The Reciprocal Consulting Blog

When it comes to reputation management, too many people don’t think about it until they need it. By then it may be too late.

Amazon has recently been awarded the most reputable company by Forbes Media and Reputation Institute. That’s quite an honor, but the surprising part is that the company didn’t win that distinction on the strength of its brand, but on the strength of its leadership. Other companies didn’t do so well:

• Google – 9th
• Apple – 46th
• Microsoft – 47th
• Best Buy – 78th
• eBay – 81st

Many of these companies have strong products and brands, but its the leadership of a company that determines its reputation. Amazon proves it.

The criteria used to judge reputation for this award include:

trust in companies and leaders rather than product brands, multiple stakeholders and their interactions, and building a connection between a company’s reputation strategy and its business strategy.

If you’re wondering whether your company can be judged by these same criteria, the answer is yes. In fact, your business will be judged by these criteria – and more. Whether you are a small business or a multi-national enterprise, your leadership will determine the reputation your company maintains in the marketplace. Leadership, not products.

That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t build good products that people want to buy. It means, in addition to building great products, you should focus on great leadership. That’s the best reputation management you’ll ever have.

GoDaddy CEO Bob Parsons seems to enjoy being the center of controversy. He’s come under fire for his racy Super Bowl commercials and lost business on account of it. Now, he’s shooting elephants and has a ton of people ticked at him for that.

The issue is, he posted a video of the escapade online. It would have been bad had he gone to Africa and shot the elephant then had it reported on in the news, but he shot himself in the foot on this one. And it doesn’t seem to bother him.

I’m not sure that there is any amount of reputation management that Bob Parsons can do to dig himself out of this hole. He went looking for this controversy and, it seems, he went out of his way to attract it. Now he’s forced to defend his actions by focusing on interviews with media outlets. Wouldn’t his time be better spent doing something else?

He had to have known that posting the video would lead to this much controversy. So is that why he did it? Some people are claiming it is.

There’s a fine line between being controversial for the sake of controversy and making controversial claims to draw attention to yourself in hopes of gaining new business. I can’t imagine anyone seeing the video and saying, “Just what I’ve been looking for – a CEO that loves shooting elephants. Let’s switch to GoDaddy.” Can you?

In fact, many high profile clients are leaving GoDaddy because of the video. This is the kind of thing that makes me wonder if Bob Parsons may be a little bit unstable. He couldn’t have thought it was a good thing, or would be perceived as a good thing. Could he have?

Online reviews can help or hurt your business. If you get a lot of positive reviews, then it can certainly give a big boost to your online reputation. On the other hand, negative reviews can put a dent in your reputation. That is, unless you can find a way to turn those negatives into positives. That’s precisely what I’m going to teach you how to do today.

Here are 5 ways to turn negative reviews into a positive:

1. Refrain from being a jerkwad – Instead of getting angry and lambasting the reviewer with insults for the entire world to see, take a step back and don’t do anything at all. Cool down first. After you have had a chance to calm down and think about what the reviewer said, then you can offer a level-headed response with some reason.
2. Thank the reviewer – When you do respond, thank the reviewer for their input. Then, offer to resolve their situation amicably.
3. Issue a sincere apology – Be sincere and apologize for the bad experience. Most businesses won’t apologize at all and most that do will do so badly. If you apologize sincerely and make the reviewer believe it, then you’ll be way ahead of your competition.
4. Offer to fix the problem – If possible, send a private message to the reviewer offering to resolve their problem amicably. Offer a coupon or a discount on a future service. Maybe you can offer a free product or service on their next visit. Whatever it takes to make them a happy customer, do it. There’s a good chance you could turn a negative review into a positive review – and keep a customer.
5. Leave your phone number - If you cannot send a private message through the review site, leave your phone number instead, and offer to have that reviewer call you so that you can resolve the problem. If you offer a discount or free service in lieu of the phone call, then you could turn a negative into a positive with just one phone call.

