Dusseldorf The business of the entrepreneur Christian Scherg is booming these days: entrepreneurs, founders or footballers with reputational crises call him – and recently numerous politicians. “This year I completely did without vacation,” says Scherg. “There was a lot going on, especially shortly before the general election.”
Scherg and his company Revolvermänner are a combination of digital cleaning staff and a task force. Because many newcomers have a problem: their digital past is catching up with them. Young people in particular were often active on social networks early on – and may have published content there that they later regret.
The latest example: Sarah-Lee Heinrichs. The 20-year-old almost wasn’t elected national spokeswoman for the Green Youth because she posted anti-Semitic and homophobic abuse at the age of 14.
But not only young career makers have the problem. Even experienced managers or entrepreneurs underestimate the dangers of the internet. Joe Kaeser is considered to be particularly open and blunt in his tweets. He also went wrong when he described Elon Musk as a “pot-smoking colleague”. “The tweet shouldn’t have been made,” said the former Siemens boss later.
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The situation Lee-Heinrichs and Kaeser find themselves in is becoming more and more common. Social media are becoming more and more natural for life and career. Around 5.5 million Germans use Twitter once a month, and according to the keynote strategy consultancy, the average CEO posts 123 tweets a year.
And that is not hidden from potential employers: just over 60 percent of HR managers check applicants with search engines and look at their private profiles. “In Germany, online visibility and positioning have become much more important in recent years,” says Tijen Onaran, head of the consulting and network company Global Digital Women.
As a result, there is increasing demand for help from PR agencies or specialist reputation managers to spruce up the past. The service providers clean up all conceivable online appearances, from unfortunate statements to possible criminal offenses. “That can quickly cost several thousand euros,” said Felix Beilharz, social media trainer, recently to Spiegel.
First the obscene post, then the career turnaround
When customers call Scherg, they are often in a really bad mood. “They are usually already in the middle of a crisis,” explains the online reputation manager. An obscene Twitter post, a shared Facebook photo or even just a like can turn into a career kink, relationship stress or security risk. Scherg should then step in and clean up the past.
Like a criminal, Scherg searches the activities of his customers – as if he wanted to hack them. “I’m looking at what you could do with the data in principle,” he explains. In this way, he not only finds information that is offensive, but also information that could endanger the person. For example photos that can be used to infer where the person lives.
It all starts with a simple Google search. Then Scherg and his team use algorithms to search the customer’s profiles in social networks. You are looking for specific terms about the people or different names to put them in connection with each other. So-called crawlers help: the bot programs search the Internet systematically and quickly for certain terms. In doing so, Scherg often finds interesting content for the customer that other people have shared without his knowledge.
After the scan, it’s about deleting. “In the digital world, however, it is impossible to completely delete certain things,” explains Scherg. Data may already have been stored in internet archives such as the Wayback Machine or other web archives. There is also the option of restoring data on WhatsApp as well as in social networks. Definitely, says the reputation manager, other people could have taken screenshots of the postings or saved chat histories with their customers. He warns: “I would be extremely cautious as a person above a certain popularity.”
Take a stand and develop the story
The reputation managers do not simply delete posts from the past at random, but develop a communication strategy together with the customer. This can consist of commenting on a faux pas and then using new pictures and status messages to tell a story about how you have developed personally. “I have to classify my story and relate it to today’s situation,” says Scherg.
Probably the best way out, especially for younger people: apologize and go on the offensive. Sarah Lee-Heinrichs succeeded in doing this: “That was extremely stupid and inappropriate,” she wrote. “I’m really sorry to have ever dropped such a tweet.” The success is visible: She was elected national spokeswoman for the Green Youth. “Actually,” philosophizes Scherg, “we need digital forgiveness rather than digital forgetting.”
If you want to clean up your online presence and are not in the public spotlight, you don’t necessarily have to turn to an expensive reputation manager. Online providers such as TweetDelete and TwitterDeleter automatically delete Twitter posts according to a certain schedule and depending on the age of the tweets. You can also search your digital past for specific keywords. For tools like these you pay significantly less than with a real agency, TweetDelete, for example, charges a one-time fee of 15 dollars.
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