Question: Why did you start BrandYourself?

Patrick Ambron: We started BrandYourself because my co-founder, Pete, couldn’t secure a college internship because he was being confused for a criminal with the same name in Google search results. At the time, he contacted several traditional reputation companies but couldn’t receive a quote for under $25K. This was way out of the budget of a college student – but even more troubling was the fact that these companies were unable to explain what they would be doing to help Pete’s situation. After looking into these companies further, it became clear that they were only catering to the wealthy and were using outdated practices. This resulted in out-sourced, low-quality work.

Fortunately, I had a background in search engines and was able to help Pete out with his problem, but it made us think about all the other Petes out there that didn’t have access to help with their search results and reputations online. These traditional companies were not only ineffectively servicing the clients they were targeting, but were ignoring a huge gap in the market. In today’s age, everyone needs the tools to manage their reputations online – not just the wealthy.

So, we developed a Do-It-Yourself ORM software that walks users through the process of cleaning up, improving, and managing their online presence. The software is free to get started and just $99 per year to unlock all features. The software analyzes a user’s entire digital footprint and alerts you to potentially damaging search results, risky social posts, and risky social media images – then helps you to clean them up. It also walks you through the process of building and maintaining a positive online presence that wins career opportunities. In tangent with the software, we developed in-house services to help both individuals and businesses, including negative suppression and personal branding services for individuals as well as negative suppression, employee branding, and review management services for businesses. Through our services, we’ve maintained a commitment to quality and transparency with our clients and maintain all work in-house.

Question: Why is it more important than ever for people to protect their reputations?

Patrick Ambron: We initially started BrandYourself as a way for people to deal with the unintended consequences of the web. We saw with our co-founder Pete how a single negative search result can have damaging repercussions on someone’s career. Over the years, we’ve continued to help people who have found themselves dealing with unwanted search results, many of them a by-product of upsetting the wrong person. For all the good the Internet has given us, all it takes is someone to write or post something about you anonymously for damage to be done. We see this a lot of time with cases of revenge porn.

ORM has evolved into something that everyone needs, not just those who have been targeted or are dealing with negative search results. Everything we do online leaves a digital footprint and all of that data is increasingly being used to screen people at every stage of their career. Online screening is on the rise – with over 70% of employers now conducting online screenings of candidates, many of which are using advanced technology to do so. However, we believe that online screening can be extremely inaccurate and unfair:

• Negative Google results frequently are the product of cyberbullying – With the web’s anonymity, all it takes is one person to write something negative about you online for it to have damaging effects. Someone who you fired, passed over for a promotion, or even who you dated could post anything about you online – and we see it happen all the time. According to the Pew Research Center, 73% of American adults have witnessed online harassment, and 70% of young Americans say they have been victims themselves. Unfortunately, there’s not much that can be done about it either. Most laws currently protect the publishers and it’s incredibly difficult to get something removed from the web.

• You might have a questionable social media post online and not even realize – this shouldn’t discredit you from the job – Looking for red flags in social media may sound like a good idea on the surface, but we’ve found that most screening often mis-catgorizes people who could be great employees based off of posts taken out of context.  

• Online screening algorithms can frequently lead to less diverse hiring – Algorithms may favor individuals with more polished online presences, but who may not actually be the most qualified for the position. As screening becomes more prominent, so has the availability of expensive resources to help those willing to pay. High-end college prep companies are increasingly adding online personal branding to their service offerings and universities are beginning to even offer classes on the topic. However, not everyone has access to these types of resources meaning algorithms may do a better job of signaling privilege than competence. We believe reputation resources need to be available to everybody, not just those who can afford it.

• Online screening can reward those who are better at promoting what they do than those who are good at what they do: Although online screenings ultimate goal is to help find the best candidate, it may end up just finding the candidate who is best at promoting themselves. The candidate who has a polished, well-maintained online presence (has a personal website, active blog, robust social media presence, etc.) is more likely to get hired. While this isn’t necessarily fair, it speaks to the importance for everyone to have access to tools and resources to improve their online presence.

