Reputation Management

I recently had the chance to ask search engine optimization expert Aaron Wall about reputation management and how to use different social media tools to “squeeze out” negative references from showing up on the search results page. This was a topic that Aaron had written about in the past and I am grateful to Aaron to take time to answer my questions

When I ask a company how they monitor their reputation online the most frequent answer I hear is that we use Google Alerts. Google Alerts are ok, but they don’t give the complete picture about what people are saying about you or your company, and because they are email based, the information is difficult for multiple users within a department or company to use simultaneously.

Aaron Wall blogged recently about how you can use iGoogle or Google Apps to create a web site that allows multiple members of your team to easily track brand mentions on blogs and other active parts of the web.

Within an Investor’s Business Daily editorial last week was a great example of how to respond to negative information in blogs about your company. Reputation Management is an area of concern to many corporate executives, unfortunately many of them do not have plans in place to respond when negative news breaks.

Luckily microwave popcorn maker Pop Weaver did have a plan.

Back in September the Lighter Footstep blog wrote an article about the harmful effects of diacetyl, an additive in microwave popcorn that provides a buttery taste, the story started snowballing. The post was quickly picked up by pumphandle.wordpress.com, a blog that fashions itself as a water cooler for public health, and youarewhatyoueat.tv, which covers healthy lifestyles.

Last week’s reputation management post brought several emails about how to go actually go about implementing a reputation management program. With that in mind here are five steps that you can take to manage your reputation online (and control the search engine rankings also).

Create and manage a profile on all the major social networking sites
You do not need a profile on every social network, just on the more prominent ones. Reprise used 13 social networks and I think that is a good number to start with. Two things to keep in mind when doing this. One is to use the name of your brand/company/product as your profile name. The second is to make sure that the profiles are linked together to create your own reputation network.

You would have thought that after the public relations disasters that companies like KFC have had that most companies would have a reputation management plan in place, ready to get implemented at the first hint of negative news coverage. Well a new study by BtoB and Eric Mower and Associates shows that that is not quite the case. Fully 57% of companies surveyed said that they do not have any type of plan in place.

Of the 43% of companies that do have a crisis plan in place, over 10% worry about their ability to implement it, and only half have trained spokespersons.

We are really excited that Kris Jones, President & CEO of pepperjamSEARCH has agreed to be the inaugural interviewee in our social media optimization series.

Pepperjam is an industry leading full-service internet marketing agency recognized by Inc. Magazine as one of the fastest growing privately-held businesses in the United States.

Kris is considered one of the top internet marketing experts in the world. A true pioneer and leading voice of the industry, he is a prominent speaker and moderator at leading national and international marketing conferences.

Interesting article in the Boston Globe this weekend about how the airlines are now using social media tactics to improve customer service especially with its top customers.

Continental Airlines now has customer service reps whose job it is to visit forums and blogs and see what people are saying about their airline. The main SMO guru at Continental is Scott O’Leary. According to the article:

Since being assigned to monitor Flyertalk, www.airliners.net, and blogs on various websites, O’Leary has solved dozens of problems that irritate road warriors. He has posted more than 500 comments in the past year alone on Flyertalk, most answering questions, shooting down rampant rumors, or highlighting a change in the airline’s frequent-flier program.

The #2 social networking site last week unveiled a new look with some pretty cool features. While MySpace gets all the media (and user) attention, Facebook has had a pretty good 12 months.

At the unveiling of Facebook Platform, Facebook Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerman rattled of the following numbers (courtesy of Mashable.com).

General Growth

• More than 24 million active users
• More than 100,000 new registrations per day since Jan. 2007
• An average of 3 percent weekly growth since Jan. 2007
• Active users have doubled since Facebook expanded registration in Sept. 2006

User Demographics

Interesting story from MySpace today where Barack Obama supporter Joe Anthony who had been running a successful MySpace site for Barack suddenly found out that his space was actually Barack’s.

The MySpace site, which Joe Anthony started 2 ½ years ago, is something that the Barack camp had been ok with. In fact according to the AP story with the Obama team, which worked with Anthony on the content and even had the password to make changes themselves.

Problems arose when the Senator’s Presidential aspirations started to gain momentum and the campaign became concerned about an outsider having control of the content so the campaign told Anthony they wanted him to turn over the MySpace site to them.