While I was teaching a Blogging for Business class out at Insights Group in Brighton yesterday, I mentioned that you need to be careful what you say online because it lasts for eternity (or you should consider that it does). People were pretty shocked to know that just because you delete something, it may still be available on the Internet somewhere.
Why? Search engines and other web crawlers move around the Internet indexing websites. They often actually pull a copy of your website (or whatever website you’re posting content on). Some use this content to be able to provide results even if your site goes down. Others reprocess content to provide excerpts from across the web. There are many different things that websites do with content from elsewhere. The important thing is to remember that anything that’s posted may be available long after you’ve deleted it from the original source.
If you’re worried about what’s available for other people to read, try searching for your name occasionally using Google search (this is a good idea anyway). You can also search for your product and company names to say what others are saying about them. You can use Google Alerts to email you a report of what’s been said about you, your company, or your products (more about Google Alerts in an upcoming post).
Worrying about the eternity of what you say shouldn’t keep you from blogging. Just be mindful and think about anything controversial before you post it.
(photo by art es anna @ Flickr CC)
Technorati tags: SEO, marketing, google, internet marketing, business, opinion, branding, brand, brand strategy, brand management
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