When it comes to online reviews, every review is a reputation management opportunity. Turn those negative reviews into an opportunity to perform an awesome service and see what happens.

Loyalty in a business has several different components. You have customer loyalty, staff loyalty, and perhaps even supplier loyalty. When it comes to an online business, you can have social media loyalty, and for some businesses, affiliate loyalty. That’s a lot of loyalty that needs managing, yet it only takes one of those loyalty areas to unravel, and your whole businesses reputation could be down the drain.

Managing that loyalty is not as difficult as it sounds. If you take the top three components for most online businesses – staff, customers, and social media – they all cross paths at some stage. Here are a few suggestions for managing each component.

• Staff Loyalty – Staff loyalty requires both a firm hand and good management skills. Providing fair work conditions is always a good start. Having social media policies in place that are fair but firm are also a necessity. If you manage those two areas carefully, then staff loyalty need not be an issue, even if one employee leaves and tries to bad mouth your business.
• Customer Loyalty – Customer loyalty comes to the basics of good business. Provide a good product at a fair price and back it up with a good customer service policy and you should have customers coming back time after time.
• Social Media Loyalty – Social media loyalty is perhaps the hardest of the three to manage. However, if your social media approach is social and less marketing, and your communication is honest two-way communication, then you have a good start. Understanding why users are connecting with you through social media and feeding that motive in a positive way will seal their loyalty.

Loyalty is not that difficult to attain if your approach is positive and honest. With a strong loyalty base, you have a rock solid reputation management foundation. If anyone does try to undermine your business, those loyal to you will stand up and defend you without having to be asked.

Experts in the field of reputation management will all agree on one thing, prevention is better than the cure. Prevention includes providing a good product at a fair price. It also includes providing a good service, and this includes after-sales service. Here is a new take on how after-sales service can help with your reputation management.

I recently received an article that reported on how an Australian telco had discovered that an employee from a rival telco had left unkind remarks about the Australian telco’s service. The Australian telco has a customer service department that follows up on such complaints in an effort to placate the customer and improve their own service. It came as a real surprise to find that the person in question was not a customer, but was an employee of a competitor as well.

The rival telco has naturally denied any association with the remarks left. Given the rather amateur way these comments were left, it’s hard to see them being involved. However,  what is important is that these comments were not just left sitting there. The affected company didn’t try to get into any slanging match, or war of words – they simply investigated the complaint to try and rectify the issue.

This is not the first case of one company (or one of their employees) being involved in an attack on another. It does, however, reinforce how valuable a customer service department can be if they are diligent. Companies spend a lot of money managing online reputations – sometimes, its starts at home.

There has been a lot of background noise in recent days about website security – or rather the lack of it. One phrase that has been coined, probably by a journalist eager to sensationalize things, is the danger of a digital 9-11 attack. There’s no doubt that many businesses and governments aren’t protected sufficiently to ward off such an attack, but what about smaller businesses – how much protection do they need?

If we’re talking about a digital 9-11 attack, I don’t think small businesses need to worry. Any attack of that nature is going be directed at governments and financial sectors. That doesn’t mean you are safe from other attacks. Most businesses lack any real security measure to protect themselves, yet a small digital attack on their website could do immeasurable harm to that business’s reputation.

We can’t do much about the causes of these attacks. In some cases, people are targeting a business because of its policies; in other instances, it is purely random. So how can you protect yourself? There are a number of ways.

First and foremost, regularly back up your site and your database if you use one. Every day is the ideal situation with the backup copies stored away from your server. With backups, you can at least restore your site to a good copy should anything untoward happen. Your website should also include software designed to block hackers and viruses from getting a foothold. It is estimated that websites unknowingly help to spread 15% of all computer viruses and malware. I am sure you wouldn’t like to see your website suddenly listed as a malware site.

Your reputation is important. Take the steps to protect your website, and to protect your visitors. At the same time, you will be protecting your own online reputation.

