Reebok’s reputation as an earnest athletic brand that could make people jump and run faster was all intact until the company introduced its toning shoe ‘EasyTone and RunTone’. The product claimed to burn that extra fat and get you that Jessica Alba kind booty. Well this was enough to tempt people to buy and fine tune their shape.

But it seems like the Federal Trade Commission did not agree with Reebok and charged the company for misleading advertising. It further slapped a fine of $25 million as settlement to resolve charges regarding their toning shoes. Director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, Mr. David Vladek, said in a news conference that the company’s claims —

that they strengthen and tone muscles better than other shoes” — were not backed up by sufficient evidence.

Though Reebok has agreed to pay that $25 million settlement “to resolve charges’, this incident has taken the toning shoe market on to a false start, and possibly on to a phase-out. Now an important question remains…what should Reebok be doing? I think the company should be worried about how it deals with this keeping in mind the reputation and loyalty the brand has among its customers.

Faith in companies is trembling as of now, and this will not help. Reebok hasn’t rebutted the claim, so if they are still confident, then they need to reassure customers that the brand will bring in more products in this line or move-on to other lines while assuring that EasyTone and RunTone has undergone all the quality measures just like any of their other products.

Who’d have thought that getting Power to the People would end up so expensive? The general public is currently up in arms over news that gas and electricity suppliers are set to increase their prices by up to 20% as of August of this year. And though this has become a political hotspot and a point of contention between the Labour and Conservative parties, more people are focused on the effects this could have on the consumers themselves.

Market experts at Appco Group UK have observed that the rates at which energy prices are set to hike could result in 1 in 5 people finding themselves in ‘fuel poverty’ – spending 10% or more of their income on utilities. Power suppliers however maintain that the increase in costs is reflective of current global energy costs. And, with a greater emphasis being placed on renewable energy sources (which despite advances in the technologies are still more expensive) it looks like a trend that’s set to continue for the forseeable future at least.

Bill-payers currently feel trapped. While not all the gas and electricity suppliers have announced price hikes yet, the biggest names have all suggested that they’re not in a position to avoid them, either. People will want to ensure they’re getting the best deals, but with the industry currently as indecisive as it is – it’s harder to know where to look. People might not be keen to leave one supplier in favour of another for fear that the grass might not stay greener for long enough to make the change worthwhile.

Companies will need to keep a competitive edge and place greater focus on customer relations if they hope to save face in lieu of pending price changes. Sales representatives and customer services will need to be tentative to a now-weary consumer base and have a greater awareness both of what they’re offering and how it’s likely to be received. Now more than ever there shall be an emphasis on building rapport with customer with face to face time being the order of the day. Appco Group UK say the best advice to consumers at the moment would be to explore options fully and take up any offers of information to help you make the best financial decisions for your household.

The widespread outage of the absolutely necessary Skype internet communicator that impacted most Windows users today could not have come at a worse time for Microsoft as the bloggers and tweeters of the world rose up to blame Microsoft rather than skype programmers. What is it with tech people that they so frequently hate Microsoft above all other technology companies. Why does MS have such a damaged and unloved reputation for messing things up? 

The problem is sort of interesting as a fix for it seems to require computer users to delve deep into their  PCs and then delete a file. I can do that but every one of my colleagues has really struggled and given up perplexed. Curiously, part of the problem stems from the way that recent versions of Windows do not show these more recondite directories like AppData unless you know how to reveal them.

Microsoft’s reputation for being arrogant and for failing to deliver the goods outside their core constituency has not been addressed by the senior executives of the company over the past 5 years. Their well documented mis-steps with their Internet strategy and the seeming lack of real innovation in the product line-up remains a real reputation problem. You can measure it by the lack of interest or indeed fear of the company and their decisions. Once upon a time, technology companies watched anxiously the pathway of the company. Today, analysts are more focused on Apple, Google and Facebook as the arbiters of future technology directions.

My thought is that Microsoft needs to pivot and start working outside of the Windows box. It needs to demonstrate that it can produce a new platform that operates in a new way. They need to dazzle us and get the adaopters back on board.

HP looks all set to botch the launch of Touchpad tablet by over-promising. Never did a company need to get real quicker!

