Have you given up on Google Plus, already? The Google+ rollercoaster has been nothing short of mercurial – The fanfare, the golden invite, the Google+ launch was on hype overdrive; then came the ‘is it dead’ questions and Facebook launching new features to stay in the game. Google is now talking about brand pages in Google+, yet another feature in Facebook; and hence the question – ‘Does Google stand a chance against the social media behemoth that Facebook is?’ 

Google+ syncing seamlessly with Android devices: Google+ of late seems to be more about bringing all your web presence onto a single platform with easy icons and circles. So from easy instant upload of photos from your Android phones to video chat hangouts, its about getting you organised the Google way. The best part about this is that, the photos that get instantly uploaded are not available to your Google+ circles by default; you have to make it available or shared on Facebook etc manually. Google scores on privacy which has always been a sticky point for Facebook always.

Facebook popularity to stay: Facebook and its numerous Apps are the rage worldwide and is not likely to make a difference to its millions of users as far as social media activity goes; and the Facebook ‘likes’ will continue to to be popular and people will continue to share and upload images from Facebook. So on a social networking level there is no way that Google+ will replace Facebook.

Brand building and search implications: For Google+ the focus is on brand building and this is where small companies or professionals should focus on as well; and the SERP privileges of having Google+ page is sure to mount as the days go by. Being the giant search engine that it is, the SEO implications could be phenomenal in the future.

The trick in appreciating what Google+ could be, is to look at it as NOT a social networking platform but as an organiser of all your web activities, contacts, chats, professional meetings (Hangout) and as a means of brand building.

I’d definitely recommend having a Google+ page for your business as Google eventually gets around to what it originally planned in terms of web content importance with more applications coming under the Google+ umbrella.

Wikipedia began with the noble intention of providing all with free information on anything under the sun. So yes, the content should be impersonal or neutral and in an openly editable model. So unlike an encyclopedia, which is written by experts, the Wikipedia content is largely written by volunteers who do so without pay.

The big advantage: By virtue of being a favoured site by Google, the SEO or ORM implications of having a Wiki page for your small business are huge. Wikipedia pages usually rank on the first pages of Google and other search engines.

Should you have a Wikipedia page for your small business? There are a few risks to keep in mind -Wiki pages can be edited by anyone and there are numerous people who keep a tab on new pages. If you look at the way people with an axe to grind keep at forums to deliberately malign a brand or name, one should tread carefully as this is also the case with a Wikipedia page. So there is no rule-for-all from a small company reputation management aspect and we would advice a case-by-case decision for creating a Wiki page.

What if you already have a Wiki page? If you already have a Wiki page for your small business and do not have negative content issues with it, it would be best if you don’t make too many changes.

What do you do if you have too many negatives being added on your Wikipedia page? If you do have a Wiki page that is being regularly updated with negative content, there are still a couple of things to be done. First of all make the tone very neutral; and add a host of new info on your page to water down the negatives or push it down further.

So there it is, depending on how well your business is doing in a certain area and taking into account the added publicity a Wiki page will bring in and with the help of reputation managers to watch your back you may have a Wikipedia page for your business with the positives far outweighing the risks.

Do you have an active social media life? If the answer is a ‘Yes’ you need to be reading this post.

Post the ‘Weinergate’ incident, when an accidental tweet with an obscene photo that should have been made via direct message to an on-line girlfriend went public on Rep. Weiner’s timeline forcing his resignation, it is time to list out ways to avoid such social media disasters.

Armed with Android smartphones and numerous social media accounts on Facebook and Twitter is by itself a challenging situation. So you have your personal Twitter and Facebook account, and your companies’/clients’ both on a computer and sometimes even on your smartphone. Juggling these daily is daunting to say the least.

The other aspect is your own social life and how you conduct yourself in social circles, what pictures you post on Twitter and Facebook and so on. Ask around and you’re sure to know quite a number of people who have suffered the ‘Freudian slip’ or in this case the ‘Freudian click’ sending the wrong message to an ex-flame/spouse. You end up dealing with not just the horror of such a predicament but also the sinking feeling that it could have been easily avoided.

