How Pinterest Is Kicking Up A Dust Storm

There’s a new social media site in town. It’s called Pinterest. And in the last month the site has gained 7 million new visitors.

Pinterest is an interesting social media experiment. And it looks like it could become one of the powerhouse websites, especially for women, its largest set of users.

The cool thing about Pinterest is that it is highly graphic. Take a look at its home page and you’ll see all the photos and images, and it isn’t cluttered.

The way it works is you set up your own pinboard. You can have one for your company just like Mashable has. And just like Mashable’s, it can be branded.

Notice how Mashable’s pinboard has the Mashable name in it. That’s great for reputation management and branding. Then, on the left, you can see the big Mashable logo with the website URL underneat. Again, that’s great for branding, but the URL back to the website provides a useful inbound link for SEO purposes.

If you look at the pins that Mashable includes on its pinboard, they’re not all self-promotional. They spend a great deal of time promoting other items around the Web. That’s great stuff. It’s the way that it should be done.

You don’t have to be a rabid self-promoter to be successful in social media generally or at Pinterest in particular. You just have to have a solid strategy for your online content, a strategy that includes promoting others while branding yourself. That’s the best social media strategy in the world, and your company can make that happen.

Google’s Best Reputation Management Tool

Reputation management has become one of the most important tasks for any Internet marketer, particularly an author. Google has a tool that can help webmasters test their reputations online to see if their content is doing what it should. That tool is the Rich Snippet Testing Tool.

So what does it do?

In a word, it looks at a web page on your website, or any website you want to test, and tells you whether or not that web page is using microformats to present your authorship of the page in the best light. Specifically, it will:

• Tell you whether the page is linked adequately to your Google profile.
• Let you know if the page is linked to your social media profiles at Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, StumbleUpon, Quora, and other social networks.
• Show you a preview of your Google snippet for that page should it be returned in a search results page for your author name.
• Give you the extracted rich snippet data from the page.
• And show you what a custom search engine would see if it were to look at your rich snippet data.

That’s a lot of information. More importantly, it’s a lot of useful information.

Rich snippets are very important for authors and other creatives who spend a lot of time creating content in their own names. Even if you employ a ghostwriter to create your content, you are its author. You should test your rich snippet data on a semi-regular basis to ensure that you are making the most of your microformatting opportunities. It not only has reputation management consequences, but it can affect your SEO as well.

Is Tablet Marketing The Next Big Thing?

Remember when everyone went ga-ga over video marketing? The talk of the town was it’s the next thing. Remember?

It happened right after YouTube started to climb sharply in popularity.

Then, remember when mobile marketing was the big thing? When did it happen? Right after everybody and his dog decided that you could Facebook on your phone. Now mobile phones are supposedly smarter and marketers are trying to figure out a way to get into your ear through them.

That’s cool.

Well, it seems that now nearly 20% of consumers have e-books and another 19% have tablets. So it’s time to start on the tablet marketing bandwagon, right?

Hold on before you start mocking me. I’m not being facetious. Not entirely anyway.

What can a tablet do? Play music and other audio files. Broadcast videos. Display e-books. Think any of those could be useful in promoting your business? How about that Internet radio show you wanted to start last year? Or that YouTube video channel? Maybe that e-book you’ve been putting off writing?

Yep, all of those can be marketed to tablet owners. So maybe now is the time to start looking at tablet and e-book marketing.

There are other benefits to promoting you and your business through these media. It also doubles as reputation management. That is, the more you publish and the more you promote yourself in a positive light the bigger and better your reputation will be online and off line.

Don’t just take up tablet marketing because it becomes a fad – it will. Do it because it delivers on the benefits.

Does SEO Trump Branding?

There’s no doubt that SEO is a necessary component to your online marketing efforts. But what about branding? Is it necessary for online marketing? Which is more important?

Let’s take a look at the functions (purposes) for each of these efforts.

Search engine optimization – The purpose for SEO is to get your content to rank in the search engines so that you can increase your website visitor traffic and convert it into sales. That’s obviously an important task, but if all you did was SEO in the way of marketing your content and your website, then you’d be woefully undershooting your target.

Online branding – Online branding has a much wider reach. It can, and should, include SEO. But it should also include your social media initiatives and everything else you do – online and off line.

If you think of online branding as a part of overall reputation management strategy and your overall business strategy, then it is far more important than SEO, which is simply part of your overall marketing strategy. Granted, it’s an important part, but it’s not the only part worth considering.

In terms of online marketing, everything you do is a part of your branding effort. That includes SEO.