There are three ways to promote technology products: the Apple way, the Google Way and the Microsoft Way. When it comes to software you can either use Microsoft’s traditional technique of warning consumers that they will release something awesome and so hold off purchasing anybody else’s software meantime. The Apple way is to keep shtumm about your products and then announce and release them on the same day to fanfare; a technique that is very effective when your products are as good as Apple’s. The Google way is to release a beta product which is not really a launch at all and then let it take off through word of mouth.

Hewlett Packard has announced that it will be releasing a new tablet computer later in the year called the Touchpad. So far so good, but they have also decided to up the ante by pre-announcing that it “will be better than number one. We call it number one plus”. These were the words of Eric Cador (who none of us has ever heard of) in Cannes.  This is Microsoft marketing with a vengeance!

Technology companies have struggled to match Apple’s iPad with products of their own. Worse there will be five operating systems by the end of the year as the new Touchpad will not use Android (which you have heard of) or iOS which you have heard of, or Blackberry (which you have heard of) or Windows 7 (which you have also heard of) but a new operating system called WebOS which you will not have seen or heard of.

So lets rethink the HP strategy:

1. Get it to market NOW. Talking about a product which is not released doesn’t cut it anymore.
2. Shut it! You think we believe your number one plus nonsense. That somehow one of the world’s most boring companies is about to become better than Apple at user experience and technology form factor. HP may have become the world’s number one PC manufacturer, but let’s not kid ourselves, it is not on the back of innovation or excitement. These are shopping mall PCs for the masses that offer nothing really new.
3. HP may believe internally that they have a reputation for innovation and for being innovative, but that is long gone in the minds of consumers.
4. Just who are you anyways? Who is HP? What does it stand for? Who is Eric Cador? Is he their evangelist or some amazing crazy guy who really knows this stuff? Or is he a senior member of middle management who wears a suit and manages processes. HP needs to get personal and needs to get human so that we can relate to them.
5. Give your products a proper name: Touchpad sounds like an Apple product! Now HP may think they can steal share using this derived name but it reveals a lack of confidence in their ability to market something really different and to stand out. All it does is emphasise that Apple shapes this market.

Consumers want companies to speak and behave authentically. Crass Speak like “number one plus” means nothing to the consumer. It is fine to use these expressions if they are part of a change exercise internally, but dont foist them on us, thankyou!

Yesterday we did a piece on the Top Ten Reputation Management Tips, detailing 10 things you really should be doing to preserve your own/brand name on t’internet. And, while we freely admit that the list wasn’t exhaustive, there are also some things which – equally as importantly – you should NOT be doing. Whilst amicable that you should wish to fix any issues that may arise, within you is the potential to make things a whole lot worse, too.

The following are examples of the top 10 things not to do to manage your own reputation. When they say the road to ruin is paved with good intentions, they’re talking about this list:

1/ Don’t Engage In Bad Business Practices

Yeah, like, duh. You shouldn’t even need to be reminded of this (and most of you don’t), but the quickest way of landing yourself in hot bother is by making bad ethical business choices. But it’s not just your archetype evil business tycoon that’s prone to doing this, it’s pretty much anyone that runs a business. The economy is utter trash at the moment and making cuts is necessary for a lot of people, but you need to be careful what you’re making cuts to. If you’re cutting corners on normal business procedures, customer service, customer aftercare (for example) – it will reflect reflect badly on you and it will get out. The safest bet you can make is that nothing you do is guaranteed to stay private, or behind closed doors, and that for every irate customer or business partner it’s a potential bad story appearing on the internet. Just think “Should this get out, how would this reflect on me/the company?” and you’ll make far fewer bad judgement calls.

