The first step in understanding your online reputation as an educator or school administrator is discovering how the Internet defines you. You must monitor your online reputation so that current and prospective employers will view you favorably.

Given the all-consuming power of the Internet, your words will remain visible for many years to come. The most popular review site for educators is ratemyprofessors.com. At this writing, there are ratings for more than a million professors submitted by over 11 million users. Meanwhile, more than 6,000 schools from across the globe are accessible on this site. This is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of content houses that could sully your online reputation.

Often you will only learn about any negative content by performing a Google search. When this negative content pops up near the top of your search results, it can feel a little overwhelming. Online rating and review sites will typically avoid removing negative reviews unless they’re illegal or reveal personal information such as a social security number or address. Therefore, the only way to handle these negative results is to override them with positive content.

Most Internet users focus their attention on the first couple of pages of search results, so it’s imperative that you push negative results further down the list. Here are some essential tips for starting the process of creating and maintaining your professional digital assets.

Shore Up Your Social-Media Accounts

Establish profiles on all of the social-media websites such as Facebook, Google , Twitter and Pinterest. If you take ownership of these accounts, you are going a long way towards burnishing your online reputation.

LinkedIn, long known as the premier social networking website for businesses and professionals, currently claims 238 million users. By opting for more user-friendly features, it has become a terrific source for content curation involving a host of different industries. Educators and administrators can share their experiences and connect with colleagues and fellow professionals.

Social-media fans and followers in the educational community like to think of themselves as creative individuals, so giving them the opportunity to read your published works in academic journals could result in a considerable amount of traffic and a whole host of mutually beneficial interactions.

Keep Your Hands Off Negative Mentions

For anyone in education with a significant history, negative reviews will occur from time to time. Even a carefully crafted response can draw you into a verbal assault with site posters, and most of them remain anonymous.

Unfortunately, some students will spend large chunks of their time damaging the online reputation of a professor for no logical reason. Many defamation attacks are the result of tech-savvy individuals who know just how to promote false content on social-media platforms and search engines.

If you’re on the wrong end of an inflammatory review online, your first response might be to unleash fury upon the Internet commenter. After months and months of building your positive online reputation, you will compromise these efforts by replying back in anger. Shooting off a nasty response will only cause the situation to escalate. Unfortunately, there is little recourse if your name has been disparaged on the Internet. That’s why managing your personally owned digital assets is so important.

Focus on Positive, Affirmative Postings

Your goal is to ‘own’ as many first page search results as possible for your name and/or your company’s name with content you’ve created or positively influenced. Ideally, your website address will appear at the top of page one results.

Your aim should be to create content that both current and prospective employer will enjoy reading. An added bonus of posting information-rich content will be that customers are much more likely to share it. If Internet users are forwarding your content on their own social-media accounts, your website traffic will skyrocket and a new audience will follow you.

By posting regularly scheduled high-quality content with text and visuals, you will improve your chances of appearing near the top of search engine rankings and pushing down negative mentions.

This post was written by Blake Jonathan Boldt