Most people have probably heard of the recent online phenomena surrounding Ted Williams. He was a homeless individual whom someone decided had a great voice. They made a short video and posted it to YouTube. From there, it went viral, and suddenly Ted Williams became one of the most popular men in the US – at least, for a short period of time.

Ted was flown around the country, interviewed by the best, including Dr Phil. He even had large sums of money thrown at him to do advertising voice overs. A true rags to riches story. Unfortunately, he was detained by police days later for being drunk and disturbing the peace. The problem was, much of his story centered on him being a reformed alcoholic. Now, he is yesterday’s news and no one want to know him.

It’s not our role to comment on the rights or wrongs of what happened to Ted Williams. Rather, it provides a very telling lesson on the difficulties of online reputation management. Consider how your business would have fared if a similar situation arose.

Rather than Ted Williams’ voice being the draw card, it was a video of your product in action. Everyone loves the video, the product looks great, and suddenly sales are booming. You have achieved every marketer’s dream, a viral marketing campaign.

But what happens if, a week or two later, someone posts a comment about how your product started a fire, or some similar catastrophic situation. Your reputation will suddenly go down hill, fast. Your video will sit unwanted, and your sales will drop altogether. Ted Williams, despite everything that has happened, still has that perfect on-air voice. Your product may be totally harmless, the fire or event being caused by misuse rather than poor quality.

The final result is still the same – like Ted Williams, the Internet skyrocketed your product to the starry heights – just as quickly, the Internet brought your product, and your business, back down to earth with a grinding thud. Online reputation management can be tough, especially in situations that involve viral campaigns.

It’s amazing how a few words can trigger a train of thought a mile long. Seth Godin has a short piece on the art of juggling. So what does juggling have to do with reputation management? Plenty really. To quote from Seth’s blog:

Throwing is more important than catching. If you’re good at throwing, the catching takes care of itself. Emergency response is overrated compared to emergency avoidance.

Of course, it’s the last sentence that caught my eye (that’s his italics, not mine). You can apply the philosophy that response is overrated compared with avoidance to reputation management. Operating online with a policy of providing good products with a good service and you will develop a reputation for excellence.

However, what had me thinking was human nature. We do make mistakes, and they can sometimes be blown right out of proportion. Imagine a juggler that has been distracted for a moment – there’s a good chance they will drop the lot. And that can happen to reputations as well – take your eye off the game for a moment and suddenly your name is mud.

Unlike a juggler, you can protect yourself to a certain degree. By building a strong reputation early, it becomes harder to undo. Those that believe in you and your products will doubt any negatives until they can prove for themselves that what is being said is true. What is important in the reputation management process is to build a strong reputation in all the places you operate in.

This includes search results, social media, and your own websites. If you can develop that reputation from day one, you will lessen the chance of any stray incident or a disgruntled employee (or customer) starting a negative campaign against you. In simple terms – reputation management starts with your activities. Like a juggler, it takes constant concentration to ensure your business is doing everything possible to build and support your reputation.

If 2011 is like any other year there will be fads that come and go, perhaps even some that come and stay. What has been evident over the years is that some have proven to be good while others have proven to not only be bad, but to run the risk of getting your website removed from the search index. If you’re good at picking the winners and losers, then you don’t need to read on. If you want to protect your reputation, then the best piece of advice to offer is to be cautious.

The problem with fads is that they come and go. Some fads hang around, but they can still be dangerous. Some of the more notable include automatic software – the type that seeks out blogs to leave robotic comments; spins a document and then lodges it with hundreds of directories; and the type that automatically bookmarks pages in social bookmarking sites.

If automatic isn’t enough, there are still a lot of individuals offering to do the same by hand. Oh yes, they ‘hand pick’ the directories, social sites, and blogs – but ultimately, it’s still spam.

This past year we have seen groups touting local search as a ‘clever’ way to game the search results. Claiming a listing in many locations around the US, even though you’re sitting at home in the UK, or Australia, or wherever. Google will soon find a way to filter those tactics, then hit those websites that games the system right out of the ball park.