2/ Don’t Rush To Admit You Are Wrong

Seems a bit of a u-turn on that last one, doesn’t it? Well, no, not really. We’re not suggesting that you intentionally hide mistakes, mishaps or unfortunate coincidences, but rushing an apology doesn’t always help either. If something happens and you’re perceived to be at fault, showing a bit of humility and holding your hands up might go a way towards clearing your conscience. But that’s about all the benefit it’ll have, as admitting liability publicly is the only thing anyone’s going to hear. Sure, you might have a solution – you may have already sorted the situation out – but the minute you say “Yeah, our bad”, the only thing you’ll hear about is that you/your company has admitted complacency. And regardless of what the problem was, or how great you were at rectifying the situation, the headlines will all read “[Company Name] Admits Fault”. IF something happens, don’t feel like you have to be brutally honest and hope people will respect you for it. Sort the problem, and issue holding statements (i.e. “We are aware of the issue and are working towards resolving it. We will be issuing a full statement in due course.”) until you can confidently say that the issue is behind you. At which point, acknowledge the existence of the issue, explain what the issue was, how you fixed it, and what provisions are in place to ensure it doesn’t happen again.

3/ Don’t Ignore Misdirected Negative Content

“He aint talkin’ about me” logic doesn’t work. Not when it comes to businesses, and not when it comes to preserving your reputation. It’s all well and good safeguarding against your brand/company name receiving negative attention and taking measures, but is that enough? Well, say you ran a company called Big Mike’s Tyres and had a solid reputation. Congratulations. Unfortunately, a few streets away some guy is running a company called Big Mike’s Tiles and, well… his reputation isn’t as good. In fact, he’s pretty much a cowboy; he rips people off and does a terrible job installing new tiles. So naturally, a lot of people take to the internet to complain about him. But, because of keyword similarities, his bad press is appearing on searches for your company. And, if anyone sees a story saying “Big Mike Ripped Me Off!”, you think that each of them are going to take the time to distinguish between different companies? It’s also not completely beyond the realms of possibility that somebody’s going to see the article about Big Mike ripping people off, assume it’s talking about you, and write their own piece criticizing your company. I hate the use of clichés, but don’t let yourself be put in the position of ‘guilty by association’.

4/ Don’t Threaten Legal Action

Speaking of clichés, I also strongly dislike the “exception to every rule” concept. There are undoubtedly going to be exceptions to this one, but you should at least know what you’re getting yourself into. There’s ultimately no definitive answer to the prevention of negative content arising, but there are certainly rules about how you should conduct yourself when it does. One of the biggest mistakes you can make is threatening legal action against authors/publications out of anger. What they’re saying might well be defamation, it might be inaccurate, it might be a whole lot of things that make you look bad, but you can’t get angry about it. Or, at least not outwardly so. You might even have legal grounds  to have it removed, but have you consulted legal counsel? If there are legal implications, leave it to the solicitors to sort. That’s what they’re paid to do. Once you threaten legal action, you make it a far bigger story. Bigger stories attract more attention, and not just from readers. Once a topic becomes popularized, everyone will want a piece, and so instead of one piece of negative content, you’ve got ten people writing about the original story with the extra bit about your ill-advised response. It used to be a concern that when a story got out, people would hear about it. Now though, you need to be far more concerned with who writes about it. Don’t give them the ammunition they need to make their story any better.

5/ Don’t Try To ‘Pay-Off’ Bloggers

Generally speaking, Bloggers write about whatever they want. A lot of amateur writers also feel that in order to maintain a ‘cutting edge’ to their work, they can only do so by being overly and often cynically critical of others. So yeah, you might at one stage find yourself at the receiving end of a good tongue-lashing, compliments of RandomBlogger569. His article is highly critical, unfairly bias and at points is blatant fabrication. How dare he?! Right, what can you do? Well, as established above – threatening legal action is out. What about trying to pay him off? This guy writes blogs as a hobby, and using his words to try and get attention and is rambling on hoping to cause a scene. How much bigger do you think the ‘scene’ is going to be once he’s written a follow-up post about the guy he wrote about trying to bribe him to remove his content? The best advice is not to respond (rather than fan the flames) and take the usual RM steps to ensure it doesn’t get the attention it deserves.

