Reputation management advisors use various tools and search engines to keep up the optimum online reputation of a company. The search engines typically comprise of  RSS feeds, micro-sites, blogging, social media, Wiki-Site, videos, business profile linking, and other media. Whereas the most popular tools that are used effectively to fight bad press and to ensure the site ranks include blogs, SEO and SEM among others.

Blogs form a strong medium of communication with the general public through which you can communicate personal experiences, news, entertainment news or infact anything that you wish to share with the community. Blogs work in a couple of ways.  You can link your blog to your Website or can maintain it as a separate Website. Regular blog posts can greatly  benefit your search engine optimization (SEO), and help you communicate with the public without any outside interference, thereby helping you to  build up your reputation.

Social network sites like Myspace, Facebook, Twitter and others help you to build up a community of like minded individuals. Thus social networking sites immensely help you to  create positive public opinion  based on open communication and shared experience.   quality reputation management tool, it helps to enhance your brand image and reputation slowly yet steadily. The best part is that it does not require the resources that a national publicity campaign would have involved.

SEO/SEM  could probably be the most important tools in reputation management. SEO involves the intelligent usage of key words to ensure that your website comes up in the search engine results; whereas  SEM utilize pay-per-click technology, keyword usage and HTML coding to keep your company’s name in the top pages of search engine results and to ensure brand protection.

Other channels of Communications including web content , press releases and even snap shots can go a long  way in building up your online presence and a strong reputation. Regular posts will keep your websites active which in turn would attract scores of visitors. Hence it is very important to not only have quality content  and keywords but also regular postings. Make the most of the online possibilities to enjoy a strong repute and brand image.

What’s reputation management got to do with a guy who rarely goes out of his house, you may wonder. But, then like all great ideas that go ka-ching ka-ching and rakes in the money, this one is  so simple that you’re going to kick yourself for not having thought about it first.

Drum-rolls for Jason Sadler, a guy who wears T-shirts for a living and has made $85,000 this year doing just that. Jason wears T-shirts for all kinds of people – people like you and me, celebrities who have a new line of products to promote and even companies looking to get the word out about their products. He blogs about it, Tweets about it and even does live video streaming wearing the T-shirt with logos his clients have paid him to wear on YouTube.

Talk about having a light bulb moment and even as you say “why didn’t I think of that” Jason labours on for his clients who can get him to wear a T-shirt for $1 on Jan 1 and $2 for Jan 2 and so on till Dec 31 he gets paid $365. He is so busy that he plans to recruit an assistant in 2010 and expand to Europe and South America and is going to charge $2 for Jan 1 and $4 for Jan 2 and so on in 2010 with the – “two dudes in your shirt” marketing tag as he calls it.

Here’s a guy who will Tweet your grandmother’s birthday wishes wearing a T-shirt or inform the public of new line of products or even get your online reputation given a quick boost like Bill Cosby did with Jason’s help. 

Online reputation management has found for itself a new dude in Jason Sadler and his quirky idea and he works hard for his clients on Twitter, Facebook and Youtube. I give a thumbs up for this great idea.

In business and in life, reputation is everything. So it goes on the web as well. Your web site is considered one of the representations of your reputation of your business. You and your business together forms your web site. When disatisfied customers complain about your company in discussion forums, and chat rooms around the web, that is another representation of your reputation.

You are what people are saying about you. The blogs convey the public thoughts and moods to express good or bad points and emotions. To minimize damages due to inflammatory websites and weblogs launched by consumers, some use the same reactive tactics. Given the increasing popularity and development of search engines, these tactics have become more important than ever.

In the years ahead, reputation will become even more important on the web. To be successful, you will need to manage your reputation on and off your web site. Software services are emerging nowadays that measure and record reputation in quantitative and qualitative ways. Search Engine Reputation Management tactics are often employed by companies and increasingly by individuals who seek to proactively shield their reputations or brands from damaging contents.
These tactics have become more important than ever due to the increasing popularity and development of search engines. We can help your company develop a reputation management strategy by assessing high-level analysis of the business, industry, competition, and customers. That is the analysis of the key phrases, web site visitors,source of prospective customers and competitiveness of the search results for those phrases.

By Nicola Ford, Head of Editorial, Trinity Mirror Digital Recruitment (TMDR)

Consumer blogs, discussion forums and feedback ratings are just some of the opportunities the internet offers to consumers who want their voices to be heard. With as little as a 30-second registration process, disgruntled consumers can now have a serious impact on the reputations of previously almost impermeable corporate giants.

Online reputation management (ORM) is the process of protecting a brand, product or business across the internet – both limiting damage following negative press or public response, and also reinforcing and promoting existing corporate values.

The proliferation of user-generated content online means all organisations both private and public need to take ORM very seriously. And it’s big business, in 2008 the UK ORM industry was worth £60million (source: Online Reputation and Buzz Monitoring Buyer’s Guide 2008, e-consultancy) – and as the internet continues to expand exponentially, so will the number of companies that need ORM.

Moreover, as companies continue to downsize to survive the recession, reputation management is increasingly important. If you don’t treat your exiting employees well, they might try to damage your reputation online, and your remaining employees might leave once the economy picks up. Companies need to safeguard their reputations for the future so they attract the best candidates to work for them.

But it’s not just organisations that need to worry about online reputation. With, on average, 80% of employers checking people online before interviewing them using social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn, candidates need to make sure their online ‘brand’ positions them correctly.

Most people take a reactive approach to their online brands only removing content they don’t want people to see. And although this is definitely part of it, it’s those people who are proactively building their online brands that will reap the biggest rewards – one of which is recruitment.

It’s estimated that 70% of all job opportunities are never advertised – in today’s tough market, jobseekers need to tap into this hidden job market and online networking is a great way of doing this. It’s not just making sure your LinkedIn profile is up to date – it’s about positioning yourself as a credible player in a particular field. There are a variety of methods to build up your online following: blogging, participating in discussion forums, Tweeting and so on.

A successful personal online brand does take time and effort to establish itself but the benefits can be great. By establishing a great online reputation for yourself, you should attract companies, professional contacts and friends with great reputations in return. And if that’s not enough to convince you, think of the alternative – competing with the majority of people for the 30% of job opportunities that are in the public domain…

And fortunately, there’s help available to make sure your online brand positions you as the sort of employee companies want to recruit. Services like Workthing which provides you with all the tools and advice you need to take a proactive approach to managing your reputation online.