2011 will see new creative ways to get to the top of the search results. If they sound a little fishy, then they probably are. If you have spent a lot of hours building your business, and building your business’s reputation, then forget any of the fads as they come around – use a little caution to see if they are valid, and acceptable by the Internet at large.

What is your reputation worth? Reputation and brand awareness go hand in hand – in fact, they both rely on each other when it comes to building a successful business. Mention a brand, any brand, and you will have positive or negative views on that brand (unless the brand is unknown to you, of course). As a business, you spend a lot of time promoting that brand, and a lot of time building a positive image around the brand. So what happens when you lose that brand?

That’s an issue that is facing TwitterMoms.com right now. They have built their website and brand to a point where they have a huge following. More importantly, they have a good reputation amongst both parents and businesses that provide goods and services to parents. I can imagine their horror then when they received a notice from Twitter to cease using their brand name.

TwitterMoms is about to become SocialMoms.com, and while the transition will no doubt be smooth, they will still have to do a lot of work to rebrand themselves, and to transfer their reputation from TwitterMoms to SocialMoms. Being a very successful website, they will be back on track in a very short time. But what if your business wasn’t quite as successful? What if it was only doing reasonably well in a highly competitive niche?

That one simple branding error could cost you business. It is difficult to build a positive image that is attached to a brand. Lose that brand and you have to rebuild a new one, and with it a reputation. In highly competitive niches, that could prove to be impossible. Your brand and reputation are closely tied together – lose one, and you potentially lose the other. When deciding on a brand name, the more unique you are and the easier it is to remember, the better. While riding on the wave of another brand may make life easier initially, it could, over time, prove to be a huge mistake – just ask TwitterMoms.

Sometimes the smallest things can have the biggest effect on any business. There are reports from Australia that a leading business group ‘forgot’ to renew their domain name.  Not only did they forget, they were unaware that it had then been sold off in a domain auction for over A$30,000.  It wasn’t a brand name or business name that they could lay any claim to either – it was the very generic, and one would have thought, highly desirable hardware.com.au domain.

To add insult to injury, the business group that picked the domain name up was one of their biggest rivals. Any reputation that can be attributed to that domain name will now flow to that business’s biggest rival. That’s more than just loss of reputation, that is taking the power of your reputation and gifting it to your competitor.

Some would claim bad management, and perhaps it was. How did they lose a domain name that was that important? They simply forgot to update the email address in the registrant details.  The lesson here for all businesses is to keep a firm eye on the little things behind an online business. Your domain name, and even your hosting account – forgetting to pay either can see your site disappearing overnight.

Losing a domain name like that is really unforgivable. Allowing your competitor to pick it up and use it is even worse.  Do you know when your domain name is due for renewal? Is all your information up to date in the registrant details?  Perhaps you had better check!

The Internet is a dangerous place in more ways that one. We have all read stories of employers coming across disparaging remarks written by employees or employers using social media to check on potential employees. Reputation management has become an important issue for both businesses and individuals and the focus is not just on what others say. Your own words are just as important.

One of the worst aspects of the Internet has been the amount of online dishonesty perpetrated over the years. The result now is that people will often check Google or Facebook before making friends online. Trust has become the number one issue when doing business, and again, reputations are the key factor.

It does raise a number of questions. For example, if I did a search on your name, business, or brand right now, do you know what I would find? If not, then you have no idea how the online world is affecting your reputation. A second question – what are you doing to protect your reputation?

There are a number of ways in which you could manage your reputation. One method suggests filling the front page of the search engines with your data, often in the form of social media profiles. But then, what of social media? What is being said there? Reputation management starts at home and there are three key areas that you need to consider.

What you say – What you say online can and will be used against you. For example, if you condemn someone, or another product, you had better be right. If you are wrong, or if people consider your comment to be in poor taste, then your reputation is going to fall.  These days, you have to be careful about what you say in jest as well.