6/ Don’t Argue On Review Sites

There are review sites all over the internet covering practically every subject under the sun (and some above it too). This is the by-product of Web 2.0 and the User Generated Content generation. This is mainly because people have found they can make a lot of money off of hosting a platform for people to share their experiences/opinions. It requires very little effort, as people will now actively seek out a website they can share their thoughts on; and the more people who share their thoughts, the more people will look to the site as a point of reference. And, with that kind of traffic, comes advertising revenue. So these sites are out to make money and they don’t care who is made to look bad in the process. As such, there might come a time when people take to one (or many) of these sites to write about you. Which, you know, if you’re perfect in every possible way, is most likely to be positive content (though still not guaranteed). Sometimes though, people just want to rant. Let them rant – they’re doing what they think they need to do to feel better. If you start replying in an attempt to refute what’s being said, you’ll look petty. It doesn’t matter if you’re right or not, there can be no good from arguing with somebody on the internet. Under any circumstances. It will look unprofessional, it’ll grant greater credence to what’s being said and you’ll make a bigger thing out of it than it needs to be.

7/ Don’t Post On 3rd Party Forums

A successful politician will, when questioned, often ignore the premise of a question altogether and respond with an answer that sounds like it’s answering, but is actually deflecting on to different matters entirely. They do this not just to be awkward, but because they know that if they answer the question directly, they’re acknowledging that the question has a degree of validity. If negative content starts appearing for searches on your name/company/products in the form of forums, the worst thing you can do is respond to it. For one, it’ll just prolong the story. If you’re taking the proper Reputation Management measures, the story will disappear soon enough, but not if you answer/get caught up in active discussions. For every time you issue a response, you’ll get (at least) one response which counters everything you’ve just said. Your choices then are to continue arguing (with everyone) which is going to make you look just as unprofessional as getting into debates on review sites, or stop posting. At which point, they’ll have won the argument, you’ll have lost and you’ll look worse for it. It’s like thinking “water puts out fires, water is a liquid; paraffin is liquid, I’ll use paraffin to put out this fire”. Yeah, good luck with that.

8/ Don’t Fret Over Neutral Content

Wouldn’t it be nice if everything everyone said about each other was nice, supportive and gratifying? Well, besides from being boring, it just wouldn’t make an awful lot of sense. Nothing and nobody is perfect, and so if you wangle S.E.O. (Search Engine Optimization) to reflect nothing but positive content, it might look artificial and suspicious. Sure, get rid of negative content, but what about all the pieces that are ultimately indifferent? Some people are so paranoid about looking good that they’ll try and manipulate everything that doesn’t imply butter wouldn’t melt in their mouth away from the top rankings in the likes of Google and Yahoo. There are those that are of the mindset that if something isn’t singing their praises, it’s making them look bad. This is crazy. Not only does neutral content (or ‘Swiss Content’) make related searches pertaining to your name/company look more natural, but if it’s ranking high it’s helping to push the negative content down too. Leave it alone.

9/ Don’t Post Compromising Pictures

We said yesterday that it’s good to share pictures. And, while we don’t like blowing our own trumpets, we were right. Sharing pictures will at time help put a face to a name, make people feel a closer, a more human connection to your business. That’s great, you’re human too after all. You lead a life outside of work, just like your customers. You socialize, you have parties, you… Oh, wait! Don’t you still have those pictures from the Thanksgiving  party you had after-hours at the office last year? That was such a good party! Remember when Rodney from Accounts had a few too many to drink and tripped over the carpet and landed face first into Deborah? How you all laughed! Wouldn’t people think you were great people if you showed them you were just like them? No. Rightfully or not, when people give their custom to a company, they hold them to higher, professional moral standards. It’s due to a need for trust, and they need to trust that you’re being professional at all times and they can rely on you to deliver the goods/service they expect. If you show them any pictures which cast doubt over that trust, or cast any aspersions over the professional integrity of your business, they’ll likely not give you their custom/take their money elsewhere. And this is the internet, there’s nothing people like more than a potential scandal.

10/ Don’t Contribute To Wikipedia

Last on this list, but often the top of Google searches. A lot of people assume that if they can make a Wikipedia page, or add to a Wikipedia page, that’ll be a high-ranking page for related searches. This almost always backfires. First of all, it’s difficult to create a Wikipedia entry dedicated to a company or business that’ll pass the requirements to feature in the online encyclopedia. Most pages get removed pretty quickly anyway, making any effort to write a piece a waste of time. But then, we’re forgetting the main point of Wikipedia. It’s the ultimate UGC website. It’s comprised almost entirely of user-generated content as, the ‘beauty’ of it is that literally anyone can edit it. An email and password later, and any Tom, Dick or Harry could edit what you’ve written. You could have said the nicest, brightest thing about your company and an 11-year-old could edit the article, and add the story (or cited references to the story) you’ve been trying to cover up in the first place. And all of a sudden, there it is – at the top of Google results page. And we can guarantee you – as hard as it is to bury random bloggers or news columnists, getting rid of Wikipedia entries is infinitely more difficult.

