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How's your rep? Online reputation management
When a potential customer searches for your firm on the internet, you want to be in control of what they see on their first search engine results page. Matt Henkes takes a look at some of the ways this can be done. The first century Roman author Publilius Syrus wrote that ‘a good reputation is more valuable than money’. He never had to court abusive bloggers or create a Facebook profile for his company, but his words are just as true today
A good reputation can take years of backbreaking work to establish, yet can be taken apart by one careless remark or action. Gerald 'it's total crap' Ratner would no doubt concur with this.
Bad news has always travelled fast, but today it can zip around the world at light speed through the fibre-optic cables of the internet. Alan Greenspan, former chairman of the US Federal Reserve said that reputation had become "a significant driving force, propelling our economy forward", and he was right. Consumers are currently enjoying an unprecedented level of access to information and an ability to air their views to a massive audience like no other time in history.
So when a potential customer is searching online for your business using nothing but Google, it's important to at least try and control of the top search engine page results. And even better, how nice would it be to be able to encroach on your competitors' SERPS as well?
This is far from impossible and not too complicated. Using a few basic techniques you can streak up the Google rankings and occupy the majority of the top spots for your brand and keywords, displacing whatever negative content nasty people may have posted about you.
Squidoo, Stumbleupon, Newsvine, del.icio.us, Yahoo! 360, Mashable, Claimid, Blogger, Twitter, Mybloglog, Amazon profiles, Ezinearticles, Blog Catolog, Naymz, Zoominfo, MySpace, Facebook
Create a social networking profile - The rapid spread of social networking sites like Facebook and Myspace has resulted in their increasing appearance in SERPs. They are free to sign up to, and allow you create a profile using your company or brand name. Enable the option that lets you pick the URL of your profile, for instance 'myspace.com/MattHenkesPies'.
Even if you're not facing a Google reputation nightmare it would be worth creating profiles on all of the many networks, then linking them to each other and also back to your company site. That would make them all more attractive to the search engines and drive them up the results, hopefully displacing the negative content.
Add sub-domains to your website – You can brand them using your name and keywords, and Google views sub-domains as separate pages. You can post anything on there, jobs, corporate or product information, articles about your business or services; the options are virtually endless.
Use press releases - Use your key terms in the titles of press releases or other PR. PR Newswire and Business Wire will rank on Google if you use your brand or company name in the title and body text. Link back to your company website as well. Talk about all the great stuff your firm has done, tell the world how great you are.
Start a blog – Blogs are great as they rank well on Google. Wordpress.com and Blogger.com both provide free blogs and free hosting. Add a few posts on something related to your business or service that you can write about with authority. Use your company name in the title and the main body of the post and do the same when you comment on other blogs. Add a few links in there and it'll be on the first Google results page before you know it letting the world see how clever you are.
Kate Abbot, director of Jungle PR recently launched up a new specialist service for managing reputation online. "Traditionally it's always been done through print, TV and radio," she says. "But now with the onslaught of online media, there's a whole new platform for communication and we've decided to focus heavily on promoting reputation online."
Sign up to Google Alerts for key words relevant to your company name and products. You will be instantly emailed if anyone has written or blogged on you anywhere on the internet, meaning you can react to any positive or negative criticism immediately. Regularly checking Blog Pulse is also a good way to keep tabs on who's writing what about you.
"If you are in a situation where there are untrue allegations about your company or products, you do have the right to ask to have them removed immediately," says Abbot. And surprisingly often this will work.
"But if a blogger is annoyed about customer service or a certain part of your company, try to open up a dialogue to rectify the situation giving the kind of customer service you would approach if you were face to face with them."
So with all your profiles in place, your blogs ticking over nicely and your website ranking well on Google, you might be forgiven for thinking that you'd done enough. But is it possible that your competitor isn't managing their online reputation quite so well?
It's likely that they've got the number one spot on Google, but what about number two or three? Why not throw up a page on your website saying how your service is better than your competitor's, see if you could get it into the second spot and make your offer better. Not only will you be driving extra traffic to your site, but it will count as double as you'll be pinching it directly from your rival.
It's a bit cheeky, granted. But there are far dirtier tricks in the arsenal of online rep management, and business is business. The simple fact that someone might be doing it to you is reason enough to start paying attention to your online reputation.
Number of comments: 5
AccountingWEB.co.uk 18-Jun-2008
Categories: Money matters
Times read: 5194
I share the view below that the key message should be to raise your profile and enhance your reputation online. That means recognising that all your online activity can be searched for and found.
How concerned anyone needs to be about this depends upon their audiences. Younger people who are active on facebook for example may be at risk of potential employers checking out their profiles. Even if you restrict access to your friends a\re you SURE that none of them could ever have any influence at a new firm? Only this week the a 30 year old Mayor was riddiculed and at risk of losing his position following publication of pictures from his facebook profile that showed him drunk and disorderly.
Are your online profiles (on social and business networks) consistent. And are they congruent with your CV? Or will you be hoping for a Seralun type sympathy vote when inconsistencies become apparent?
Even if you run your own practice, how confident can you be that no one would ever check out or be adversely influenced by your online reputation? Who might take a look?
Bank managers? Journalists? Potential partners? Recruiters? Potential staff? Potential clients? The list goes on and on.
I can well understand the reluctance of many accountants to become active online. It's a minefield out there!
Mark Lee
Tax Advice Network
Mark Lee
Remember Online PR is an evolving industry!
Be creative to get your message to your audience via your website and use fun viral marketing where possible on You Tube or FaceBook.
For more information about Online and Digital PR check out www.junglepr.com or email kate@junglepr.com
http://www.junglepr.co.uk/jungle-pr-news.aspx
Just a word of caution re Blog Pulse; it returns some bizare results for the terms and URL's I tried (if any at all) so I am not convinced it is ready for prime time, especially niche terms, blogs or bloggers that may be below their radar.
Brendan Dunphy at http://brendandunphy.blogspot.com/
Micro Marketing and the Age of The Personal Brand make reputation management on-line a key task. Just as you protect your PC from virus attack it is essential to ensure you take the same actions seriously with regard to your on-line persona. This can pay dividends. Last year, a Wall Street Broker with offices in Hong Kong and London signed us up to advise his hedge fund clients just on the strength of web data about our knowledge of the global sustainable auto sector. We now have a constant stream of calls from their clients that generate unplanned revenue. Your reputation is worth more than money and can generate money!
A very interesting article and all of this is true, but I was disappointed it read as advice on how to ensure nothing bad said about you gets seen, rather than giving insight as to how to legitimately acquire a great reputation that you can then exploit to your benefit.
WeCanDo.BIZ enables anyone to build a search engine friendly profile which our other members can search in addition to it appearing on Google etc. We also provide you sales leads when our members have a need you may be able to satisfy. But better still, you can connect to your customers and they can endorse you, filling your profile on our site with glowing endorsements. This is a better thing for people to find on the web than sub-pages on your own website of you blowing your own trumpet!
With a WeCanDo.BIZ profile of good endorsements, you can also use those to help you win more business, as a page full of recommendations does much to help win new customers' confidence.
You rightly bring the topic up, but the benefits of maximising from great relationships you already have far surpass what you suggest can be done.
Ian Hendry
CEO, WeCanDo.BIZ
http://www.wecando.biz
