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After conducting extensive research and analysis of reputation management services, we recommend BrandYourself as the best reputation management service for individuals.
Ready to choose a reputation management service? Here's a breakdown of our complete coverage:
- Choosing a Reputation Management Service: 2015 Buyer's Guide
- Best Reputation Management Services Roundup
- Best Reputation Management Service for Business
Why BrandYourself?
Ease of use
While narrowing down online reputation management services for individuals, we found that many companies have websites that are difficult to navigate, and that most of them are not very transparent about what they do and what their services cost. As with our top choice for reputation management services for businesses, we were looking for a company that was open about its methodology, services and prices. BrandYourself's website does a great job of explaining exactly what the company does and how it does it, and pricing information is listed clearly.
BrandYourself has an entire page dedicated to how the reputation management process works, and all the details are laid out step by step in a way anyone can understand them. There is also a Web page that explains why reputation management is important (whether you do it yourself, or you use a service). This page includes statistics and a breakdown of what different search results could mean to a potential employer, for example. The company also maintains a very active blog with helpful information about reputation management, social media, careers and personal branding, along with additional information about BrandYourself's services. All of this information is categorized, so it's even easier to find what you want to read.
Control
Arguably the best thing BrandYourself has to offer is the ability to manage your reputation yourself (with guidance from the company, so you know you're doing it right). Other reputation management services did not offer this feature. BrandYourself calls this service its "Do-It-Yourself Product," and it comes in two subscription levels: free and premium.
BrandYourself's free DIY service doesn't give users very many features, but it is a good option for people who haven't had to deal with any reputation disasters and just want to put their best foot forward online — for example, job seekers, professionals, bloggers or anyone who wants to get his or her name out there but wants a little bit more control over what people see first.
Signing up is simple, and the feature is easy to use. Just enter your email address, type in a password and click "Create My Account." From there, BrandYourself will prompt you to enter the name you want to control in Google. (This would be your full name, stylized the way you prefer and the way people would be most likely to search for you. If you typically include your middle initial, for example, include it here, too.)
Once you've confirmed the name you want to control, you'll be taken to a page that shows you the first 10 search results that Google finds. (You can use the arrow buttons at the top to go to the next page of results, and so on.) Next to each link, you'll see three buttons to label these results — "Positive," "Negative" and "Not Me" — as well as a link that says "Not sure?" (This explains how to label a result if you're unsure where it fits best.)
Once you label each result, you'll be given a grade by BrandYourself. When you've completed these steps, the tool will show you what to do to improve your results and optimize the links you want at the top.
The premium DIY subscription works exactly the same way as the free service, except instead of being limited to optimizing up to three links, there are no limits to how many links you can optimize. This makes it ideal for people who want even more control over their search results, or for individuals who want to hide any negative or irrelevant search results.
Additionally, with either subscription level, you can publish a BrandYourself profile. This is a free feature that gives you a landing page where you can link to relevant social networks, as well as add contact information, a picture and a bio. The company offers several themes and color schemes to choose from, so you can customize your profile to your liking. And the best perk that comes with creating a BrandYourself profile is that once you do, you can see information about who is searching for you on Google.
Options
If you don't want to do it all yourself, BrandYourself has other options that give you varying levels of control over your reputation management campaigns. In addition to the free and premium subscriptions to BrandYourself's Do-It-Yourself product, the company offers two other services: HeadStart and Concierge.
The HeadStart service is the middle ground between managing your reputation yourself and having BrandYourself do it for you. With HeadStart, BrandYourself's team builds up your online presence for you for 30 days, and then turns it over to you to manage yourself. To get started, you'll have a strategy phone call with reputation management experts to map out your goals. These experts will then create one to two custom websites, along with eight to 12 social media and professional profiles, all of which will be filled with accurate and relevant information that is optimized for search engines. After 30 days, BrandYourself's experts will give you a personalized action plan and turn over all of your login information, and you'll automatically be given a premium subscription to the DIY service so that you can manage your online reputation from there. This is a great option if you need help getting off to a good start but want more control in the long run.
BrandYourself's Concierge service is the best option for you if you want to take a more hands-off approach, or if you're already dealing with a reputation management crisis. With Concierge, you get all of the same features as you would with HeadStart — you start with a strategy call, and then reputation management experts build up your online presence with one to two customized websites and eight to 12 social media and professional profiles. However, instead of turning over the reins to you after 30 days, BrandYourself will continue to update and optimize your content and manage your reputation and online presence for you.
When you sign up for the Concierge service, the company's content team will also manage your personal Wikipedia page (if you have one) and will work to get you mentioned in major publications in your industry, position you as a leader in your field and add more positive search results to push down the negative ones. Concierge subscribers also get a comprehensive monthly report that explains what the service did for you each month, and what the team's goals are for you for the following month.
BrandYourself also offers reputation management services for businesses; you can read more about those services on the company's website.
Customer service
On its website, BrandYourself has an impressive live-chat feature that makes it easy to connect with a representative right away. To access it, just click the blue Live Chat bar on the bottom right of your screen. A window will pop up to indicate that you're "now chatting." Simply type in your question, and a representative will respond to you right away. We tested this feature out by asking some basic questions about where to find information on the website. Each time we chatted with a representative, there was virtually no wait time before we received an answer.
When we tested out BrandYourself's free DIY subscription, we were also impressed by the company's quick response. Within a few minutes of signing up, we received an email with contact information for our personal representative. A few moments later, we also received a thank-you email from the company's CEO. While this appears to be an automated email, we thought it was a nice touch that showed the company's openness and transparency.
Another customer-service feature that stands out is the option to schedule a call on the website. If you're interested in BrandYourself's Concierge service and you'd prefer that a company representative reach out to you to discuss the services in depth, you can scroll to the bottom of this page and click Schedule a Call to fill out a form with your contact information and the best time to reach you for a free consultation.
Customer service over the phone had both strengths and weaknesses. What we really like about BrandYourself's phone service is that there's no guesswork. Rather than calling and listening to a virtual menu, pressing numbers until you get to the person you need to speak to, BrandYourself's phone service automatically tells you how many people are ahead of you and asks you to stay on the line to be connected with a representative. The only downside was that we weren't always able to get through to a representative. At times, it was easy to connect with a person, and other times, we were directed to voicemail after a minute or two of wait time on hold. While this is an issue, given how stellar the company's customer service is online, we didn't find this to be all that problematic.
Pricing
We found BrandYourself's pricing to be very reasonable compared to that of other reputation management companies, and above all, we like that the company offers a free product for individuals who don't need to do damage control but want more say in what comes up in their search results. Here's a breakdown of BrandYourself's prices, per service.
Do-It-Yourself service: BrandYourself's basic DIY service comes in two different options with different prices: free and premium. As previously mentioned, with the free service, you can optimize up to three different links about yourself. With the premium package, you can optimize an unlimited number of links about yourself for $99 per year.
HeadStart service: The HeadStart service, in which BrandYourself builds up your online presence for you and then turns it over to you after 30 days, costs $798 (this is broken down into two payments of $399) plus an additional $20 per month to cover Web hosting and domain-name renewal.
Concierge service: BrandYourself's Concierge service, in which the company manages your reputation for you, starts at $399 per month.
We chose BrandYourself from a pool of dozens of reputation management services. To learn more about our full methodology and for a more comprehensive list of reputation management services, visit our best picks page here.
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