What you do – Customer service has once again become an important consideration – provide a good customer experience and they will return, often with their friends.

How you respond -  When individuals raise issues publicly, you need to be sensitive to the fact that the problem is in public. Others will, over time, see your responses. With that in mind, you need to be positive and need to be seen to be trying to resolve the issues in a friendly manner. If they get nasty while you remain positive and in resolution mode, your reputation should remain strong.

Reputation management focuses on what you do, what you say, and what others say. You can manage the first two while working to reduce the third.

Social media is becoming an important tool in people’s lives but we should be aware of what we say, when we say it, and how we say it. We should also be careful that unconnected threads aren’t connected by others to reveal sensitive information. A recent article from the AMA advised doctors on how they should approach social media, particularly when it came to social interaction with patients. The Australian AMA has gone a step further and advised doctors about the content of their discussions.

The Australian AMA points out the problems of seemingly unrelated discussions or comments and how they could be connected to reveal sensitive information. To quote from their article:

…..it’s the comments you made a month ago saying which hospital you work at, two weeks ago saying which ward you work in and then the comment from today about the adverse outcome for a patient you treated,” Dr Bonning said.

“When you stack those three things up together it’s suddenly very easy to identify who the patient was.”

It is very easy to make a disparaging remark about your competition, without naming them, and then to make other comments at other times which, when connected, make it quite obvious who you are disparaging. In our litigious society, this is an issue just waiting for a test case, and if it’s successful, a flood of follow-up cases.

You have a number of choices. You either track closely everything you and your employees say, or you take a great deal of care when disparaging others. The same is true when it comes to sensitive information. As with the doctors in the above quote, what seems like harmless comments today could become online reputation management busters tomorrow. While it’s smart to track what everyone else is saying, don’t forget to track your own conversations.

Google have changed the way search results are displayed and the new changes could make online reputation management just that little bit easier. The last modification to search results was to publish two related links on a domain for certain search queries. These queries include a search for domain by name, a search for a business by name, and a search for a brand by name. Google have now increased that from two related pages to a maximum of four pages.

You may wonder how that will help with reputation management. If your website is able to claim the top four listings, and you have a blog that is also able to take the next four listings, you will now have the top eight listings in search results covered. According to the Google blog:

As before, we still provide links to results from a variety of domains to ensure people find a diverse set of sources relevant to their searches. However, when our algorithms predict pages from a particular site are likely to be most relevant, it makes sense to provide additional direct links in our search results.

That variety of domains could well be your blog, especially if it is hosted on its own domain with the appropriate domain name. Don’t be surprised to see businesses now registering domain names using their business name with the term ‘blog’ or similar added to the end. We recently reported on an admission from Matt Cutts that exact domain matches rank higher than they normally should. Put the two together and you have two sites that rank highly for any searches on those domain names.

It’s only a small step since your reputation can be badly tainted in many other ways. Reports may not float to the top of search results based on your business name, but they could based on product names, perhaps a brand name, and through non-search entities such as social media. Still, every little bit helps, and this change will certainly go a long way to protecting a business’ reputation in the search results. All you need now is a blog that is ranking well – you do have one, don’t you???

There are two things that visitors are going to notice when they first land on one of your pages – how it looks and what it says.  Let’s assume you have hired a professional website designer to create attractive easy-to-negotiate pages, so your website looks great. What about the content?

One of the problems with search engines is that they generally rank old pages above new pages. Google, for example, may talk a lot about ‘fresh content’, but for most searches the pages listed are fairly old.  If your site has been around for awhile then those old pages are going to rank fairly well, even if the information on them is a little outdated.

This is where your reputation could take a real hammering. If visitors feel the information is too old, too out of date, or no longer relevant, there is a good chance they’ll hit the back button rather than seeking fresher content on your site. Flagging the fact that the information is outdated and linking to fresher content may not attract them either.

