Reputation Management Tips from Around the Web

The collective thoughts of multiple people usually means you are going to get some more advanced and interesting information than that of talking about something yourself. Therefore, I thought it would be a good idea to ask some of the biggest names in internet marketing to share any reputation management tips they have.

Needless to say, I think we have came up with a nice amount of quality information here that anyone can benefit from.

Reputation Management Tips

The number one thing that has helped me manage my online reputation is by participating in relevant, search engine friendly online communities consistently under my own name. Establishing links through communities is probably the number one way to help push trust to a specific page for a specific name, especially in context with another modifier, such as a search for “joe blow seo” versus just “joe blow.” You can of course do this with more than one page/site, and it is possible to re-establish specific relevance if you move jobs, for example.

- Chris Boggs

Online reputation management [in the search results] is not about burying negative stories, it’s about promoting positive stories. Trying to out-rank negative stories with profile pages is ok, but you don’t want a page full of spammy profile pages ranking. Instead generate positive stories which puts your side of the story across and promote those instead.

- Tom Critchlow

I’ve got a few that help keep your / your client’s / whoever’s reputation in line. There’s Google Alerts, which sometimes get a bit overwhelming if you’re mentioned a lot, but are really useful if your very interested in every mention of your brand across the web.

There’s also the obvious but little-used trick of keeping an eye on your misspellings. For example, I get referred to as Jane Copeland a fair bit. I bet people often spell your first name with too many “n”s and surname too few “p”s! It can be tougher to think of misspellings for others’ names and brands, but people will find a way to spell virtually everything incorrectly.

As for repairing reputations, I think that a combination of honesty and restraint come in handy. Sometimes, it’s best to apologise, but sometimes it’s best not to get involved in criticism as it can fan the fire. I’m often not popular for saying that, but I’ve found it works.

- Jane Copland

Predict future searches and put content online now so that you aren’t “Catching up” when you have a reputation management issue in the future.

Many companies have a PR team that has rules in place on how to handle a PR nightmare, so why shouldn’t the same be true of online reputation? Put into place those rules and set up content or resources online now so that you can prevent negative blog posts or news items by providing resources to disgruntled consumers. If you have a resource online that is so good that you have prevented someone from negatively speaking up, then you have succeeded at preventative reputation management.

- Scott Fish

Create a lot of social media profiles to try and dominate the SERPs with your brand and push down any negative results about your company.

- Rebecca Kelley

The best way I know of to manage one’s online reputation is to be detached and not control anyone’s response. This means that if you write something that people find offensive, accept responsibility for that. If someone blasts you online, try to not come out with raised fists. In some situations, I ask myself, “Is it true, is it necessary, is it kind?” if I feel a need to respond. This helps to keep me in check, so I don’t go off and say or do something I’ll later regret.

- Kim Krause Berg

Biggest tip - do your homework. Then you won’t have a reputation problem to deal with (for the most part).

- Rhea Drysdale

Take advantage of universal search, unless you happen to have the same name as a celebrity, sports, or other historical figure chances are you’ll be able to rank for your own name with a YouTube video pretty easily.

- Michael Gray

Remember the early days of the web when everyone was petrified about domain squatting, while the law is now in your favour be sure to keep an eye open for people passing themselves off as your company on emerging social media platforms. Only last week I found the biggest Facebook page about Tesco was being run by a cunning affiliate trying to make some mullah every time someone did their food shopping. Subscribe to techcrunch or one of the other new media websites and when a new site takes off go and nab your name.

- Kelvin Newman

Use Summize Sentiment to see what the sentiment on twitter is about yourself, your client or your product. Alot of conversations are moving to twitter, so you can use this tool to gauge how the overall sentiment of the conversation is. In addition to using google web, image, news & blogs searches, perform searches at summize and tweetscan and sign up for an rss feed for those searches.

Search the web for different communities that caters to your industry, join and become active. By creating positive content around your brand you can further solidify it from people trying to tarnish your image.

- Martin Bowling

I’ve been doing Online Reputation Management for more than 5 years…. I began monitoring it when my first eCommerce site went live. Of course, the way I do it has evolved, but the reason behind it has been the same…. to make sure that I stay on top of what is being discussed about my products online. And, If I notice something that could harm my brand I act fast.

We have so many amazing tools to monitor our products, our company, our name… there is no excuse not to do it. At the very least you should be using Google Alerts and Feeds to watch over your online reputation.

Ignoring Online Reputation Management is easy, but think about it this way…. if you heard someone speaking about you or your company in an untrue or unfair way would you ignore it? Of course not. Listen to the opinions of others and make sure to respond to them. There are millions in the online world that could make or break you. If you aren’t going to defend your brand…. who is?

- Shana Albert

In Summary

Who knows how long all of these tips will be applicable, but that can be said for any industry online. The factors that helps websites rank now is not going to be the same in 2-3 years from now but take action on what you do know.

Thanks to everyone who took part!

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