Reputation related PluginID Topics

Online Reputation Management eBook is now Available!

Today is a great day for me, I’m finally releasing my Online Reputation Management eBook that I’ve been working on for the last few months. The eBook is entitled “All You’ll Ever Need to Monitor and Manage Your Reputation Online“.

The guide is 75 pages long and has been completely written by myself, here’s a look at the sections it includes:

Introduction - A piece about me and the topic
What is Online Reputation Management?
Reputation Management Ethics
Reputation Monitoring
Types of Reputation Management Issues
SEO Basics
How to Deal With - Multiple specific issues
Managing Your Reputation (14 pages)
Resources

Free Updates for Life

Because ORM is web related and the internet is always changing, this eBook is going to get updated on a fairly regular basis to make the product timeless. Any update that I do make will be emailed to you automatically and won’t cost you a penny.

30 Day Money Back Guarantee

And because I stand by my work, if you don’t like the product you have 30 days to get a full refund…no questions asked. What have you got to lose?

I will be creating a completely separate page on the site for the product but for now you can buy it for ~~$25~~ $19 and receive an instant download as soon as you have purchased it.

Buy Now for $19

16 Comments / May 4th, 2008 / Reputation

Online Reputation Management Proposals: A Guide

Being a relatively new online service, reputation management proposals are not something a lot of people have experience with. However, with a change of focus on this site, reputation management proposals are exactly what I have been spending a lot of time with, either doing them myself or training others on how to do them.

To be honest, I try to keep them as simple as possible in order to not confuse the potential client and so that we don’t give too much away so they could just go and do things themselves (this has happened). I realised I was doing a lot of free work and that is what the blog is for so that had to stop.

So, proposals are normally split into three parts which I’m going to go into in more detail:

What is Reputation Management
Current Situation
What we Can / Will Do
Success with Other Clients

What is Reputation Management

This first part is very basic, although we offer four services, the most requested is our ‘general reputation management‘ offering. As the title of the section states, we basically explain the three parts of our reputation management offering: live tracking, research into previous mentions, and doing / consulting on how to deal with the negative.

To add a little quality and clarity to the service, we simply state that millions of blogs and forums are tracked, the most common types of reputation issues we are likely to find and explain that we have dealt and handled most if not all of them with previous clients.

Current Situation

Now, this is the part where I realised we were giving away far too much information and basically doing the work free for the client. In this section we simply look at the most serious negative results we find (usually these have been highlighted by the potential client) and state some brief thoughts on the issue.

We will do a search for the client / brand / product names on blogs, search engine results, video sites, bookmarking sites etc (mostly using custom tools) to then include things that the client may have not known about. We won’t tell them everything though, because that is part of the service we offer. We simply state that theres more out there and we will have to spend a lot of time really researching the field to get the majority of it covered.

What we Can / Will Do

Linked with the ‘current situation’, this is where I noticed we gave away far too much information. This section tends to look at the main negative issues we have found, explain how serious they are and how we will go about cleaning them up along with an estimated time it will take to do that.

If its negative search engine results from a high profile site, it can take as much as 6 months, if it’s a blog post that has some facts wrong then it’s usually pretty easy and quick to ‘clean’ something like that up, as long as you go about it in the correct manner.

Success with Other Clients

Now your first thought may be that this probably belongs on your website somewhere, but my thinking goes like this; if you have already told them what you think you can do, show them what you have done and that builds trust like you won’t believe.

Have you ever bought a book recommended by a blogger you’ve never heard of? Or trusted the writing of a make money online blogger who doesn’t make any money themselves? If clients see that you have successfully implemented your services before then they are much more likely to sign that proposal.

What’s your thoughts? If you have done some RM proposals, let us know.

5 Comments / April 7th, 2008 / Reputation

ORM Ebook - Free Or Paid

Update: - The Online Reputation Management eBook is now available!

I’m going to release the Online Reputation Management Ebook - The Guide to Monitoring and Managing your Reputation Online. It’s currently well over 40 pages and would love some advice on whether people think it should be free or cost a fee.

Here is a sample of the up and coming ebook cover:

My Personal Thoughts

Free

More likely to get links from people
Gives the possibility of attracting more clients
Becoming more established as an authority
Gives the product little value, otherwise why would I give it away?

Paid

Still the possibility of getting a decent amount of links
Can still get clients from the reviews of the book if people enjoy it
Still seen as an authority on the subject
Gives the product more value, but might get less people reading it
Can Set up an affiliate program that might push more sales

If I do decide to sell, I don’t see it being anymore than $20-$30 and it will be updated over time.

21 Comments / March 31st, 2008 / Reputation

How to Deal with Negative Social Network Groups

As part of our small series looking at 8 Types of Reputation Management Issues, we are looking at how you can go about dealing with each issue in the best possible manner for your brand.

