One of the most important things you can do for your business online is to set up profiles at all of the social bookmarking and networking sites. If you don’t, someone else could.

Online, anyone can essentially steal your identity and pretend to be you, making promises in your name and not fulfilling them, doing all sorts of damage that you’ll spend hours upon hours upon hours cleaning up and still not sure if you got it all. That could be worse than cleaning up a negative credit report!

It’s up to you to protect your brand online and one of the best ways to do that is to set up profiles in your business name or brand and actively engage other social media marketers through those profiles. Even if all you do is set up the profile and never use it you’ll at least stop others from using your brand name illegitimately. Many social sites offer link juice for the links from your profile to your website so that alone is worth the effort. But actively using your profile by networking with others in those social sites could lead to additional business as you develop relationships. Not only will you be protecting your online reputation, but you’ll be building your business brand in a positive, forward-moving way.

Here’s an interesting experiment in reputation management. I like the way Aaron Wall concludes his piece:

Compare the above scenario with having a blog in the marketplace and building fans one at a time. Sure connecting with people one at a time is slower, but it is much less risky too.

If you are thinking about paying someone to do online public relations for you or you think that buying a review is going to get people excited about your business and you DON’T yet have a blog, I’d suggest you ditch the paid review idea and start a blog. Even if you hire a ghostwriter to write your blog for you, the monthly expense will do you much more good long term than any paid review will ever do. Plus, Aaron Wall makes a convincing case that when negative publicity goes viral it is as difficult, or more, to stop as positive publicity. And you can’t control what other people are going to say about you. You’d be better off letting them say it on your own blog than on someone else’s. Why? It’s an environment you can control.

When people comment on a blog, even if it is a negative comment, the blog owner benefits because the comments register as content and if you get enough of them then that pushes the blog post further up the search rankings for one of the important keywords. Do you really want to risk hundreds of negative comments on a positive review that exists on someone else’s blog when you could have your own blog ranking for those comments? And, get this, people are less likely to leave a negative comment about you on your own blog than they are someone else’s so merely having a blog is a small deterrent and reputation management tool.

When it comes to online reputation management, start at the basics. Own the property, allow people to speak their mind freely, and answer their comments about your company and its products with real language from real people. Engage and re-engage.

Internet marketer Jane Copeland expressed some dismay over a people search engine called Spock.com. Essentially, this service allows anyone to set up a profile for anyone else and then the search engine will draw from various sources around the web to include information about you and anyone can go up and add information about you, whether it is true or not. There are several things wrong with this, but rather get into those and harp on things that will take more than a few blog posts to fix, let me suggest a few ways you can use this service as a positive reputation management tool.

First, you should set up your own profile before someone else does. As Jane Copeland says in her blog post, it can be a royal pain to fix inaccurate information once it is published. If you set up your own profile then you can set the pace for the information about you before someone else does. Plus, by including some basic information about you - websites you are connected with (and that includes social networking profiles) and people with whom you are connected - then the service can go from there to add other stuff that it finds about you. That leads me to my next two points:

1. Be careful what you say about yourself online. Everything you do online is public record. If you’d be embarrassed by it, don’t let it get online. If you think that 20 or 30 years from now something can come back and haunt you, or if it’s something you wouldn’t want your children or grandchildren knowing about you, then don’t let it get online - anywhere. Even in the most private and secure areas of the Net.
2. Update your Spock.com information periodically. This is not something you have to pore yourself over every day. Who knows if this service will be popular in the future? It could, like many other website concepts, just die. And if so then no bother. But right now, it’s alive and well. As long as it is live, it has potential dangers. From a reputation management perspective, it is better if you go in and update the information than if someone else does. So, once a month or so, just go by and make sure the information is accurate and up to date. If something is no longer true, add a change to the news segment (but pay attention to Rule No. 1 above). You don’t have to tell the world everything about yourself. Just make sure that what you do tell them is accurate and reflects your own sense of self worth and privacy.

Finally, don’t play dirty pool with other people’s online information. That’s bad karma, and besides, if you wouldn’t want them doing it to you then don’t do it to them.

Marketing Pilgrim had a great blog post yesterday about the difference between SEO and reputation management. It got me to thinking, which is a bit dangerous at times.