Google+ Rolls Out Business Pages

Google+ Pages for Business are finally here. Some of use have been waiting for these for awhile.

If you’re wondering just what a Google+ business page is, think of it as a Facebook page for Google. There are, of course, some subtle differences between Google+ pages and Facebook pages. One such difference is that you must have a Google+ personal account before you can add a page. But that’s a minor hurdle. I recommend that you get a personal account as well.

So what can you do with a Google+ business page?

For one thing, you can post to Google+. If you’re not sure if that’s a benefit or not, consider these points and then make up your mind.

• Google+ is owned by Google, the largest search engine online. While SEO benefits are currently unproven, you can bet that Google will eventually provide greater weight to personal profiles and business pages for brands.
• Increased online reputation management opportunities.
• Better targeted marketing as you can create circles around your different market segments and communicate with each segment more easily.
• Multiple pages possible, which means you can have one for each product or brand you support as well as each location you serve.
• More effective video marketing since YouTube and Google+ are integrated allowing you to share videos more easily.
• Google+ is the fastest growing social media website in history.
• You can schedule hangouts with your clients and partners and communicate for free with them via video right inside Google+

This is just the tip of the iceberg. Google+ is only going to get better. If you haven’t joined yet, I highly recommend that you do and set up your business pages now.

Using Print For Online Reputation Management

There’s a lot to be said for online reputation management. I mean, using articles, blog posts, social media, etc. to management your reputation online. But can you use off line material? Can print publications be used for online reputation management?

Absolutely. But I’m not talking about replacement here. I’m talking about enhancement.

You still want to use traditional online marketing resources to manage your reputation online, but writing articles for print publications, networking at physical events, and writing and publishing a book in print can do wonders for your online reputation as well.

The big thing to keep in mind is using online and off line resources for an integrative approach to marketing. That’s where print comes into play with online reputation management.

When you write articles for print publications, do you add your web address to your bio? Do you let people know where to find you online? You should. And that’s a part of your overall reputation management plan, or should be.

You can do this simple thing every time you engage with an audience off line. Direct them back to where they can find you online. Every time you do that, it helps your online reputation. And that will replicate the more you do it.

Blogger Bloggers Can Now Use The Service With Google+

Since the inception of Google+, Google has been saying that it plans to integrate all of the Google services with the new social networking service Google+. That’s a lot of services.

Google+ started out with Picasa integration. YouTube integration was minimal, but the service has had video support. Slowly, Google is integrating its other services. Recently, they’ve announced that Blogger integration is happening right now.

This is good news for bloggers who use Google’s own blogging platform.

While we’re big components of WordPress uploaded to your own domain name, there’s a pretty good chance that if you’re stuck on Blogger, then this integration will only boost your small business blog’s presence online. Historically, Blogger has not ranked well despite being owned by Google. But this integration could change that.

If it doesn’t, then there are still other reasons to continue using Blogger.

One reason is because it will be easy to share your blog posts through Google+. I also believe that using Blogger will increase your Google profile’s presence in the search engines making Blogger a great reputation management tool. Already, Google+ is causing that to happen. By using your Google+ profile for your Blogger account, that will make your reputation management efforts even better.

5 Things That Are More Important Than SEO

It might seem strange for an SEO company to mention anything that is more important than SEO, but the truth is there are things that are more important. We’ve identified 5 very important things about online marketing that are much more important than SEO.

1. Reputation Management – Without a good reputation, all the SEO in the world is for naught. Good products and services, customer service, and the ability to solve your customer’s needs are the building blocks to good reputation management.
2. Conversion Optimization – Bottom line, if you aren’t closing sales, then nothing else matters. Drive traffic and convert it – by any means possible.
3. Market Research – Successful online marketing begins with market research, and that includes competitive intelligence.
4. Relationships – Business is all about building relationships. Maintain good, solid relations with your prospects and you’ll take care of #1.
5. Targeted Marketing – Who do you serve? The best marketing in the world reaches out to the market you serve and let’s everyone else go.

If you want to build a solid online business, make sure you focus on these 5 key areas. To the degree that you succeed at these and that your search engine optimization efforts support them, you’ll do well online. Forget these and it won’t matter how good you can optimize a web page.

Google+ For Reputation Management

I believe Google+ may very well become the most important reputation management tool you have and I’ll tell you why.

First, if you update your Google+ account on a regular basis – that is, you post to Google+ in the public stream – then your Google profile will rise to the top of the search results for your name (whatever name your Google account is under). Notice that I said “in the public stream.” That’s very important.

