It's a wonderful world when others do your advertising, marketing and public relations for you. In social media it happens often that people will mention businesses or other people and in many cases they also include photographs. If you're out and about often in your community the odds are that you'll be at least noted on various social media sites. If you watch the sites of people who often post photos, especially on Facebook, make a point of checking for photos of yourself, your co-workers, your alliances, and your business. When you see yourself or someone you know in a photo, take the time (it shouldn't take more than 30 seconds) to 'tag' the personal or business in the photo.
Exactly how tagging works and how notice of the tagging is spread varies with different social media, but it's a good idea at least to search for instances when others have tagged you. One way to look for tagging is to search your personal or business name on Internet search engines, looking specifically for images. Also, if you were at an event it's pretty easy to search for that event, again using search engines, to see if you show up in any photographs.
Be aware that not all images that show up may be complimentary or to your liking. Forgetting unfortunate photos you and your friends might have posted during high school or college days, even contemporary photos where you look silly or awkward can be irritating. If you do find there are photos you don't like of you or your business, take a two pronged approach to remedy them:
1. Contact whoever posted the photos and ask that they be taken down (which may nor may not happen); and
2. Actively post and tag complimentary photos so that the earlier ones will be pushed further down on Internet search result. Obviously if you're a celebrity caught in a compromising or unfortunate photo, the photo itself may quickly spread to a wide audience with lots of hits and stay higher on search results, but for most people and businesses, it shouldn't take long to push down undesirable photos if you actively substitute better images for a week or two.
The bottom line with this tip is to take advantage of the opportunity to have images of you and your business play marketing and public relations roles for your business, and also be on the lookout for uncomplimentary images that you can attempt to remedy in the two ways mentioned above.
