How do you manage your online reputation?

Since the blogging and social media boom, information – or misinformation – can almost instantly reach anyone who is connected to the Internet. Journalists’, Investors’, job-seekers’ opinions about your company can shift within a few days, if not hours.

Internet is dreaded for the immediacy with which information can be conveyed. Therefore, many companies fear for their reputation: words spread fast on the web. There is not much you can do to prevent them reaching their audience. A comment posted on a high-ranking blog can make or break a company's reputation.
You might remember situations as “Dell Hell” (unfavourable post from a dissatisfied customer on his personal blog). Or more recently, the online comments to an interview with Dutch KPN CEO Ad Scheepbouwer. KPN Employees were eager to criticize their boss.

Your concern is to “determine if opinions expressed online are favourable to you and positive and help and will aid marketing efforts or are negative and may damage both reputation and sales” says Richard Morochove from PC World.

Here are some basic tools and tips to begin with.

1. Create Google Alerts:

Monitoring your online reputation should begin with tracking negative comments or buzz about yourself, your company or your employees circulating on the web. Suppose that you work for Société Générale. You know that rumours begin to circulate about   your company and you want to evaluate the situation yourself.
Set up an alert  with your company name, choose ‘comprehensive’ for type.

 Google Alert for “Société Générale”

Then you get an overview of what is said about your company and on which sites.

Results for "Société Générale"

For more in-depth information about which specialised blogs or social networks are talking about you, set up a variety of alerts combining their name with your company name. This gives you the possibility to track online comments or buzz more accurately, to prioritize actions and enable a timely response. Simple, but effective. http://technorati.com and www.buzz.com are good examples of sites to track what people say in the blogosphere.

2. Engage in Social Networks:

Being a part of the social media is the best way to navigate into specific or popular networks. This way you can learn what people are saying before it reaches the whole internet community or spills over to other media channels. The goal is to counter any erroneous or negative information. In the case of inaccurate information, react and answer in an appropriate manner in order to re-establish the truth or moderate radical comments. Additionally, having profiles on social media sites like LinkedIn, MySpace, FaceBook, Twitter, gives you the opportunity to position your company the way you want.

3. Use SEO:

Appropriate Search Engine Optimisation activities can aim for the promotion of chosen content and news in order to make that more visible, while making the negative content less so. The majority of search engine users only consider the first search results and often don’t even look at the bottom of the page.

Google heat map

As we can see from the Google Heat Mat above, the top left part of the screen gets the majority of clicks, while the rest is disregarded. Knowing this, move the positive content to the top of search engine results. Creating sub-domains on your website when possible can help as well.

4. Use Online Reputation Specialists:

In addition to the points above, and especially if you don’t have the time for those recommendations, you can use specialists in Consumer-Generated Media measurement, like Nielsen BuzzMetrics (http://nielsenbuzzmetrics.com), Online Identity Restauration (http://www.onlineidentityrestoration.com) or Trackur, (http://www.trackur.com)

Whatever method you choose, consistency is essential to get results. Persistently checking what is said about you to react if needed can enhance your efforts to protect your online reputation. Using an online reputation management firm can help too. But besides cleaning up your online presence, just be sure that you remain proactive in communicating about the positive aspects of your company.