With Google+, you have the ability to post only to your circles, which makes distribution of your posts limited only to people within those circles. But those limited posts don’t show up when people look at your Google profile. If that’s all you post, to the outside world it will look like your Google+ account isn’t active. It really doesn’t matter what you post to your public stream, it will be visible to all and it will affect the rank of your Google profile.

Another reason Google+ will become an excellent reputation management tool is because Google is integrating all of its services. You can use Google+, Picasa, Google Docs, Google Reader, and all of the Google services to push your reputation to the forefront of the Google search results.

The more active you are, the higher you rise.

5 Ways To Use A Blog

Blogging for business can be any number of things depending on your business model. I have found a blog to be a great marketing tool. But many businesses use blogs in different ways. Here are 5 ways you can use a blog for your business.

1. Branding – A blog can be a great way to brand yourself. You can use it to communicate important messages about your business periodically so that your customers and potential customers understand your brand better and engage with you on your blog in discussions about your brand.
2. Search engine optimization – Many businesses use their blog for SEO. They target their keywords in blog posts repeatedly until they gain a certain level of search engine traction.
3. Reputation management – A blog can also be a great reputation management tool. Use it to improve your position in the search engines as well as your reputation online.
4. Social media marketing – Many bloggers take their blog into the social media arena and use it for reaching out to others in their niche in a very social way.
5. Customer Service – Other businesses use their blog as a customer service tool, fielding questions about their products and services that they then can use to engage their audience in a conversation.

If you use your blog for any of these purposes, then you are on the right track, but these are not the only ways you can blog. In what ways do you use your company blog?

4 Big Benefits To Social Media

When you think of social media, what do you think about in terms of benefits? Most people are wrapped up in the idea of engagement, and that certainly is a benefit. But is it the only one?

Here are 4 of the most important benefits to using social media starting with audience engagement.

1. Audience engagement – When you participate in social media – whether it be Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, or something else – audience engagement is one of the most important benefits. Done correctly, you can have your audience hang on your every word.
2. Reputation Management – Another benefit is the increase in your social stature. Reputation management can cut both ways so you should watch you Ps and Qs.
3. Link Building - Many social media websites are do-follow, but beyond that even you can build links through social media just by being interesting. Some people will link to your content through their blog if they like what you are doing.
4. Traffic - Finally, traffic. If you don’t have enough traffic to your website, then engage in social media. If you are effective, you’ll see your traffic go up in great numbers.

These are just a few of the benefits to social media marketing, but they are important benefits. If you are ready to take advantage of them, get involved right now.

Get Your HubPages Subdomain

Google Panda has all sorts of websites trying something new. And about every 3-4 months now, Google updates its update and you’ll hear a little murmur ripple through the blogosphere. Well, HubPages is taking a different approach. They’re assigning subdomains.

Assigning is correct, unless you claim your own subdomain by August 10.

This is a great article marketing opportunity for Hubbers. If you’re not currently a Hubber, then you can still get the online reputation management benefits.

The way HubPages works, you can put links in your articles, but your articles better be quality articles and not spam. If your articles are low quality, then your subdomain will be low quality and will likely have low search engine rankings if any at all. Bottom line: If you want your subdomain, and your articles, to rank well, then you’d better write high quality articles. Period.

That’s the way article marketing should be. Your high quality articles will produce links for your web pages, send traffic to your website, and provide you with a strong voice of authority with an equally strong reputation.

Start building your HubPages now. Be diligent in your efforts and you will see a huge increase in your reputation and get the traffic and links you want.

Is Reputation Management A Social Media Metric?

Neil Glassman says it is.

There are two sides to reputation management. There’s the reactive side and the proactive side. Social media can be used for both, but it’s most effective when used proactively.

Reactive reputation management is the practice of using social media, SEO, and other online marketing tools to combat negative information about your company. Most companies that engage in online reputation management are being reactive, but if they had a proactive approach to begin with then the reactive approach might not be necessary.

Why wait until your company’s reputation has come under attack before you start trying to improve your company image? It should be an ongoing thing.

The proactive approach to reputation management is an ongoing strategy of highlighting what is good about your company. Do you support a particular charity? Do you give to local community organizations on a regular basis? Do your products help the environment? These are all social responsibility positives for you and your brand. You can use social media to bring attention to these initiatives at any time in your company’s life.

Online reputation management is not a zero-sum game. Your reputation in the marketplace is based on a number of factors that lead to an aggregate perception of your brand without regard for what your competition is doing. Manage it well and it doesn’t matter what negatives there are – the positives will outweigh them.