It’s more important than ever to have the tools to understand what’s out there about you on the web and how it could potentially be used when making decisions about you. You can read more on my thoughts on online screening here.

Question: What’s the most important thing for people to know about their digital presence?

Patrick Ambron: The most important thing to be aware of is that everyone needs to be concerned with their reputation online. All it takes is a single post for something to damage your reputation – and we see it happen all the time. Your reputation is no longer just the search results for your name but rather your whole digital footprint, including the social media posts you seemingly share privately with friends. Many of us have been on social media for the better part of a decade – that’s hundreds or even thousands of posts, comments, images, etc. that are online associated with your name. Even if a post was meant to stay between friends as an inside joke, you’re never sure who may see it and take it out of context. And although privacy settings are a step in the right direction, it’s never 100% safe from it finding its way in the wrong hands. Additionally, more and more companies are requesting access to private Facebook profiles via screening technology.

When it comes to social media screening, we’re not here to judge whether something is good or bad. We want to empower people with the knowledge of what’s being found in many of these online screenings, so they can make the determination on whether or not they want to keep it online.

Question: What should someone do if they are dealing with negative search results?

Patrick Ambron: Over the years, we’ve helped thousands of people, through both our software and in-house services, deal with negative search results. While the initial shock of discovering an unwanted search result showing up for your name can be overwhelming, you do have some options:

• See if removal is an option – While removing something from the web is very difficult and not an option for most people, it’s worth checking to see if your situation fits the criteria:

• It’s an incident of revenge porn – As revenge porn has grown into an epidemic, many tech companies have taken a stand against it. Google, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. all of policies against revenge porn. If you’re dealing with revenge porn, you can file a claim directly with Google to have the content removed from search engines. Additionally, depending on where the image/video is hosted, you may be able to appeal directly to the site itself to have it removed. Learn more about your options here.

• It’s copyright Infringement – The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) is responsible for protecting copyrighted material on the web. Websites and search engines will honor removal requests if the content is in violation of the DMCA.  In order for it to qualify, you need to be the owner of the original content itself and be able to prove. For example, many instances of revenge porn are selfies, meaning the person took the photo of themselves, and therefore owns the photo. Each website and search engine requires different information to file a takedown request so do some research with the site itself.

1. 1. You live in the EU or Argentina– The “Right to Be Forgotten” was passed several years ago in the EU to allow citizens “to determine the development of their life in an autonomous way, without being perpetually or periodically stigmatized as a consequence of a specific action performed in the past”. There are guidelines to this, however, and a request does not guarantee removal. If you do live in the EU or Argentina, do some research on if your situation meets their criteria.
   2. It’s sensitive information connected with your name – Google will remove sensitive information from its search engines, including bank account numbers, credit card numbers, social security numbers, signatures, and other information that could lead to identity theft. However, this doesn’t include information like your name and address.

Even if your situation does fit in one of the removal options listed above, it doesn’t prevent the negative result from resurfacing elsewhere, which is a common occurrence. That’s why we recommend suppression as your best option for dealing with unwanted search results.

• Your best option: Suppressing unwanted search results with positive content. The concept behind suppression is simple: create positive, relevant content about you that will push anything damaging or unwanted in search results farther down and out of site to anyone looking you up. Additionally, having positive content about you on the web can also minimize the overall impact of anything damaging. Here’s the process

• Create a foundation of websites and profiles – First and foremost, you need a foundation of high-quality websites and profiles that communicate a professional brand. This includes:

1. 1. 1. 1. Personal website: This should serve as the keystone of your personal brand online and include an ‘about me’ section, awards, accolades, any portfolio items, links to other info about you on the web, and more. There are plenty of tools to easily create a website without a technical background. We recommend WordPress because it’s easy-to-use and ranks well in search engines.
         2. Professional profiles: To support your brand, you need professional profiles including LinkedIn, Twitter, Quora, etc. We commonly recommend 10-12 supporting profiles based on your overall goal.