You have several options. You could redirect to fresher content as long as the new page is about the same subject. You could also rewrite the content to bring it up to date. It seems to be pointless having a redirect to new content when you could simply update the content on that page.

Reputation management starts at home – that is, it starts with what you say and do on your own website. While search engine marketing and social media marketing are all the rage at present, taking time to review those old pages on your website is equally important. Is the content still relevant, accurate, and able to answer the needs of your visitors? If not, give it a lick of polish and bring it up to date.

When it comes to reputation management, there are always two aspects that you must look at. What you do and say and what others can do or say to hurt you or your business. There are a number of measures you can put in place to protect your business and your brand, but how far do you need to go?

This question sprung to mind when I read that Facebook was likely to introduce an email system of their own. One of the questions I keep reading is whether you would prefer a Facebook email address or a Gmail email address. My initial reaction is one of  – why either/or? If you are running an online business then surely your email address is something like yourname@yourdomain.com?

However, returning to reputation management, in particular your brand, do you need to protect your brand by claiming it as an email address on Facebook? I mentioned there were two aspects to reputation management – what you do, and what others do. The big question here is – if you have a branded Facebook Fan Page and someone else claims your brand as an email address, can they hurt your business? While unlikely, it does have the potential to create some harm so with that in mind you probably should do everything possible to claim it.

Have you secured your brand on Facebook? If you haven’t then everything in this post could be moot.  We come back to that question – can someone else harm your brand or business by using either on Facebook or Twitter or any of the other major social media sites? If they can then perhaps you should look to securing them yourself before someone else does!

One of the most important components of social media marketing is your reputation on social sites that you develop a presence on.  There are several activities you can undertake that work to increase your reputation amongst followers, and often work to encourage newcomers to also follow you. Here are six activities that you should consider.

1 – Promoting Others - spend a little time researching what others have to say about your brand, product or service. If someone has written a good blog post detailing how to use your product to advantage – promote it with a link to the post.  Followers will appreciate the information and of course the blog writer will appreciate that A) you have bothered to read their content, and B) you are promoting it for them.

2 – Respond – responding to people who reach out is vitally important. If someone follows or ‘Likes’ you, a quick and simple welcome personalizes the relationship. If someone asks a question, respond to it in a timely fashion.

3 – Give Credit – if a question is asked and you decide to write a blog post on the topic, give credit to the person that asked the question. They feel that their question was important, others see that you take questions seriously, and you are also sending a message that you do actually read comments and responses, even on Facebook, or Twitter.

4 – Provide Value – people follow you for a reason and, generally speaking, it’s because they have some expectations. If you have promised early notice of specials then deliver. Failing to deliver will see people leaving you quite quickly, telling the world along the way that you fail to deliver.

5 – Stay On Topic – stay loyal to the niche around which you have created your profile. If you have several niches, then develop separate profiles and build followers for each. While the occasional cross-promotion is generally acceptable, don’t over do it.

6 – Be Social – it’s not just about you or your business. Don’t forget the social component. While readers don’t want to know about what you had for breakfast, you would be surprised at how many people do want to see the human side. An engagement, wedding or new baby by a staff member will often see a stream of congratulations. If you, or that staff member can respond, so much the better.

Social media marketing is not always about promoting a brand, product or service. However, in delivering on those six points, you can be doing just that, but in a way that highlights the ‘social’ nature or your marketing. Just for a change – put yourself in your followers shoes!

Scrolling through Yahoo! Answers today, it was quite a surprise to see some fairly serious questions. Generally speaking, the questions asked revolve around relationship problems, school homework questions, and diaper issues. While I am sure those questions are important to the people who ask them, it is the serious questions about business that are of more interest to us. As a business owner, these questions can be real gems when it comes to enhancing your reputation as an authority in your niche.