Reputation Management The Amazon Way

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’s Reputation Problem

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?

Why Have Your Own YouTube Channel

YouTube presents one of the best online marketing opportunities around. And I’m not just talking about producing an occasional video and uploading it to the site and bookmarking it. I’m talking about producing your own series or regular YouTube show through your own channel.

A YouTube channel is essentially a home page on YouTube where all your videos are posted. But it’s a more organized and strategic method of producing and marketing videos on an ongoing basis than simply throwing up a new video every two or three months. It’s like having your own TV show except that it’s on YouTube instead.

So what are the benefits to having your own YouTube channel? Here are a few off the top of my head:

1. It’s free. It costs nothing to start a YouTube channel.
2. You can drive targeted traffic to your website with every video.
3. If you can consistently produce great video content that entertains and informs your audience, then you can attract a loyal following of viewers on YouTube.
4. You can also monetize your video content on YouTube and turn it into a money-making channel as well.
5. Having a popular YouTube channel is a great reputation management tool.

These are just a few of the benefits to having your own YouTube channel. There are plenty more. I’d encourage you to look into it for yourself.

5 Ways To Make Online Reviews Pay

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.

What’s The State Of Your Reputation Today

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.

Unrelated Threads Could Destroy Reputations – With Consequences

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.

Reputation Management Principles – 6 Steps To Gold

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.

10 Online Reputation Management Tools

Online reputation management has become an essential part of doing business on the Internet. But how do you go about it? What are the important tools that you use to manage your reputation online? Here is a list of 10 reputation management tools that we recommend.

1. Your blog – If you don’t have a blog then I recommend one. The search marketing potential of a single blog outweighs almost everything you’re probably used to.
2. Your website – Your company website is the best reputation management tool you have. Unfortunately, most people never tap into its full potential.
3. Google Alerts – Use Google Alerts – they’re free – to notify you whenever your name or brand are mentioned.
4. Twitter – Twitter is the most important real time tool on the Internet. It’s also a great communication and marketing tool.
5. Facebook – The most visited site online. It’s where your friends are. It’s also where you enemies are. Work it well and it can pay off big.
6. LinkedIn – LinkedIn is a business networking tool that is becoming more and more important every day.
7. Keyword Research Tool – Study your keywords, find new keywords, and learn what people are searching for. Give it to them.
8. Quora – Quora is a question and answer site that allows you to prove yourself a knowledgeable expert in your field.
9. Social Bookmarking – There are hundreds of social bookmarking sites online. You can pick 10 of them and make a solid reputation for yourself by making new friends and sharing with them information about your niche that you find valuable.
10. Your Service – Seriously, it doesn’t matter how good you do other things, if you don’t provide a good service then people will tell their friends about it. Provide a knock out service and let them tell their friends about that.

Whose Reputation Are You Managing?

Reputation management is a type of marketing that can either be handled proactively 24/7 or it can be forgotten until you need it. I don’t recommend the latter course. It’s too important to leave to chance or fate.

But I do believe that everyone is involved in reputation management to some degree. You may not know it, but you are managing someone’s reputation even if not your own. Care to know what I mean?

As it goes, every activity you perform online helps someone. It might even hurt someone. Search engine optimization, social media, pay per click advertising, you name it, all of it is benefiting someone. And if you approach your online marketing initiatives in the wrong way, you could just be benefiting the wrong people.

For instance, let’s say you are chatting it up with some friends on your favorite social network. Someone says something and you retort. Unfortunately, you didn’t think about what you were about to say in time and you make an embarrassing comment. You can’t take it back. Your competition could have just scored a point.

That’s how serious this game of reputation management is. One little slip up could cost you in terms of potential business, mass perception or in other small ways.

You can’t afford to be nonchalant about your reputation. Manage it well and it will help you. Mismanage it and it might haunt you forever.

Google Places Allows Responses To Reviews

Google has announced that businesses with Google Place pages can now respond to reviews about their business if they have a verified account. This is actually good for businesses and can serve as a reputation management tool of the highest order.

Already, if you are listed in Google Places with a link back to your website then you have a much better chance of achieving high rankings for your keywords than if you don’t have a Google Places page. The reviews will further make optimization for your keywords and company brand an important part of doing business online, especially for local businesses.