• Optimize for search engines – To maximize the chance that your properties outrank unwanted results, you need to implement comprehensive Search Engine Optimization best practices. There are hundreds of factors that go into how search engines rank results. Fortunately, our DIY software easily breaks down and walks you through the most important things you can be doing to your sites and profiles to help them outrank anything unwanted.

1. 1. Create ongoing content to build to build out your personal brand. – The key here is to keep your sites and profiles active with professional content. It not only helps make them more search engine friendly (and therefore give them the best chance of outranking unwanted search results) but it also looks impressive to anyone looking you up online. A few of the major buckets of content creation include:
      1. Blogging: this is one of the best ways to get professional content out there under your name. Blog about topics that are related to your industry to help enhance your brand
      2. Social media engagement: Views, shares, and other forms of social engagement all contribute to higher search rankings.
      3. Rich media creation – Post rich media like videos, images, and presentations on sites like SlideShare, Vimeo & YouTube. Rich media ranks very well because it is so engaging.

If you’re dealing with negative search results, we’d love to help! Give us a call at 646-863-8226.

Question: Where do you see the ORM industry going?

Patrick Ambron: I touched upon it earlier, but we entered the industry because it was broken: it only catered to the wealthy, used outdated techniques and lacked transparency.

In many ways the industry needs to change and many of the steps BrandYourself has taken is leading the way:

• Tools and resources to manage one’s reputation need to be available to everyone, not just the wealthy. As we’ve seen, reputation is a cause of concern for everyone, but there needs to be tools and resources accessible to the average person. That’s why we developed a free ORM software to help people better understand and control what’s out there about them on the web. Although we do offer higher-tier in-house services, our software allows us to empower a much larger group of people.

• Ongoing changes to Google’s algorithms have made “quick fixes” to influence search results outdated. As a result, companies employing these techniques will need to be more transparent about their process & timelines.  When we were researching traditional ORM companies to help with Pete’s problem, it became clear that they were employing “quick fixes” in order to over-promise on their results. As Google’s algorithms have become more and more advanced, these quick fixes no longer work, and are even penalized by search engines. The key to successful reputation management is creating, managing, and optimizing high-quality content (profiles, websites, blogs, rich media, etc.) that is actually relevant and useful to searchers. This is the approach we’ve always taken when working with our clients. We never mystify the process or make outlandish guarantees that are impossible to meet. Instead, we’re transparent about the process the entire way, we set realistic expectation with the client with actionable steps for how we will reach our goal, and we invest in the work by keeping all work in-house with our team of amazing employees.

• The industry needs to help people prevent problems as well, not just prevent them. Years ago, people only traditionally sought out ORM help when they had a problem but it’s more important than ever for every individual to be actively monitoring, cleaning up, and improving how they look online – and the industry needs to provide the tools to do so. At BrandYourself, we released a feature to our software this year that scans your social media profiles and alerts you if you have any potentially risky posts or images. We’ve also enhanced our features to help you build out a positive online presence. The first offense is a good defense and having a solid online presence now can help minimize the impact of something potentially damaging later down the road.

As we live more and more of our lives online, it’s the responsibility of the industry to step up and continue to evolve with the needs of consumers. You can read more of my thoughts on the future of the ORM industry here.

Patrick Ambron is the CEO and co-founder of BrandYourself.com, which provides tools and services that help people look better online.  He has been recognized by the White House as one of Empact100’s top CEOs under 30, named to Inc Magazine’s top 35 under 35, and appeared on ABC’s Shark Tank, where he walked away from a $2 million offer – one of the highest offers in the show’s history.

The post Q&A with Patrick Ambron: BrandYourself Co-Founder & CEO appeared first on BrandYourself Blog | ORM and Personal Branding.