What sort of questions get asked? Here are a few examples:

• How do I change the language on my HP Laptop?
• I can’t attach my lens to my Canon AE-1; it won’t attach. Why is this?
• Is there any way I can get free counseling?
• What would be a good party for teenagers in the winter that’s not lame?

The questions are not rocket-science type questions, yet by providing a good accurate answer your are creating two situations – one instant, the other delayed. The instant situation – readers will ask ‘who are you’ and follow any links. The second situation? The more often your name appears in answer to these types of questions, the more respect you will earn. This will further enhance your reputation in your niche.

One mistake that most people make is to constantly link to the home page of their web site. Don’t. Link to internal pages that actually have the information related to that question. If you don’t have a page that answers that question, link occasionally to your Facebook Fan Page, or one of your popular social media sites. By linking to Facebook, readers may well follow and ‘like’ your Fan Page.

As a final thought, Yahoo! Answers can be a good place to generate ideas. If you cannot link to a page on your site that answers that question – why not? Time to create one. Yahoo! Answers is popular, it is the perfect place to prove your knowledge, and it can reward you with links, traffic, and authority.

The Internet is by no means a young entity anymore. Over the years sites have come and gone and sites have risen to fame only to drop off again in popularity. Human nature is often such that we follow the crowd. A site becomes popular, we check it out, perhaps even register our details, then never return again. The question you have to ask yourself is whether or not those tracks will come back to hurt your reputation.

Reputation management strategies often focus on what others can do to hurt our business. Have you ever stopped to think about your own past activities? I well remember the stories that abounded many years ago when Hotmail was popular. People thought it clever to use fancy addresses such as ‘sexylegs99′ or ‘hotstud01′. What is worse, they didn’t blink an eye when adding these as contact details on job applications – then wondered why they never received a call to an interview. The problem is, when your young and carefree, these activities are fun and few think of the long term consequences.

Those email addresses don’t exactly identify you so you may wonder how they can effect your reputation. They probably wont, however, they could be indicative of other online activities. For example, did you also have a Myspace presence? Can you remember the login or the password? Can you go back and remove any offending material? Can you even remember the sites you were active on? Those are questions that only you can answer.

We have already seen situations where employers have undertaken simple Google searches on job applicants to see whether or not they have any unsavory footprints on the net. Have you taken the time to check your own past. Do a Google search, and go beyond page one and two – you never know what sort of gems you may unearth!

If you are looking for an ironclad reputation management solution – sorry, there isn’t one. But there are some things that you can do to increase your reputation online and off line. Follow these 6 steps and you’ll do yourself wonders to increase your reputation online fast.

1. Establish your web hub. This is the place people go to find information about you. All of your social media profiles should link from this page, or website. You might have a blog on this site; if not, at least link to your hub from your blog. It is the central place of information about you and your brand online.
2. Blog daily. Your blog may be your hub, but it doesn’t have to be. It should, however, promote your hub like crazy. And you should blog daily. It would hurt also to have multiple blogs. You can start blogs for niches within niches, related niches, hobbies, or anything related to your business that you have something to say about. Blog often to each of your blogs, but blog daily to your main one.
3. Establish your social media presence. This should include a profile at the top social media sites (Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Facebook and Flickr) plus to top two or three niche-related sites for your industry. Don’t just put up a profile and forget about it. Be active on these sites and interact with your audience regularly.
4. Build links. Don’t just build links to your main website. Do that, but also build links to your blog and your social media profiles. The way to do that is with a standard bio that you use for articles, guest blog posts and even speaking engagements. Use your standard bio for everything.
5. Support a cause. Pick something that you believe in and make it your community service project. Promote it, donate to an organization that promotes it and volunteer your time. You’ll be surprised at the pay off that comes from these efforts.
6. Excel at customer service. Produce content, give away your time, be generous, be good at what you do and always respect your customers. If you treat people right then they will migrate to you because they see the value in what you offer.

Reputation management is nothing new. Keep doing the good stuff and let the bad stuff wash away. Don’t do anything you’ll regret later.