I share Frank Reed’s concern about responses to reviews on third-party sites:

From what I can gather this response mechanism is for reviews that are done in Google Maps only (I am willing to be wrong here if someone from Google would like to let me know). This would limit the ability for the business owner to truly manage his / her online reputation completely but it is a very good step in the right direction to make the Google Place Page an even more important part of every local business’s online presence.

On the other hand, the reviews are not there necessarily for the benefit of reputation management. Business reviews serve multiple purposes, but generally they are to help consumers get an idea of what to expect from doing business with a company based on what other consumers are saying. Allowing a business to respond to reviews simply gives potential customers more to go on in making a decision.

For instance, a business’s response to a review can tell a consumer whether the business takes feedback from customers seriously. It can also allow the business to provide more information to a particular case so that potential consumers can determine the true value of the complaint (after all, not all negative reviews have equal merit).

So while I share the concern for opportunities in reputation management that Frank Reed mentions, I’m also aware that businesses have that opportunity even without the ability to respond to reviews on third-party sites. Maybe not as much, but it’s there. Still, this is a good move by Google Places.

Can Reputation Management Services Erase Negative Reviews?

An article on BusinessWeek’s website asks if online reputation management services work. It’s a legitimate question and one worth considering. Just what does a reputation management company do and does it work?

First, you need to understand that if someone goes online and makes a negative comment about your business that you can’t make it disappear. Once it is online then it is a permanent record. Period.

Having said that, there are some things you can do to help diminish the impact of negative information about you online. One of the things you can do is try to use search engine optimization to push negative results down further and to increase the exposure of positive information about your company. Honestly, though, that’s not a perfect solution and it’s getting harder and harder to accomplish.

Another thing you can do is respond to information about you that you feel may be unfair to you. This is typically the response of companies that have grown in stature and want to be viewed as reputable.

It’s almost inevitable, once you grow to a certain size then you’ll encounter negative reviews of your company. It used to be that information spread by word of mouth and you had no way to control or monitor it. Now, it quickly makes its way online, which is a benefit to a business owner because you can actually read what people are saying about you and not just hear the rumors. That make it easier to respond to.

Online reputation management is not a cure-all panacea for every negative information you find about yourself. It is part SEO and part PR. But its purpose is to aid you in telling your story in a positive manner.

How To Manage And Enhance Your Reputation With Links

One aspect of link building that rarely gets talked about is online reputation management. Of course, in many ways, the reputation management benefits of link building are ancillary – they aren’t the main goal. But if you are cognizant of the impact that links can have on your reputation then you can influence your reputation online just by adding a few inbound links to your important reputation enhancement web pages.

For instance, let’s take your About page. Your About page likely has information about your professional reputation that you want your site visitors to know. But do you promote it?

Many webmasters spend a lot of time building inbound links to their important landing pages, as they should, but neglect to build links to their Contact page and About page. Instead, they let their internal website links serve as the means of driving traffic to those pages. But you can actually build reputation enhancing links to those pages as well. How?

Here are a few ways you can build inbound links to your reputation enhancement pages and use link building as a reputation management tool:

• Press Releases - When you send out a press release to online press release distribution websites, make sure that you include a link to your About page with important anchor text regarding your name or reputation. You might include a sentence like this in your press release:  “(Your Name) is a recognized expert on guinea pigs.” Let “expert on guinea pigs” be your anchor text.
• Social Networking Profiles - When you link to your website from your social networking profiles, link to your About page. You might say something like, “For more information about raising guinea pigs see (Your Name)’s online bio.” Link “(Your Name)’s online bio” and let it serve as your anchor text.
• Social Bookmarking – Why not just social bookmark your About page at some of the popular social bookmarking sites? Ask your friends and most valued customers to do so as well.
• Like Button – Add a Facebook Like button to your About page.
• Request Links – Request links to your About page. You’d be surprised how many people actually will link to your About page if you ask them to. You might even provide them with some choices of anchor text for their links.
• Blog And Forum Signatures – When you comment on blogs and forums, occasionally link to your About page instead of your home page and other landing pages. You should vary your links anyway. Just be sure to throw your About page into the mix with appropriate reputation enhancing anchor text.

Reputation management is becoming more and more important online. Why not use the activities you are already engaged in to improve your reputation and the perception that others will have of you and your business?

Is Online Reputation Management Necessary?

We’ve heard a lot about online reputation management the last couple of years, but is it really necessary? Is this something that everyone should be concerned about?

The best way to answer this question is to ask another question in turn: Would you think reputation management was important if you suddenly found a group of people making disparaging comments about you, your company and your brand? If you answered that question in the affirmative then you’ve answered the first question as well, however, if you wait until then to start managing your reputation online then you’ll be starting too late.