What many companies do, and Jordan McCollum provides enough good examples, when they get into reputation trouble is try to hire an SEO firm to “knock down” negative results about themselves, thinking that this will somehow fix the problem. But it won’t. Usually, those negative results are still there. They just may be a little more difficult to find. But someone intent on finding them will find them nonetheless.

SEO is good; don’t get me wrong. But reputation management is not SEO. They are two different things. SEO is something that you can do only as you are doing it. You can not pre-SEO your website, in other words. As you build your website, you built into it the SEO necessities to help it rank in the search engines. It starts with keyword research.

Reputation management, on the other hand, is something that you can do before you need it. SEO you do as you need it. But your reputation is too important - much too important - to leave to the vagaries of search engine algorithms. Your reputation is a lasting impression and even long after the evidence of negativity has been buried there is still a lingering issue, at least in the mind of the one person who saw fit to blast your name everywhere on the Web, with regard to your reputation. Those negative impressions are hard to erase; not impossible, just difficult.

The time to manage your reputation online is before you need to. Don’t wait for someone to post negative comments about you to start managing your reputation. Do it before you need to and when the time comes to defend it, you’ll be in a much better position to be able to do so.

There are two main areas of reputation management. The first is knowing what people are saying about you and the second is getting your name out in the manner you want to be thought of. There are many ways to manage your business reputation, but I´m just going to give you a few in each area to get you started.

Reputation Management Tips: Other People

• Subscribe to Google Alerts. You should set up different alerts using your business name, title and your own name. This way, anytime anyone blogs about you, it will come up in Google Alerts.
• Do regular searches. Checking the top search engines for your business name and products will bring up any non-blogging sites to let you know what other people are saying about you.
• Hire it out. Don´t have the time to stay on top of all this? Then you might want to look at hiring someone else to keep track of all positive and negative feedback.

Reputation Management Tips You Can Use

• Send out press releases. These will help your business gain a lot of publicity and it is controlled, since you write the press release.
• Maintain a good relationship with other bloggers. Getting along with bloggers in your field increases the chances of them publishing information about you. It really only takes a little time to become a regular commenter on several blogs and you´ll be building for the future.
• Keep up the article marketing. Steady feeding of new articles into article directories and websites will bring in more traffic and also help you establish your reputation as an expert.

Caroline
Small Business Mavericks
Back to the Blog

It´s happened to many big companies, one little scandal that spreads like wildfire and even the best business can come crashing down . . . and the internet makes it super easy for this to happen. A recent post on ComputerWorld discusses whether or not it is ethical to manage your online reputation:

Online reputation management “is a space that’s hot and is heating up further,” says Jeff Zabin, an analyst at Aberdeen Group Inc. who recently co-authored a report on social media monitoring and analysis. Executives are waking up to how the Internet can be used as an early warning system to alert them if their company’s brand names and reputations are at risk as a result of a product defect, a disgruntled customer’s blog rant or some other looming crisis, says Zabin.

If the news is bad, SEO techniques can help level the playing field. Sophisticated algorithms and other techniques allow manufacturers, retailers and other types of businesses to suppress unfavorable blog posts about their companies, and learn things about consumer preferences and perceptions of their brands like never before.

The practice of beating out the bad press by improving your SEO techniques can be considered good reputation management, or it can be looked at as messing with the natural rythme of the internet. After all, people are supposed to be able to find useful information online, right? By getting your site placed higher than bad reviews, you could be accused of spamming, but to most businesses, it is just good sense . . . what do you think?

Caroline
Small Business Mavericks
Back to the Blog

Most small business internet marketing websites say the same thing, you need to build links in order to achieve a high ranking on the search engines. Incoming links make your website more valuable to the likes of Google and Yahoo and link building is a very worthwhile venture. However, there are lots of link building scams out there that seem legit. You really have to be careful, as this post from Internet Marketing in Nottingham points out.

* they are using software that scans through the web, scraping up random email addresses to generate link requests. Fundamentally you are paying the SEO to generate email spam that harm’s your company’s good reputation
* you are actually paying them your hard earned cash to get utterly irrelevant websites to link to your site
* they are probably getting links from sites that are never going to generate a single click or enquiry to your site
* they are getting links on “Links” pages that have dozens or even hundreds of other random company links
* and you are certainly going to do more good linking to them then you are ever going to get in the link back

It pays to be careful with your small business internet marketing site. Creating links can be helpful, but only if you do it right. Take the time to check out the business that is offering to give you links, or, better yet, take the time to connect with other sites and to provide high quality content to get natural links!

