Do you accept “friend” requests from everyone who asks for it through your Facebook and LinkedIn account? I do. Even people I’ve met just once at a conference. But lately I’ve started to think it may not be a good idea. Consider the case of Bernie Madoff, the $50 billion dollar ponzi scheme mastermind. There were probably, dozens, if not hundreds of investment professionals that worked in the industry who now have to work backward to separate themselves from Madoff’s firm. They took photos with him at events and probably sent business his way on more than one occasion. And all thought they knew him as a friend. Certainly they thought they knew his reputation better than a person they met one time at a conference.
Some people may argue that they way they use social networks is to connect with people – regardless of how thin those connections may be. But keep in mind that there is no degree of friend designation on sites like Facebook or LinkedIn. That person I met once at a conference is the same type of “friend” as my college roommate whom I’ve known for 20 years on Facebook. It would be interesting to be able to categorize people as “friends” or “acquaintances” for people we don’t know very well.
I consider “friends” to be people I would trust to babysit my daughter. Yet I have over 600 “friends” on Facebook that I probably wouldn’t even recognize if they walked into my office at this very moment. And yet I “friend” them without a second thought – connecting them, if in just a small way, to my own online reputation. Heaven forbid they should do something awful, I might have some explaining to do when asked why they are my friend on Facebook.
Offline, you can tell a lot about a person by the company they keep. Why should online be any different?
The ability to control your corporate or individual online reputation is now largely a matter of learning effective search engine optimization. The ability to push favorable articles, blog posts and message board threads higher in the search results and thereby pushing the unwanted links further down is the most efficient way of controlling what users see. In other words, whoever is better at search engine optimization will win the battle of online reputation management.
Although there’s recently been a heavy emphasis on making corporate websites search engine friendly, most company websites still don’t do a terrific job and therein lies the rub. These days blog and message board software that can be installed by just about anyone automatically “search-engine-optimizes” every single post and message thread – making them powerful information sources in all the search engines. It’s ironic, but the gaudy and unattractive free WordPress template blog will often blow away the the million-dollar website of a corporation in Google simply because it’s installed from the beginning with all the right tips and tricks to make it quickly searchable and available worldwide. And the blog owner may not even realize it.
The next time you’re trying to convince the boss to hire an in-house or outsourced SEO expert for the website, be sure to remind them that is no longer just about brand marketing – it’s about being able to compete in a world where anyone can install a simple SEO blog and shoot straight to the first page of the search engine results using your own company name – without knowing a single SEO strategy themselves.
“With Trackur’s online reputation tracking technology you can keep track of any web content that mentions your name. Not just your personal name, but your executives, your company brands, and even your competition.
The truth is, the web has made it possible for individuals to freely share their thoughts about you–and without much accountability. You should be made aware the moment your reputation is being discussed. Sure, you need to know about the attacks by your detractors, but you should also know when you’re receiving praise too!
The internet has given a powerful voice to consumers, bloggers, forums, and even users of MySpace. Arm yourself with Trackur’s intelligent online reputation monitoring and you’ll never get caught by a surprise attack on your good name.”
He mentions that the advantages of a company monitoring their reputation 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 people at the company, and they just want to be heard. To be told by a personable company representative that they understand why they are upset, and are offered a genuine apology, you can quickly turn a hostile person into an asset to the company. Once they feel understood, they can often suggest ways this type of problem can be avoided in the future, since they have the best understanding of being a consumer of the company product. An employee of the company understandably does not have the same views of the company and its products, so the consumer viewpoint is extremely valuable.
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 acknowledging 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.
The Bourquin brothers are co-Founders of Ideas For Download, LLC, a privately-held company in Southern California that produces online media, conferences and lead generation websites. As early adopters of Internet technology, they have always been fascinated with the way online information affects the offline world for individuals, organizations and companies.
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