The time to start managing your online reputation is before you need to. That is, before your reputation is in danger or being attacked.

Many people find out the hard way that reputation management is important. They find information about them that they didn’t create and that they don’t find complimentary. That’s when they want it removed. Sadly, however, you can’t remove it. The best you can do is bury it beneath other information about you that is positive. But how?

That’s a question for another blog post, but suffice it to say that online reputation management is a necessity for almost all businesses and persons. But when should you start? How about now?

Craigslist And Reputation Management

If you weren’t aware that Craigslist could be used for reputation management, allow me to point something out. Craigslist happens to have a very high PageRank and is one of the most trafficked websites on the Internet. So it has a lot of authority.

There are really two reasons why you want to use Craigslist:

1. Perception – Your audience, or at least a segment of it, likely uses Craigslist. If they see ads on Craigslist that promotes your company and/or products then they’ll have a different perception of your company than otherwise. Craigslist says “down to earth,” “not stuffy”. Prove it by using Craigslist and speaking in a language that people can understand. Drop the marketingese.
2. SEO – Believe it or not, ads on Craigslist can be optimized and rank. Use your company name in the title of your ads and you stand a better chance of getting your ad to rank in the search engines. Also, link to your ad from your own web properties. The inbound links will help the ad to rise in the rankings. This can help push negative comments about your company down in the rankings.

When it comes to reputation management, think outside the box. Craigslist is an open door.

Why Online Reputation Management Is Easy

One of the most talked about topics in the last couple of years has been reputation management. But most people intuitively assumes it means online reputation management. Not necessarily.

Anyone who has been in business for long knows that reputation management is just as important off line as it is online, but few people realize that it’s much more difficult to manage off line. Joe Hall communicates this very well in his blog post at Marketing Pilgrim.

I like his political analogy. It’s also true in business, though few people do it intentionally to harm a business’s reputation.

Here’s how it works, the whisper campaign. Someone tries a new restaurant in town and they didn’t like the salad. They tell their friends they didn’t like the restaurant. Now the friends go and tell their friends that the restaurant has a lousy salad. Pretty soon, everyone in town is talking about how lousy the salad is just because one guy didn’t like it.

That’s the simple version. Reality is much more complicated, but this is what company’s face off line. You may never know which customer didn’t like your salad, but you’ll know if you’ve only sold one of them. And the customer paid cash. So you can’t even track him down. Bummer.

But in all seriousness, if this conversation took place online then you’d know who said it and when. Even if the person used an anonymous name or fake name, at least there’d be a record of where it was and when. For instance, some user named Evil Twin tweeted it at 12:01 New Year’s Eve. You can always point to that tweet in your reputation management responses and follow any rumors that spread from it.

Online reputation management is easier than off line reputation management because there’s a record. And if you can follow the record, crafting responses is a whole lot easier.

Can Twitter Be Used For Reputation Management?

We’ve discussed online reputation management a few times on this blog. But we haven’t really made a huge connection between Twitter and reputation management. Is there a connection? Can Twitter be used as a reputation management tool?

As a matter of fact, it can. And it really should be. I wouldn’t leave it out.

Consider these facts about Twitter:

• It’s a great way to connect with hundreds or thousands of people simultaneously
• Attracting followers on Twitter means that people are in interested in YOU, in what YOU have to say and how YOU say it
• Twitter messages are now being indexed in real time by all the major search engines
• Twitter is great for driving new traffic to your blog or website
• If not already taken, your name as a Twitter profile could end up being a top 10 result on Google (that’s great reputation management)

Reputation management is a multi-channel proposition. Make Twitter one of your channels. It is one of the best online reputation management tools to show up in years.

One Google Tool That Is Perfect For Reputation Management

No reputation management campaign is complete without Google, particularly Google Profiles.

So what is Google Profiles? In a word, it’s your hub on the Google index. Whenever someone Google’s your name they’ll be presented with your profile at the bottom of the search results for your name – along with the profiles of anyone who shares your name. So why is it such a great tool? It isn’t just because it shows up on the SERP for your personal name.

There’s more to Google Profiles than simply listing your name and showing your latest passport photo. You can also include the links to all the places online where you can be found. You can link to your Facebook profile, YouTube channel, your Twitter feed, all of your websites and any place else online where you are likely to be found. If it’s important and it’s about you then you can link to it. That’s what makes Google Profiles such a great reputation management tool.

If you aren’t using Google Profiles right now for reputation management then I highly recommend that you do.

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