Again, this list is probably not the be-all and end-all of everything-you-could-possibly-do-to-shoot-yourself-in-the-foot, but it’s a good start. The trick is just to keep in mind “in what way is this likely to backfire?” and a bit of common sense should keep you on the straight and narrow. Sure, doing any of the above would certainly be considered a mistake but not an unrecoverable one. If you have any issues and aren’t sure how to proceed, get in touch with us – as ever, details are on the home page.

Ok, here should be a comprehensive guide to managing your own online reputation and the things you SHOULD be doing to preserve your own/brand name. If you’re here, you’ve already shown an interest in making sure you’re doing what you can to keep your head above the proverbial current of the internet. Or you’ve found yourself in an unpleasant situation and are facing unwarranted negative press/publicity and are seeking ways to rectify your situation.

The following list assumes that you are aware of what the internet is, how to work a search engine and that you have your own webpage. You know, the basics. Here’s our Top 10 Reputation Management Tips:

1/ Structure Your Website Around Keywords

Fairly obvious for some, but you’d be surprised how many companies fail to structure their websites for SEO  (Search Engine Optimization) purposes. You need to imagine what people would be searching for when they’re looking for your specific business (and other words relevant to your business type and/or location) and tailor your site to focus on these words. SEO is a big market and it can take months to pick up a healthy proportion of the tricks of the trade, but the least you can do is name your pages aptly – i.e. no ‘Page 1′, ‘Page 2′ or ‘Page 3′ or ‘Untitled Page’ extensions. Having a url that reads http://www.yourcompanyname.com/productname.html for example will ensure that at the very least your page will rank highly in search engines for specific searches pertaining to your company/the products you sell.

2/ Employ Proper Writers

There is very little that’s more off-putting to a reader than poorly written content on websites. It doesn’t matter how good your product is, or how interesting the subject material is meant to be – if it isn’t written properly people will not only not want to read it, but will think less of you for it. There are different ways of bringing somebody onboard to maintain a high level of quality. You can bring on dedicated Content Writers who are typically full-time staff (on temporary or permanent contracts) whose job it is to specifically generate new content from scratch to put on your website(s). Content Editors are similar, but their job is focused more on revising existing material. Then you have Copywriters whose job is to write (/generate content) about a topic/product in a way that ‘advertises’ the material at hand. You don’t have to take on a writer full-time though if the project is small enough, as a lot of writers will do freelance jobs too. It’s usually advisable to have somebody on the company payroll to handle any potentially sensitive subjects though!

3/ Handle The Social Networking/Media Scene

Unfortunately social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter have now been around so long that you can no longer pass them off as ‘New Technologies’ (or a form of ‘witchcraft’). Facebook especially, whilst not the original social networking medium on the internet, now has over 500 million users worldwide. In fact, that’s how many users they had before they made a film about the website. That’s right, the website is so popular they made a film about it. So you can bet your hind legs people use it. And more importantly, they expect you to use it too. We’ve covered on this website previously the importance of managing your presence on social networks, so I’ll make this as brief as possible. Even if you don’t feel you have time to commit to running a social networking site alongside any other official business websites you have, you still need to have a profile people can find. If you don’t have control over a social networking page pertaining to your company/brand name, who does? There’s nothing stopping anyone else setting up a page with your name on it and making a mockery of your business, so don’t give them the opportunity. It’ll take less than 15 minutes to set up a page even for the most technologically shy out there.