We’re very excited to announce that starting in May 2017 BrandYourself will be joining forces with the Pennsylvania College of Art & Design to create a custom continuing education course for our Concierge Services staff!

As leaders in the ORM space, we’re always looking for ways to stay ahead of the curve so we can provide the best possible service to our clients.  We’re also passionate about providing ongoing professional development opportunities for our staff.  So when we set out to find continuing education opportunities that made sense for our business, PCA&D was our first stop.  

Before we dive into what PCA&D was able to create for us, let’s take a minute to go over what our Reputation Specialists learn in-house and why we felt we needed even more resources for our Specialists to stay on the cutting edge.

Reputation Specialist Training

Over the first several weeks at BY, every new team member is exposed to a comprehensive survey of everything they need to know to be effective ORM Specialists. Some of the key topics include:

In addition to some of those harder skills, we cover our philosophy on why having a strong online presence is so important as well as how to deliver excellent client service.  We also pair new Specialists with experienced team members so they can shadow existing campaigns before taking on their own accounts.

While our training program is extensive, you can’t become an ORM expert in a few weeks.  That’s why we also conduct monthly seminars on a specific topic with the entire team.  So far in 2017, we’ve offered seminars on client communication and practical SEO strategies that can have an immediate impact on ORM campaigns.  

We’re very proud of our Reputation Specialist training, but even with an intense initial program and regular ongoing seminars, we still weren’t satisfied.  We wanted to implement some type of program that would allow even our more experienced Reputation Specialists to keep learning.  

That’s when we reached out to PCA&D.

Partnering with PCA&D

When we began looking into the best way to partner with PCA&D, we learned their Continuing Education department offers several certificate programs that are highly relevant to the ORM field.  

The Digital Marketing Professional and Design Professional certificates, which were just rolled out this year, would both have been great development opportunities for our staff. While any of the certificates likely would have been beneficial, we were looking for something that matched the breadth of what’s required of our Specialists. 

After explaining what we were looking for to the team at PCA&D, we learned that they could actually create a completely tailored course to meet our team’s professional development needs.  We worked together closely to build the class.  PCA&D went above and beyond to accommodate our schedule and made sure we had access to top faculty.  

After just a few weeks of coordination, we were able to arrive at a 10 session, 30 hour course that we’re excited to dive into this month.  We’ll be sending 7 of our more experienced Specialists to hone their skills in the following areas:

• WordPress for Web Design
• Paid and Organic Social Media Marketing
• Content Creation and Digital Storytelling
• Blogging for Business
• Social Audience Engagement
• Insights, Analytics & Strategies for Digital Marketing

We’re proud to say we’re the first organization to take advantage of PCA&D’s ability to create full-length custom courses.  We plan to make the program part of every Reputation Specialist’s professional journey at BrandYourself as we continue our mission to educate and empower our team, our Concierge clients, and our DIY users on managing their reputations.

Learn More About PCA&D and Their Continuing Education Opportunities

Founded in 1982, PCA&D is a private, non-profit, professional art college offering BFA degrees, certificates, credentials, and curricula that enable students of all ages to pursue art as their life’s work.  

They offer continuing education classes in everything from HTML & Web Design to Adobe Illustrator to Social Media Marketing.  They also offer the following comprehensive certificate programs:

• Digital Marketing Professional Certificate (New in 2017)
• Design Professional Certificate  (New in 2017)
• Digital Design Web Certificate
• Social Media Marketing Certificate
• Digital Design Print Certificate

Want to Work at BrandYourself?

We’re hiring!  Check out our careers page here if you’re interested in becoming part of our ever-evolving team!

The post BrandYourself Teams Up with PCA&D appeared first on BrandYourself Blog | ORM and Personal Branding.

(front row from left) Bob Shoemaker, Mike O’Brien, Mayor Rick Gray, Patrick Ambron, John Galanti, Sheri Collins, Marshall Snively

We cut the ribbon, so it’s official!

