Managing Your Online Reputation

Just how important is your online reputation?

Reputation management is the process of tracking an entity’s actions and other entities’ opinions about those actions; reporting on those actions and opinions; and reacting to that report creating a feedback loop.

However, managing to keep up to speed with what is being said about your company and brand on the web is a tough job. The internet is a 24/7/365, always on medium which means that opinions, views and comment is being broadcast without respite.

A high ‘social status’ means having your website or company consistently talked about and discussed online. One of the major benefits of this can be an increased number of relevant links pointing to your website – leading to higher rankings in search engine natural listings (SERPS).

When it comes to your online reputation, preventing damage is easier than curing it. However, in the unfortunate event of a crisis situation arising, you will need sound advice and a suggested course of action for your company to follow. This will minimise the long-term damage done, and provide you with opportunities to recover from it.

Social Media Marketing (SMM)

Following the roll out of Web 2.0 and multi media functionality, there has been an explosion in social media which is more widely known as social networking sites such as MySpace, Facebook and YouTube.

SMM goals will vary for every business or organisation, however most will involve some form of viral marketing to build idea or brand awareness, increase visibility, and possibly sell a product or service. SMM may also include online reputation management.

The Five Pillars of Social Media Marketing
Any and all forms of Social Media Marketing tactics fall under at least one of these five forms of action. Often the same channel will incorporate two or more of these:

• Declaration of Identity
• Identity through Association
• User-initiated Conversation
• Provider-initiated Conversation
• In-Person Interaction

Still the best way to improve your search engine rankings is to get as many high quality natural links as possible. Releasing interesting content and promoting it using social news websites can lead to a steady increase of on-topic links.

Building a Blog
Blogs are web site content management systems with additional functionality such as comments, trackbacks and RSS. Blogs are really no different than web sites. Blogs are one of many platforms that benefit from optimisation. Most blog software (such as WordPress or Blogger) offer uncomplicated URL structure, making it fairly easy for search engine spiders to find and crawl blog content.