Andy Beal gives us a video walkthrough of his onlline reputation monitoring system at Trackur.com

Andy Beal of Marketing Pilgrim did a guest post on Marketing Sherpa in which he details a 7 step process to avoid a public relations nightmare and protect your reputation online. He mentions that the advantages of a company monitoring their repuattion online are many and varied, and include nipping bad PR in the bud, Customer likes and dislikes about your company, features to include in your next launch, ways to improve customer service, complaints about your competition and opportunities to move in. The first step of his 7 step process is, in my opinion, the most important; Perform an honest self-analysis. This means that the current issue you are facing is most likely because of something you or your company did, or a weakness in your company's processes. Once you can figure out why this happened (without blaming the consumer/customer), the closer you will be to making sure this type of problem with your online reputation does not happen again. Also, part of step 5, Strategize Responses, is very important, and is often not your first instinct; Offer a genuine apology. In general, people who post negatively online are at their wits end and feel they have no other way to reach ...

In a Wall Street Journal blog post, Kelly Spors wonders if some of the companies that are monitoring their online reputations are going overboard with the whole thing. The people mentioned in the post think it is very "Big Brother" of companies like Comcast to reach out to individual bloggers when they post negatively about the company. My question to them would be "If you are blogging, are you expecting anyone to read it?". I think bloggers have gotten into the mindset that their blogs are a place for them to vent, and no one will ever read it. Fortunately and unfortunately, PR reps know the power blogs have in the search engines, as well as the power of word-of-mouth. As time goes on, this type of contact will become more and more commonplace, and PR agencies will begin getting more work as online reputation managers. It may be perceived as a bit of a stunt now, but I congratulate Comcast for acknoledging the online community, and it's power in influencing the online reputation of a company.

E-consultancy.com has just published their Online Reputation and Buzz Monitoring Buyer's Guide 2008. The 142 page guide has been written for those who are looking for technology and services relating to online reputation monitoring, with profiles of 16 leading suppliers. The report costs $299, or can be accessed with a one-year subscription to E-consultancy.com's reports for $389 a year. A 17 page sample of the Online Reputation and Buzz Monitoring Buyer's Guide 2008 can be downloaded for free, which includes a full table of contents, and gives a very good idea of what is in the full report. Although I have only looked at the sample of the report, $299 seems like a real bargain for a 142 page research paper, especially for anyone specifically looking to buy services or technology in the growing online reputation monitoring and management field.

Anthillz.com has just launched an online reputation site for professionals. Their taglines at the moment are "Share your reputation" and "Make a name for yourself", and the site's copy crrently lists the following reasons why a person would use the site to build their online reputation: "Share the good things people are saying about you", "Strengthen your professional relationships", and "Build a reputation that people know and trust". It appears to be a bit like LinkedIn's testimonial feature, but the entire site is focused on your professional reputation. It appears they've gotten around the tricky part of online reputation by only allowing trusted colleagues to leave a testimonial about you: "The heart of your Anthillz profile is a series of testimonials and reviews written by colleagues you trust. Their words paint a rich picture of who you are and what it’s like to work with you." This begs the question 'What about the people who have something bad to say about you?' For outside researchers, this type of information can be more useful than just positive praise.

ReputationManagementFirm.com issued a press release about the sample reputation management strategy they have on their website. Of course, it's fairly generic, but their expertise and details of the strategy are what you'd pay them for. Their strategy includes creation of social networking profiles, press releases, creation of and posting in blogs, industry association memberships and profile creations on those sites, article marketing, as well as many other methods for creating and keeping a solid reputation online. They have various (search engine optimized) pages for how Doctors, Lawyers, Celebrities, and Athletes would manage their online reputation. ReputationManagementFirm.com is owned and operated by website marketing company, Brick Marketing.  Brick Marketing has over 12 years of internet marketing experience.

Andy Beal, co-author of the online reputation management book Radically Transparent: Monitoring and Managing Reputations Online is featured on an ABC News report about protecting your reputation online. The reporter suggests that using Google is one of the best ways to find out what people are saying about you online, and that if your online reputation is in need of some fixing, it is possible to do it yourself, or you might want to hire a professional online reputation manager. They cover some basic tips about removing negative press, using your real name so good pages about you will rank higher in Google, and using social media to improve the ranking of your own pages.

Welcome to the blog about managing your online reputation. We will cover all aspects of web search, social media, web publishing, search engine optimization, and  as it pertains to managing your reputation online. It's important that you know what is being said online that can affect your reputation. There are countless blogs, web pages, and forums on the internet on which conversations are being carried out that can affect your online reputation, and you should be a part of those conversations. The first thing you need to know is where those conversations are taking place, and the Online Reputation blog will give you insight into how to find those places. Once you know where to go online, you will be much more prepared to protect your online reputation.