This post is going to look at ways in which you can deal with negative social network groups. With so many new social networks popping up daily that have millions of users and the ability for people to use this function, if somebody knows about you it is possible they are going to create a group for your brand.

Examples

1. The Sun

The Sun is one of the most popular newspapers in England and well known for having glamour models on the 3rd page of it’s paper. It’s quite amazing to see that over 5,000 people have joined the following group.

2. Motorola

Motorola are known for being mobile phone manufacturers, one of their most notable products being the Motorola RAZR. The following is a good example of a negative social network group, to be fair to them there is a lot of positive ones as well.

Dealing with Negative Social Network Groups

1. Realise the Groups are there, and STOP

Theres a number of sites you may want to check to see if any groups have been made about you, ones such as Facebook / Bebo / Myspace…these are some of the most popular. You may be mentioned on others of course though and a good way to know that is if you are getting referrals from the site but have done nothing there. It’s always good to check social network sites based around your niche as well as they are most likely to write about you.

Once you have found the results then STOP. Read the rest of this blog post. Companies can so easily make their reputation far far worse just by reacting to these things in the wrong way.

2. Understand the Complaints / Issues

I have known about the negative group for ‘The Sun’ for quite a while, yet I’ve never really thought about why people would create it. I spent 18 years in England and never realised people had an issue with the paper until I checked the group. In the case of the Sun it’s partly due to the fact that it’s owned by Rupert Murdoch and there is a history of some very false reporting.

Sometimes the title of the group won’t explain what people’s problem is so try to look at the group discussions, the comments people are leaving or even the description for a better clue. If it’s something you can change, then move on to the next step.

3. If You Can Fix it - Do It

Depending on the issue that the group mentions you may be able to completely eradicate the problem. The Sun for example, can not help the fact that Rupert Murdoch owns them, although he could start working on his own reputation. If someone has had a problem with a product or service then try to do something about it. Giving away one free iPod or a full refund to a dissatisfied client may encourage them to remove the group.

At the least, they are likely to amend the group with the updated details if you can get in touch with the group creator and do something to help them.

4. Make Sure You have Your Own Official Group

Group listings on social networks can be very similar to search engine results in that the one that ranks higher for a name is going to get the most attention. If you don’t have an official group on the site then it’s definitely time to create one.

There must be 10 positive groups regarding Motorola to every negative one but there doesn’t seem to be one official group where all these positive group members can join.

5. Take the Legal Route as a last resort

Companies instantly think of calling the lawyers and getting things moved properly, but that can just do so much more damage hence why we added the ‘STOP’ recommendation to point number 1. It is possible to get in touch with Facebook and have them remove a specific group; check the TOS quote below for more information:

You represent, warrant and agree that no materials of any kind submitted through your account or otherwise posted, transmitted, or shared by you on or through the Service will violate or infringe upon the rights of any third party, including copyright, trademark, privacy, publicity or other personal or proprietary rights; or contain libelous, defamatory or otherwise unlawful material.

3 Comments / March 31st, 2008 / Reputation

38 Must Reads on Online Reputation Management

Now that I’m a huge fan of Delicious to keep my online life organised, I’ve spent a lot of time researching the web for quality resources relating to the subject of ORM (Online Reputation Management) and then started saving them for future use.

This was something I felt as very important when I decided to just focus on Social Media, and making the switch to the subject of ORM; my reason being is that I wanted to see what was out there already, what should really be covered next and how people reacted to certain content.

38 Must Reads

Search Engine Reputation Management

Fighting off Negative Publicity and Affiliates in the SERPs - SEOBook
Tips for Controlling the Top 10 - Wolfhowl
17 Search Engine Reputation Management Tips - Search Insider
A Best Practice Primer to Search Engine Reputation Management - Brandcurve
Using Search for Reputation Management - Search Engine Watch
Article Marketing Can Be Your Best Reputation Management Tool - ACP
10 Ways to Fix a Google Reputation Nightmare - Marketing Pilgrim
Advanced Reputation Management with Profiles & Presell Pages - Copybrighter
Reputation Management & Search: Avoiding Chunnel Vision - Endless Plain

Unique / Misc

How NOT to Handle an ORM Crisis - Copybrighter
Reputation Management Spreadsheet - SEO Scoop
8 Ways to Turn Negative Feedback into an Opportunity - EmomsAtHome
Responding to Negative Comments - Social Media Optimization
Defending Against Damaging Blogs Targeting You - VisioneFX
The Ethics of Reputation Management - SEOmoz
No Reputation Management Plan in Place - Social Media Optimization
Free ORM Beginner’s Guide - Marketing Pilgrim
Online Reputation Management for Individuals - Top Rank
Reputation Management: Issue Resolution Flowchart - Search Engine People

General Reputation Management

10 of Our Own

18 Comments / March 24th, 2008 / Reputation