Here’s how you can avoid accidental social media disasters:

1. Always have multiple browsers for handling personal and professional social media accounts. This is by far is the simplest way to sort things out in your head before you post both professional and personal status messages. So, having IE, Chrome, Safari and Firefox for different purposes is adding order to the chaos.

2. Applications like Tweetdeck, Hootsuite, Seesmic and others all provide quick social media posts from multiple Twitter and Facebook accounts. So, using a particular application for professional use and another for personal is the way to go.

3. Direct messages on Twitter or Facebook messages may seem private, but never forget that nothing on the internet is really private.

4. Be funny but remember the virtual world is full of real people and this includes your friends, family, professional acquaintances, co-workers and other plain nosey people. And there are a few things that should not be shared on Facebook and Twitter.

5. If you are a politician or celebrity, the personal and the professional blur – the social media world may have a lot of bots but there are real people out there, so behave as you would in the real world.

6. After writing out a post or attaching a photo make sure to read it again and checking that its leaving from the right account before hitting ‘send’.

7. Posting from smartphones both in a professional and personal capacity is not good idea. Period. Unless you have two smartphones, which again is just a disaster waiting to happen.

So well accidents happen online all the time and some people pay a heavy price as online reputation is there for all to see and every action you take in the virtual world leaves a trail for someone to dig it all up again. Hiring online reputation management consultants is another way to deal with this.

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’s one of two reasons you’re not laughing at the moment. Most commonly it’ll be because the joke wasn’t funny. Then you have the group of doctors who’ve just realised that the pictures they posted of last year’s New Years party might well cost them clients.

The internet’s a great wee thing. If you want an MP3 player, you’ll search for it on Google. Vintage cars? Google. Oh, what’s that? You’d like to find out a bit more about the person you’re trusting to reconstruct your nose? Yeah, Google will help you there too. In fact, people are becoming increasingly reliant on search engines for absolutely all their earthly needs, and – for better or worse – search engines are getting better at finding information too.

With new search tools such as Social CV and the long-running Xobni being able to scan dozens of social networking sites for personal information and internet behavioral trends, it’s never been more important to get a proper handle on your online presence. It’s more common just now for companies to use these tools to ‘vet’ candidates for employment or prospective business partners, but the information is there to be found by anyone.

Choosing a doctor is a big decision, and people need to have confidence that the people they’re trusting (often with their lives) are deserving of such trust. What does a Google search say about you? What does your Facebook or Twitter profile say about you? Your online social media presence, whilst usually intended to be personal, can be read into and used to form an opinion of you. And unless you’ve been careful to actively project a professional image of yourself, it could end up costing you. All it takes is for somebody to find a picture of you mooning a camera, 20 years ago in college, for a prospective client to lose confidence in you (or not to contact you to begin with).

An even worse result would be for somebody to find a picture, or see something you’ve said in a post (including, but not limited to,  participation in online forums) and they can repeat and relay this information for other people to find with greater ease. With the rapidly growing number of people writing their own blogs on anything and everything, it can sometimes be difficult to contain negative press once it gets out there.

Online Reputation Management is an industry which specializes in making sure that people see exactly what you want them to see. Using an extensive array of search engine optimization and positive marketing techniques, you can be sure that you can enjoy your personal life without worrying about pictures and comments being taken out of context. In turn, this will prevent your business from suffering and allow patients (prospective or otherwise) to evaluate your suitability based on proven medical experience, rather than your favourite football team or what music you listen to.

Google is to search engine and Facebook with social networking. Just like other website you can search on Facebook, but that necessarily does not make it a search engine.  On the other hand Google isn’t a social website.

But now reports have surfaced that Google wants it search to be more social. The reason behind this move is obviously they want to make a place for themselves in the social networking world.

After the Google Buzz social network fiasco, the search engine giant is stepping carefully with new social features. This time they have introduced “+1” button that will appear next to search results. This is intended to allow users’ to see what they liked and refer them or add them to their data. This is something similar to ‘Like’ button on Facebook.