We are pleased to announce the official opening of BrandYourself’s second office in Lancaster, Pennsylvania! While the BrandYourself team jump-started operations at our newest location in April, we recently hosted a ribbon cutting ceremony to publicly commemorate the occasion. 

Guests attend the ceremony

Distinguished members of the local community joined BrandYourself team members as CEO and Co-Founder, Patrick Ambron cut the blue ribbon.

Since January of this year, BrandYourself has been welcomed with open arms by countless members of the city of Lancaster Pennsylvania, and we couldn’t have been happier to celebrate with so many of them.

The ceremony included remarks from Patrick as well as several organizations that have been crucial to our move: 

• Mike O’Brien (President, Oak Tree Development Group)
• Bob Shoemaker (President & CEO, Lancaster City Alliance)
• Sheri Collins (Deputy Secretary, Office of Technology & Innovation at DCED) 
• Rick Gray (Mayor, the City of Lancaster)

Mike O’Brien President of Oak Tree Development Group shares remarks

Each address, while unique in it’s own right, voiced a sense of pride in the city of Lancaster and a conviction in its offerings to residents and businesses alike – and we couldn’t agree more.

Mayor Rick Gray addresses the crowd while BrandYourself co-founders Patrick Ambron and Pete Kistler look on

Why we looked outside of Silicon Valley & Silicon Alley for our new home

While Manhattan and the Bay Area are often portrayed as the ideal places to incubate successful startups, the truth is, 90% of startups fail within the first three years across the board. We’ve had three incredible years in Manhattan punctuated by highlights that include: a historic appearance on Shark Tank, glowing features in top magazines, and growing our lean team of 4 to over 70 employees! But as we look to the continued growth of our company, we chose to avoid the most common mistakes of young businesses based in places like NY and CA by finding a new zip code. 

3 common startup pitfalls that convinced us to look outside of NYC:

1. By The Numbers: Many startups fail due to the premium costs associated with hubs like New York or San Francisco. As BrandYourself looked to the future, we saw the value of actively reducing the operating costs of our business by venturing outside of NYC.
2. Culture Wars: New York is expensive for everyone. This fact breeds hustle in all of its citizens. While drive and focus on the next opportunity are admirable qualities, in New York it comes at the cost of rapid employee turnover rates – one of the highest in the country. By moving outside of such a financially taxing environment, our employees can comfortably grow with the company and continue to maintain strong relationships with their clients over time.
3. “Startup Life”: We’re not interested in spending excessively to look like a cool startup that’s made it. At BrandYourself, we believe in building sustainable business operations to consistently meet the needs of our clients.

We couldn’t be happier to be a part of this community

Why we chose Lancaster:

From the outset of the search for our second home, we knew what we wanted. After researching an exhaustive list of potential locations, we realized that time and time again Lancaster blew the competition out of the water.

Our requirements included:

• Accessibility to major cities
• An enviably low cost of living
• A highly desirable talent pool of quick-learning creative communicators with a strong work ethic
• A welcoming community that would help our company integrate into local life.
• An unmatched quality of life

We feel so grateful to have found a community that exceeded our wildest expectations, and look forward to strengthening our current ties while forging new ones in the city of Lancaster.

We would like to thank the state of Pennsylvania and Governor Wolf’s office, The City Lancaster and the Mayor’s office, Lancaster’s City Alliance, and Oaktree Development (in addition to all citizens of Lancaster) who have been particularly instrumental throughout the process of opening our office.

We’d also like to thank our extended BrandYourself community for their continued support including our friends, families, investors and advisors.

Read more about why we picked Lancaster, PA and what it means for BrandYourself on Patrick Ambron‘s personal website. 

The post BrandYourself Lancaster Officially Opens Its Doors appeared first on BrandYourself Blog | ORM and Personal Branding.

Our team has seen tremendous growth this year, and this next step is a testament to the team’s hard work and unrelenting dedication to provide people with the tools & services they need to manage their reputation online.