4/ Ensure You Are Sharing (Pre-Approved) Photos/Images

This one often gets overlooked even by the biggest companies/establishments. In the era of Web 2.0 and UGC (User Generated Content), everyone is a web publicist. And everyone wants pictures. Of everything. Even if it’s just for research, people will use search engines to look not just for websites, but images and pictures related to their keyword-based searches. So if somebody wants to search for, say, Oatmeal-Powered Motorbikes, and your company sells them; when they search for images of Oatmeal-Powered Motorbikes it should be YOUR Oatmeal-Powered Motorbikes they see. Image searches will display pictures relating to the search, and provide details of the image and provide automatic links back to your website. Also, you might want to have profile pages for key members of staff who might be the subject of User Searches – it helps with SEO and having official pictures of staff makes it less likely for searches returning results irrelevant or compromising pictures.

5) Addressing The World of the Blogs

People like to feel noticed. They like to feel appreciated, like they’re being kept in the loop and respected enough to be addressed directly. A blog can be a great way of presenting yourself to your market in the most professional manner possible. This can be done in the form of a personal blog from a company director, or a less personal company blog detailing business related updates (amongst other forms of blogs). Not only are you creating another website relating to your business that can rank in search engines results (potentially increasing traffic to your site too), but you can use them to relegate potential negative/rival content too. If you’ve got a good grasp on the internet goings-on, you might want to speak to existing ‘bloggers’ about doing pieces on your business. We’ll cover this later on in the week in more detail, so stay tuned for that – it’s not to be approached casually as it could backfire!

6/ Documenting Interviews / Podcasts

Another way of getting more positive content out there is by releasing interviews and podcasts from prominent members of your business. Interviews don’t have to be live question and answer sessions, but simply addressing a list of the most Frequently Asked Questions in a new and refreshing way. With the likes of iTunes and YouTube readily available to host videos, you can again give people content over multiple platforms to cover your bases. Don’t throw together a basic picture-based slideshow made from Windows Live Movie Maker or something pants like that, as making feeble efforts at videos makes you look ‘out-of-touch’ with the internet and will do more harm than good. But video diaries are great, and people can ‘subscribe’ to new content coming out of YouTube (and various other) accounts, and the more you do the more attention you will attract. Just, don’t go saying anything you’ll end up regretting – get your content reviewed by people who aren’t just going to blow sunshine up your *** prior to releasing anything.

7/ Set Up Your Own Review Sites

One of the things the era of user generated content sites have spawned is the concept of review sites. These are pretty self-explanatory; people go to these sites to either say lots of nice things about you, or it gives them a chance to moan and display their dissatisfaction with their experiences with you. Let’s face it, nobody’s perfect and you can’t please everyone (without going out of business), so there are going to be people who feel aggrieved with your business and service. If you’re having issues (or wish to prevent potential issues from arising) you might want to consider setting up your own, branded reviews site. If done right, it will rank in search engine results higher than the defamatory content and is another opportunity to show the internet all the best parts of your business. It’s best not to ‘fake’ positive reviews (or post false content anywhere online in general), but asking customers to send you feedback and being a bit selective over the submissions that make the final cut is OK.

8/ Press Releases

This is a very good way of getting high-ranking positive content out into the world of t’internet. While you have your own website(s), and now Social Networking Profiles, YouTube/iTunes channels and Official Blogs, you’re going a long way towards dominating the first page of search results pertaining to those ‘keywords’ we discussed earlier. With ‘Press Releases’, you can put official pre-approved content on 3rd-party websites too (ones that don’t belong to you!). This is a good alternative to Blogging if you don’t have the time to do both, as it offers a one-time official statement/story about your company and – here’s the important part – you get to write it (or at least have copy approval). It usually costs for this service for a good press release site, but is ultimately worth it. You also don’t want a bad/poorly performing site to host your content (counter-intuitive, right?) as it doesn’t help you in the likes of Google rankings. But yeah, go nuts. Throw in some pictures, some “official company quotes”, write it in third person – you get a lot of freedom to play around with formatting but one of the key aspects is that it has to be interesting enough to read, so make sure it’s something worth writing about. Words for the sake of words wont add any value to anything.

