazon will add more features to improve this. Or maybe they’ll adopt other practices, like writing down important points in a notebook. I often did this because the act of writing helped me memorize information.

Point is, any shortcomings the Kindle has with note-taking features will probably be easily overcome by students who like the device for its price, portability, and weight.

They’ll most probably have a laptop too and see both devices as complementary instead of competitive. I can see students carrying both. They may even have both on the desk simultaneously – the Kindle with their e-textbook, their laptop with a few chat clients (procrastinators!), and perhaps some pens and paper for notes. Swap out the Kindle with a stack of textbooks and that’s the typical study set-up.

And that is a point I suspect is more important than Lardinois realizes. I don’t know which classes he took, but if you had classes with a ton of heavy textbooks, you’d probably do anything to relieve yourself of that burden. A Kindle is the perfect answer.

One more quick point: the Kindle’s Wikipedia and dictionary integration could be hidden gems. Students use sources like those often for research reports. While a laptop might still be easier to capture long paragraphs from Wikipedia, being able to look up a quick fact would be sweet awesomeness.

All Amazon needs is a few key students (read: connectors and social hubs) to enjoy their Kindles. Word of mouth marketing is huge on college campuses. It’s a great target market in a great WOM environment.

Man, thinking about all this kind of makes me wish I had a Kindle when I was a college student.

How to Manage Your Personal Online Reputation

I’ve been thinking about one’s online reputation lately.

There are a lot of tools for businesses to manage their online reputations, but how about individuals? How about small-time bloggers, web designers & developers, and general netizens who don’t have access to marketing budgets, yet are concerned about their personal brand?

These questions bubbled in my mind after reading this comment from George of Illuminati Karate:

I made a list of my random social accounts recently, and was surprised to come up with 15. Making a list can be a good check to make sure you’re effectively managing your online reputation.

That is certainly true. Here are some more free ways to manage your personal online reputation.

How to See What Others Are Seeing

First, you need to find out what other people are seeing about you. What are potential employers seeing? Or potential dates? Or your parents?

Google Search
Who hasn’t used Google (GOOG) to find themselves by now? It is so common that it’s even a verb – as in, “I Googled myself last night” (which kinda sounds dirty). Simply type your name, email address, user ID, or URL into Google and look at the results. If you have a common name (like me) or have very little published about yourself, you may not find yourself. If you have a fairly unique name and even a moderate online presence, it will all come pouring into your search results. Unfortunately, you can’t receive an RSS feed or email alert for these search results; you’ll have to perform a search every time you want to monitor your reputation.
Google Alerts
Every time the Google search engine indexes a new occurrence of a particular line of text (say, your name, email address, user ID, or URL), Google Alerts will email you. It’s like Googling your own name every day, except having a service do it for you. Utterly efficient vanity.
Technorati
This service will track what is written about you in the blogosphere. Google tends to cover some of the same info, but sometimes Technorati catches something that Google hasn’t gotten to yet. You can receive the search results as an RSS feed.
Twitter Search
If you have a Twitter account, this may be especially useful. You will be able to monitor what others are saying about you in near real-time. Instant vanity gratification at its best. You can receive the search results as an RSS feed.
Facebook
If you have a Facebook account, look through all of your photos. Your friends can tag you on their photos, which can sometimes lead to embarrassing snapshots that you may not want on your profile. Also look through your wall posts, fan pages, groups, apps, interests, and other profile info. This is what your potential dates, employers, and parents may see.
MySpace
If you have a MySpace (NWS) account, look through your entire profile. It’s the same drill as Facebook: check your photos, friends’ comments, blog entries, interests, and other info from your profile.
LinkedIn
If you have a LinkedIn account, look through your profile, recommendations to you, and recommendations you’ve written. Chances are, there isn’t much here that will be inappropriate, because of the nature of this social network. But it’s still a good place to check.
Flickr
Do a search for your name on Flickr. Sometimes people will tag or title a photo with your name, especially if you attend lots of public events or have friends with eager cameras. Similar to Google Search, common names can turn up lots of other people before you find yourself.
YouTube
YouTube is similar to Flickr in that other people can tag you if they’ve filmed you with their video camera. Hopefully it’s not some kind of scandalous video with night-vision and an interrupting phone call. Ahem.
MonitorThis
This new service scours a bunch of search engines, including Google, Yahoo! (YHOO), MSN (MSFT), Technorati, Twitter Search, and many others. I haven’t found its results to be that comprehensive yet, even though it claims to pull from all of those sources. But it’s still a young service and hopefully will improve over time. You can receive the search results as an RSS feed.
Other Social Media Sites
If you have an account on another social media site, such as Delicious, Digg.com, last.fm, etc, create a list of them. Go through each one with a mindful eye towards potentially inappropriate content, just like I mentioned with Facebook, MySpace, and LinkedIn.
Your Own Site
Lastly and perhaps most importantly: your own site. Look through your site with the same critical eye as you did for the aforementioned social networks. For many people, if they manage to find your site, they will consider this a goldmine of information about you. Everything you publish is subject to their interpretation.

How to Control What Others Are Seeing

Next, you need to control what others find about you. While you can’t control every little thing, there are ways to steer the overall findings, and thus, your online reputation.

Get Your Own Website
The best defense is a good offense. If you create your own website, you could potentially appear high in search engine results for yourself. This will give you a way to explicitly control your online reputation. You don’t need to go all out and start a blog; even a one-pager with basic info will do.
Get Your Own Name On Social Media
Create social media accounts and get your own name before somebody else does. Although the risk of someone pretending to be you is low, you will at least have these online appearances under your control. Even if you don’t actively use those sites, put up a basic profile.
SEO Your Content
If you optimize your site for search engines, then your actively-controlled content will rank higher than other potentially embarrassing or outdated content. Since most people only look at the first page of search results, the further back you can push the bad stuff, the better. Creating various social media accounts can also help here, because they will appear in search results and push undesired content away.
Facebook
As you go through your Facebook profile, remove any potentially inappropriate photos or info to clean up your profile. You can remove yourself from a photo by clicking the “Remove tag” link next to your name, though you cannot delete the image yourself – you will have to ask the owner of the photo to do it for you.
MySpace
Again, the the same drill as Facebook: remove any potentially inappropriate photos, friends’ comments, blog entries, interests, and other info from your profile. Social networking is all fun and games, until someone loses a date or job from it.
LinkedIn
Generally, you don’t have to worry too much about inappropriate content in LinkedIn, due to its professional nature. But a less-than-flattering recommendation could be bad. You can email the author and kindly ask for a rewrite if that’s the case.
Flickr
Unfortunately, you cannot remove someone else’s photo, nor can you remove their tag mentioning your name. All you can do is email the owner and appeal to their kindness, generosity, and discretion. If negotiations get rough, consider buying them a premium Flickr account as a gift.
YouTube
Similar to Flickr, you cannot remove someone else’s video or tag of your name on YouTube. You can try flagging the video, but that won’t remove it. The best way to do that is to email the owner directly.
Other Social Media Sites
If you have created a list of your accounts on other social media sites, go through each one and remove any potentially embarrassing content. Tedious but worth it.

Duct Tape Marketing also lists a ton of reputation management tools, though I didn’t find many of them to be worth the time needed to learn & use them. I know that the services I’ve listed here may already take the average person quite a while to do.

They are worth it though, especially in today’s connected world. You never know when a potential date, employer, friend, business partner, or family member might be doing some online snooping on you.

Photo by: Photo Mojo