We’d like to take a second to thank everyone who has been a part of our journey.

 So, why Lancaster?

When we first decided to expand our operations to a second office, we knew that our next home  needed to meet certain requirements. The new BrandYourself location had to:

• Be reasonably close to our NYC office and other major cities
• Possess a talented local workforce to build our team
• Offer a high-quality of life and a vibrant local culture
• Provide a genuinely great place to live, work and play

Lancaster checked all of our boxes.

With Lancaster’s central location to NYC, Philadelphia and the DC area, booming art and entertainment scenes and proximity to colleges, we got beautiful furniture, we got luxury items such as Types of office coffee machines and special tables for the office. We knew it was the perfect place to plant our roots and flourish. We were also won over by how receptive and welcoming the state and city were in attracting a high growth business to the area.

Join the team at our Lancaster Office

We’re now accepting resumes and interviewing for a number of positions for the office’s opening this spring. For a list of all open positions and to apply, go to our Careers Page: https://brandyourself.com/info/about/jobs

We’d like to thank the State of Pennsylvania & the City of Lancaster. Read more about our new Lancaster office in Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf’s announcement.

The post BrandYourself.com to Open Second Office! appeared first on BrandYourself Blog | ORM and Personal Branding.

BrandYourself is looking for someone who can lead our growing sales and marketing department! While our growth to date has been all organic, over the last few months, we’ve been building a team meant to help us grow even faster. There are millions of more people who need our products and services, and our newest goal is to get in front of as many of them as possible.

Why We Need You
We have everything a sales and marketing leader needs: a product people love, demographic data base of hundreds of thousands of customers, a strong go-to- market strategy, structural and monetary resources, and most importantly, a team of hard working people. We just need someone to lead them! To start we need someone with both a strong business development and marketing mind. Contact Andy Defrancesco for more information.

Responsibilities include

• Developing, implementing and managing a plan to achieve annual sales goals
• Directing the day to day management of the sales and marketing teams
• Communicating vision and direction to the sales team, conducting regular department & individual meetings
• Managing and mentoring our sales team by doing the following:
  • Traveling with the biz/dev team to close business
  • Demonstrating detailed knowledge of business processes and the operational environment of the target markets
  • Demonstrating complete understanding of prospects business
    practices and internal decision making process
  • Identifying and closing long term relationships with corporate accounts
  • Maintaining contact with customers and prospects; insure awareness of our products and technology
  • Converting various marketing triggers into appropriate channels to achieve sales goals
• Analyzing the improvement of department-related programs, policies, processes and procedures, including pricing, contracts and CRM, and holds sales team accountable for proper implementation and follow-through
• Continually reviewing product, pricing and competition to maintain a competitive advantage
• Coordinating training and all sales support tools and infrastructure
• Ensuring company’s overall mission, corporate objectives, and key messages are communicated accurately, effectively, and consistently to all internal and external audiences
• Knowing the BrandYourself products and services inside out and knowing our ability to deliver and maintain the business
• Teaching our sales teams to communicate effectively, as a result which will drive our common business goals
• Ensuring that the sales division’s P&L is constantly in alignment and on target
• Educating our sales teams on the following: margin, profit, expense and performance matrix
• Ensuring our Cost Per Acquisition and close rate are met
• Creating quarterly sales forecasts and sets projections for both B2B and inside sales teams
• Working with marketing team to create sales presentations materials
• Strategizing with sales teams on generating leads, and closing
• Overseeing online marketing campaigns and webinars
• Driving change and leading growth

Qualifications

• Your Work Speaks for Itself: While it doesn’t necessarily matter how many years of experience you have (although we’d like a minimum of 5), you do have a high success rate in managing sales and marketing teams.
• People Like to Work With You: You have a strong list of references that would work with you again.
• You’re a Genuinely Good Person to Work with: As someone who will help drive our business and lead our people, it’s important that you’re an honest person who’s got a whole lot of integrity. Happy people are also very much wanted. You need to be able to motivate and inspire your team to meet their goals!
• Believe Simplicity is Beauty (Less is More): We constantly strive to make things as simple as possible – from our user experience to our business model. We’re looking for a director who shares that philosophy.
• Study Your Craft: You’re constantly looking for ways to get better at what you do, and you share your knowledge with your teams.
• Understand the Big Picture but Sweat the Small Stuff: You understand how important big elements are to a sale, and the future of our company, but you do not forget the detail and grit it takes to make it happen!