9/ Own Your Brand Name

Again, this might sound like stating the obvious, but there’s actually a bit more to it than you might think. One thing you really need to do is make sure that you control basic derivatives of your primary domain name. For instance, if I were to have www.kenisgreat.com (which I don’t, but, well – maybe one day), I’d also be sure to have www.kenisgreat.co.uk too. If somebody else were to register the .co.uk derivative, I’d have absolutely no control over the content. Which wouldn’t be as bad if it were being run by somebody else also called Ken, and we were competing for popularity, but what if it wasn’t? What if it was being run by somebody called… Dave… and Dave specifically wanted to make a website dedicated to the absurd implication that Ken isn’t great? This is perhaps one of the most important things you should have control over, as people will regularly bypass search engines if they’re familiar with your brand name. Users can type in web addresses speculatively, expecting to find information pertaining to your brand. And if they don’t find you, they might then go to a search engine to look for you. Or, if they find something they don’t like, they might not seek your business at all. You don’t have to have different websites for different domain names (which can actually be counter-productive for SEO purposes), and in fact the more URLs (and references to the different URLs) you have pointing to the same webpage will improve its performance and site traffic. Visit a domain registration website for the different domain extensions available. You don’t need them ALL, but a healthy selection of the most common is advisable. Also worth considering are derivatives of the brand/company name itself. So www.brandname.com might become www.thebrandname.com or www.brandnameuk.com – it’s up to you. You could even register www.brandnamesucks.com – just incase some other joker decides they want to.

10/ Watching Out For Negative Content

Perhaps the most important part of Reputation Management is being able to respond quickly and decisively to negative content as it arises. And it will, there’s no getting away from it – this is the internet; freedom of speech and such. Not knowing if somebody is trash-talking you is the biggest mistake you can make though, as defamatory stories (true or otherwise) about you only need so much attention before the seeds of doubt are planted and start to take root. Obviously, you can’t spend all day watching the entire internet for people posting compromising material. That’s crazy. No person can be reasonably expected to do that. Which is why there’s software out there that’s been designed to do it for you. You can create ‘Google Alerts’ which basically performs continuous searches for specified search terms and returns new results. You can choose how often to get updated, or what time of content you get updated with, and choose where these results are sent to. This would include having them sent to an email address that’s connected to a smartphone device, so you can keep up to date, on the move, all around the clock. If you were so inclined, that is. You might also want to look into setting up RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds – similar system, but less Googlefied (a real word, honest). This basically takes feeds from all over the internet; monitoring the likes of blog posts, news entries, audio and video and relaying the information in a uniform format.

There’s a lot you can do to manage your own online reputation, and the above list is by no means exhaustive. Also, the above advice only covers the things you can/should do, and there’s a lot you should specifically stay clear of too. We’ll shortly be doing a follow-up post to this covering the Top Ten Don’ts of Reputation Management which you should also probably take note of. Meanwhile, if there’s anything you need help with or would like to discuss this topic further, check out the reputationmanagementfor.com homepage. We’ve been doing this a while and we’ve gotten pretty good at it!

There is a saying that even bad publicity is good publicity, but that may work for Hollywood and that is not the case here. Reputation Management For.com conducted a study and learned that corporate crisis might very much result in online negative publicity, lowering the repute of the company. It was further found that most companies still tend to follow public relations and don’t see the value in ORM (online reputation management) until they get bonked in the head with devastating bad publicity. It’s in such situations that the effect of public relations becomes invaluable.

The study was an experimental test to see how corporate companies behave to regain their battered image. Public relations online is different than ORM, whilst both accomplish a similar purpose. But the fact remains that both include different factors. Public relations attempts to curb the message you represent to your audience. It’s a kind of technique about what you want to make others think of you and your business, more associated to quality control catastrophes.

ORM (Online reputation management) on the other hand is a set of methodologies that helps remove online negative publicity while monitoring any mention of your company. Regularly monitoring comments mentioned in your name will allow you to react and control the subject matter.

An unexpected finding in our study showed that most companies responded the least to bad publicity; surprisingly we found that an inappropriate reaction by a “bad” company resulted in an increase in respect for the firm, whereas the same reaction by a “good” company led to lose respect.

Negative publicity, if it stays for long, will be hard to shake off. By applying a fully integrated Reputation Management program for a strong positive internet presence, any brand or business firm can bring up awareness levels and necessarily raise sales.