The second reason to do so is Google thinks that information from +1 social search will provide them with important amount of data on the quality of websites and search results. Though Google say that data will not have any influence in search results, but the use in future is not ruled out.

Now it’s interesting to see how Google compete against the social networking giants. As it happened with ‘Buzz ’ when it was launched Facebook was already a household name and users had no plan to move to Google since their relationship have been there for years.

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.

Google introduced ‘hide’ option to personalized searches in March 2011 and this is what the Google blog had to say to explain…

You’ve probably had the experience where you’ve clicked a result and it wasn’t quite what you were looking for. Many times you’ll head right back to Google. Perhaps the result just wasn’t quite right, but sometimes you may dislike the site in general, whether it’s offensive, pornographic or of generally low quality. For times like these, you’ll start seeing a new option to block particular domains from your future search results. Now when you click a result and then return to Google, you’ll find a new link next to “Cached” that reads “Block all example.com results.”

At quick glance, you get the sense that Google’s giving up control to the user, so that one can manage blocked sites, control pornographic sites and spam from regular searches.

So far so good, but then, as with all personalized searches, it is all left to the discretion of the user; to his/her ability to discern what is good or bad, right or wrong, radical or moderate, revolutionary or extremist and so on. Herein lies the main problem with personalized searches and being prompted to read what you seem to be inclined to do based on several criteria in your online history  logged in from an account. This being the case, having the option to block out everything from a site is quite akin to wearing blinkers online.

The joy of discovering a great site, or a different slant to a news or to change one’s perspective is likely to get lost. However, if Google was to make sure that sites of great repute are exempted from personalized blocking, it would be a relief.

How would personalized hiding/blocking of Google search results affect Reputation Management and SEO?

Personalized search results with ‘hide’ or ‘block’ option may weed out obviously spammy content or low value content created through content farming. This could well mean that  quality content or content that is valued by a user will get precedence.

Personalized searches are said to be about 20 % of all searches made online and the  Google searches ‘block’ feature will only affect these search results. So the major chunk of searches being done will remain unaffected for now.

Will having a set of blocked sites affect Google suggested terms to your searches and to what extent is another question which needs to be looked into. However, its safe to say that Content is gaining importance and if the user does not find the information useful, your pages are likely to get axed from personalized searches.

What lies ahead for Online Reputation Management and SEO? Quality content, information, facebook likes and Twitter retweets may all come to mean more in the days to come as monetization of Facebook likes and Twitter links are all set to explode, changing business dynamics altogether.

Cause for worry: Blocking sites on a whim and forgetting about it also assumes people don’t change, or likes and dislikes are not affected by the age or circumstances of a person. This is a scary prospect; let’s hope Google fine-tunes it all, paying heed to what makes us all unique and wonderful – of having the ability to grow and evolve all the time!

Online reputation management cannot be taken for granted. Online reputation management combines a series of strategies and methodologies that when effectively done, help promote a positive online presence for a company. Online Reputation Management (ORM) has two defined branches, Proactive and Reactive. Both branches ensure online actions are controlled and monitored for a positive online presence of a company.

Reactive Reputation Management:

Reactive action is necessary in a business context and it is taken as a positive step. Reactive reputation management is recommended for companies that have an existing complaint online and want to get rid of it. Reactive Reputation Management includes the following:

• Keeping an eye for online conversations about your brand.
• Maintaining feedback to client’s complaint or praise
• Tracking with latest online trends to make use for marketing and customer services.

Businesses that took time to do Proactive Reputation Campaign on their online brand are more protected from reputation erosion than those businesses that did not even take time to build a solid wall that will shield their Google results image from customer complaints.

Proactive Reputation Management:

Proactive reputation management is all about shielding your online brand and your Google image from all kinds of reputation attack. It is sure to secure you a positive online reputation. Proactive Reputation Management includes the following:

• Social media management – getting involved and monitoring
• Blogging on different networks
• Creation of mini-sites to keep the reputation high
• Search Engine Optimization combined with monitoring
• Article submission through numerous article submission help to flood the online world with things you want to say. The control is in your hands.

By combining both the Reactive and Proactive strategies with constant brand monitoring, companies need not worry about reputation attacks.