How to Apply
So you still wanna join us?
Send an email to jobs@brandyourself.com and include:

• Your resume
• A cover letter explaining why you want to join our team.
• What you like about our product and what you would change or improve.
• A link to your BrandYourself profile (sign up here for free).

The post BrandYourself is Hiring Director of Sales and Marketing appeared first on BrandYourself Blog | ORM and Personal Branding.

Come grab a pint with us, meet some fellow New Yorkers and strengthen your NYC network.

RSVP today and stay up to date on the event by using the hashtag #NYCinDublin. Hope to see you there!

The post NYC in Dublin: Meet Other New Yorkers at #WebSummit 2014 appeared first on BrandYourself Blog | ORM and Personal Branding.

We’re proud to announce BrandYourself’s team was named to Inc’s “35 under 35 Entrepreneurs” list for 2014! The annual list highlights the coolest founders and their companies. Typically, the list features the top “30 under 30” entrepreneurs, but Inc upped the ante to “35 under 35” in celebration of its 35th anniversary. The judges for this year include Quirky’s Ben Koffman, fashion icon Rebecca Minkoff, Founder Collective’s Eric Paley, Indiegogo co-founder Danae Ringelmann, comedian Rainn Wilson, Inc. editor Donna Fenn, Dave Lerner and Elizabeth Gore.

We’re honored to be named alongside top companies on the list. Thank you to everyone who has helped us along the way and continues to help BrandYourself revolutionize the ORM space, including our amazing users, investors and team.

The post BrandYourself Named to Inc.’s 35 under 35 Entrepreneurs appeared first on BrandYourself Blog | ORM and Personal Branding.

The future of BrandYourself and online identity

This investment will help us accelerate growth so we can continue our mission to completely change our industry. We are currently the best company in the ORM space. We have the best technology, the best product, the best people and the best business model. We’re just not the biggest. Yet. This investment will help us achieve this goal by allowing us to build out customer acquisition channels, scale our infrastructure and develop new tools to expand our suite of products, without sacrificing our commitment to quality.

However, this round is not just important for BrandYourself. It represents how fast the online privacy/identity/reputation space is changing and evolving. We came into this industry because we believed it was broken. Average people didn’t have the tools they needed to control their own names online. Since launching 2 short years ago, we’ve helped over 300K people ranging from recent college grads looking for a first job to CEOs who want to put their best foot forward online. In the last 12 months, we’ve seen 500% revenue growth and went from 8 employees to over 40, with no signs of slowing.

That said, I believe we’ve only scratched the surface. Just look at the news in the last week. The recent Google ruling in the EU spawned 12k requests to remove irrelevant personal information in the first day alone. There have also been several well known figures suddenly haunted by private information they sent/posted years ago. The point is, it’s getting harder and harder to control what’s out there about you on the web, and the industry has a long way to go before everyone is protected. While emerging industries can be unpredictable, there a few core concepts we believe at Brandyourself for the ORM space:

• The tools and services to control your information online need to be available to everyone, not just the wealthy: This is why we launched our first DIY tool and will be the benchmark for everything we do in the future.
• People need simple tools that put them in control of their information: The companies that win will be the ones who provide consumers simple tools with simple value propositions. For example, our current DIY tool helps you control what shows up when someone Googles your name. People understand this is important, but it can’t end there. Everyone needs tools to ensure they aren’t haunted by a status update or message they sent 10 years ago, or that information isn’t used to steal their identity. In the next 5 years, we will see these tools emerge and we hope to be behind many of them.
• Transparency is key: We came into this industry because we believed companies were mystifying the process and overcharging. The companies to come out on top will be the ones who empower people to put their best foot forward, not the ones who make people think they can’t do it themselves.