Every small business needs a social media strategy. If you don´t have one yet, then this is the perfect time to create your social media strategy for 2008.

Source:

The “SEO value proposition” of social media is that you get your message out to communities and individuals entrenched in an innovative online environment. You become a part of the community which understands online relationships; and that community brings forth new connections, networks and inbound link opportunities.

Social media is a part of internet marketing that is becoming more and more important and valuable. It´s not just a bunch of college kids sharing silly photos, though there is still a fair amount of this going on. Now, businesses and consumers are using social media as a business medium.

Things to keep in mind when planning your social media strategy:

Set a time limit. You can get lost in the depths of Sphinn or Zuggu . . . so set a timer and make sure you limit yourself to only 15-30 minutes of social media a day.

Promote others. Don´t just promote your own business blog or website on social media sites. You should have a well-rounded profile, with plenty of other websites bookmarked. A ration of 7/1 is a good rule of thumb.

Stay appropriate. Not all social media sites welcome all types of content. Some are niche communities and you´ll just be spamming if you add inappropriate links.

Make friends. Your friends network is the biggest advantage to social media. Otherwise, your vote is just a drop in the bucket. But get your network of friends going and you could send your website into social media heaven.

Stay consistent. If you post to one social media site intensely for a few days, then abandon it for a month, you´ll lose your friends and no one will be following you. Consistently use all the social media sites on your list and you´ll gain more page views.

Social media is definitely something you want to use this year to help promote your business. It´s a powerful method of free publicity and with a good strategy that implements the points above, you should see more visitors to your business site in 2008.

Caroline Melberg
Small Business Mavericks
Small Business Mavericks Blog

In internet marketing, no man is an island (or woman, for that matter) and online networking is a vital part of marketing. Making connections online takes work, for sure, but it is one of the best ways to make sure you have those valuable business connections.

While there are many different methods of online networking, one very popular method is to join forums related to your business topic and take an active part in the community. This isn´t a one time thing, you´ll need to visit the forums of your choosing at least twice a week to stay active. Also, we are talking about making connections here, not simply dropping your URL at the end of a two sentence note.

Online networking is something that, when done effectively, can be an excellent way to build your business. Forums help build your reputation as an expert and over time, you´ll find yourself building relationships with other active users. Where this will lead, no one knows, but many a successful JV partnership has originated on a forum.

Most forums offer an internal messaging system which is ideal for online networking. When you notice that someone is frequently commenting on your questions or simply notice a particular user is savvy in an area that could be beneficial to you, you can and should contact them. Not necessarily to talk business, but just make that connection. If the relationship later turns to business, so be it.

Forums can be very useful and should not be ignored as a possibility in online networking. After all, without online networking, internet marketing wouldn´t be very effective.

Caroline Melberg
Small Business Mavericks
Small Business Mavericks Blog

(Source) In a report Sunday, the Pew Internet and American Life Project said 47 percent of U.S. adult Internet users have looked for information about themselves through Google or another search engine.

Is this good news or bad? I’m not sure. It seems that online reputation management is growing in popularity. I mean, in 2002 the percentage of people who Googled themselves was only 22%. It seems we’re making progress. But there is still about half of all Internet users who don’t search for themselves online to see what’s being said about them. On the other hand, maybe those people are confident that no one is talking about them. Should they be?

I think online reputation management is one of the most important things to pay attention to now. Two or three negative comments about you from a reputable source or in a forum with a lot of traffic could cost you greatly. You might lose a big client or fail to attract one because of a negative review. But that’s not all. It could affect your personal life as well. The same study by Pew Internet and American Life Project shows that people go online to find personal information about others, including information about bankruptcies and divorces. It could be someone you are dating or planning to marry.

Now, I’m not suggesting you should cover or conceal your past, but it is important to check out your reputation online from time to time. What are people saying about you? And better yet, what are you doing about it?

Caroline Melberg
Small Business Mavericks
Small Business Mavericks Blog