Reputation Management For.com is an integrated RM company based in the UK. For more information, please visit our website for online reputation management

From restaurants to hotels there are reviews for just about everything and doctors are no exception. There are millions of critics eager to post their last night experience about a chicken dish or grumble about a lethargic service and they will find a place to post them.  Similarly websites like ratemd.com or angislist.com is a place where users post comments about their physicians. A Doctor will have hundreds of happy patients, but it only takes one bad review to trash a Doctor’s online reputation.

These review websites are good tool for patients searching the best care, and brings in more business to doctors. But a bad review can mean empty waiting room. To avoid getting beaten online, doctors sometimes make their patient sign legal agreements or gag orders asking them not to post any comments online. These doctors say they have no option due to privacy policy they are forced to keep silent when patient bad mouth them.

Reputation Management For.com realizes it’s a matter of survival and how important a doctor’s reputation is. A survey undertaken in Texas where patients were asked ‘who do you trust the most when it comes to health hosting- Doctors, Politicians, Media, or health policy experts’ and well the answer was doctors.

It’s widely accepted that 70 percent of today’s users search for your name on Google before they decide to do business with you. Obviously when it comes to deal with medical professionals, prospective patients will tend to check a doctor’s online reputation and testimonial by just typing their name. A clean online reputation helps in obtaining new patients and maintaining trust with existing patients.

So the best way to balance the doctor’s right to fair evaluation and patient’s right to quality health care is to have a third-party review those comments. This will protect the rights of a doctor from an unfair online trial. Doctors may not agree on how to reform health system, but the bottom line is that patients trust their doctors and want to hear what they have to say.

Being plagued by Google auto-suggesting ‘scam’ with your name and directing people to a whole page of scam suggestions is a common problem for most. Well, this latest Google tweak could be the end to all your scam woes.

Google has stopped suggesting “scam” in suggestions and made life much easier for reputation  managers. This is clearly huge for a company or a brand which has had to suffer monetarily and otherwise with the word ‘scam’ being suggested by Google.

Blogs like, Gr8 Example Of Google Drop Drown Suggesting Scam for Scam’s Sake, have been highlighting the problems companies had to endure both in reputation and in terms of enormous loss of revenue.

An active participation in the Google support forum under the head - Remove Google Suggest Keyword “scam” from my company name, has also been discussing Google scam suggestion issues. Often scam was being suggested when there weren’t many scam results in SERPs.

From today when you make searches,  you will have to type the word “scam” and then you will get a clean page of suggestion even with Google Instant on and then press Enter to actually get to the results. No scam suggestions no more!

Surely a blow for review sites like Scam.com who have wielded enormous power over hapless companies with comments and postings in their forums which come up being auto-suggested by Google.

Clearly a much-needed reprieve for those who have been hit by scam posts by disgruntled employees, competitors, pranksters and the like.

Scam is not fully gone either: Google still suggests scam in related searches at the bottom of the results pages.

To rank first on major search engines is an objective most internet marketers and websites look for. Most of the companies optimize their websites to get on that first page of search engine results to invite visitors to their website. But is there anything other than SEO to get there?

Well, there are the Social Networking sites, and there’s enough evidence that SNS influences search engines. What happens, for example, when you have a facebook site with 10,000 fans and as many ‘likes’? Do they show up high on search engines?

There’s no doubt that Google closely monitors social media data with real-time Twitter updates integrated into searches. Now how they use it is a different story and it’s very hard to say because strong social media popularity usually converts high ranking on search engines. It’s a clear indication that Google uses it to determine what a trusted source is and this was something they had mentioned long time back.

Brand value of a domain was a ranking factor

It means you can probably improve your ranking in Google by promoting your site on social networks.

Social media is here to stay, because it is one of the most striking things to happen in a “free” market. All you invest is time. So take time to listen what people have to say about your business. If you are one of those curious types, make use of Google Alerts, YackTrack, Social Mention BackType and Trackur.

The year 2011 will be all about social media and the influence it has on search engines.  Remember when you share informative article and blogs with consumer, such interaction will only add value to your business. This in turn establishes you as an influence and fetches you higher rankings on the search engines.

Remember your company website’s success is as important to you as your marketing.  So do some research, look around and adapt to the changing technology and start applying new social media strategies at the earliest.  You will be surprised with the results, because a little bit of online socializing can take your business reputation to great heights.