Thank you to our users

We have an amazing community of users and clients. Everything from a positive review to constructive feedback makes us stronger and helps us create the tools and services people need to manage their online presence. Your reputation is one of your most important assets and we know entrusting any company to help you manage it is a big decision. Thank you for choosing us.

A special shout out to the team

Of course, none of this would be possible without an amazing team. It’s not easy to go from a small company making a few hundred thousand dollars to a much bigger company making millions of dollars almost overnight. It takes hard work, patience and a lot of late nights. I can’t say how proud and grateful I am for everyone on our team.

-Patrick
Co-Founder & CEO

The post BrandYourself closes Series A to continue revolutionizing the reputation management space appeared first on BrandYourself Blog | ORM and Personal Branding.

2009:

2011:

2013:

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1. Submitting, boosting and tracking links is now easier:

We wanted to make sure you know where your important links rank and make it even easier to submit and boost them, so you can now do all that right from your home screen.

All the recommended profiles that used to be in the “Submit Links” tab in the past are now on your home screen – to reveal them, just click the “(+) View All” link and they’ll expand down.

If you see any profiles you don’t have yet, just hover your mouse over it and click “Create one.” We’ll give you step-by-step directions to create them.

To submit any other links that aren’t included in our recommended profiles, just paste its web address into the Smart Submit box and click “Submit.”

You’ll notice when you click into the Smart Submit box that we automatically show you suggestions of links to submit, including the top 100 Google results for your name. The best part: you can type keywords into the Smart Submit box (your hometown, your employer, etc.) to filter the suggestions and find links about yourself to submit.

2. All your most important info is now in your Report Card

To make it easier to see how you’re doing, we brought together your Search Score, your overall progress, and who’s Googling you into a beautiful Report Card.

To see your first page of Google results, it’s right there on your Report Card. Just click “(+) View First Page of Results” in your Search Score Breakdown section.

3. Learn even more about who’s Googling you

If someone Googles you and finds your profile, we can now tell you exactly who they are if they’re a BrandYourself user. If you want to remain anonymous when you visit another BrandYourself user’s profile, just go to your Settings and set yourself to anonymous.

We also added a new way to see the people who have Googled you: the “Personal” view. You can toggle between this and the old Table view by clicking the icon highlighted below in the Who’s Googling You section.

4. Editing your BrandYourself profile is now easier:

Now when you update your profile, the edit page will resemble your actual profile, making it much easier to edit. And thanks to your suggestions, you can now drag-n-drop your experience and education blocks to re-order them.

5. Earn points every time you do something to improve your results

There’s now a point system that tracks how much you’ve done to improve your results; the more links you submit and boost, the more points you’ll earn. You can’t redeem your points, they’re just a personal reference point as you do more and more to improve your own results. We recommend you continue earning points until your first page of results is filled with only positive results.

6. Let an expert improve your results for you with our Concierge Service

If you have a common name, a negative result you want to bury, or just don’t have the time to use BrandYourself to improve your results yourself, we’ve introduced a service specifically for you. Our new reputation management services assigns you a dedicated search expert who will manage your account for you, develop a custom strategy and do all the work to improve your results for you.

Call us at 315-565-1799 or email us and we’ll give you a free consultation about how we can help.

7. Questions or feedback? We want to hear from you!

If you have any questions or feedback on the new version, we want to hear from you! Don’t hesitate to call Patrick (our Head of Customer Happiness) at 315-565-1799, email us at support@brandyourself.com, or even ask in the comments below.

The post Brand New Version of BrandYourself is Launching Today! What You Need to Know appeared first on BrandYourself Blog | ORM and Personal Branding.