If in the past, we’d turn to our family or friends circles for recommendations, advice, opinions or answers, it then turned towards “www.com” ever since it appeared on the virtual scene. Today, we are once again back to asking friends and family circles with the help of this World Wide Web. The 3 W’s have given birth to several new generation virtualities, especially the ‘social media’. Now, ‘social media’ is the best source of recommendations for nearly everything including the reputation of your brand.

Social media has emerged itself into a vast number of siblings such as Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Flickr, Linkedin, Google Plus and so on and on the list goes. Social media and search are converging because search engines are incorporating social signals. Google, Bing and Yahoo have incorporated Facebook likes and Twitter’s tweets into their organic search results. Now, searchers see results in different formats based on activity within their social networks.

Social networks are now expanding their own search functionality. Facebook now lets you search your News Feed for status updates, pictures and videos shared by your connections or brands that you “like.” Twitter bought Summize and is continually improving its search capabilities.

It is seen that consumers are skipping search engines and asking their social networks friends and family for recommendations. This may be most alarming for marketers who are relying on search engine marketing. These social media can make or break one’s reputation. That’s the reason why most of the brands and businesses are after these social searches. Ensure that your brand is well-positioned in a world of social search and that is the big tip for 2012 from Reputation Management For.com for brand protection.

Facebook has finally rolled out the Timeline for all and all you have to do is go here and click ‘Get it now‘. The FB Timeline comes with a seven day grace period to delete stuff that you did (videos, photos, status updates) that you don’t want to be on your Timeline. Warning – When you first see the Facebook Timeline… you are in for a SHOCK!!

What you will see is every single thing you did since joining Facebook neatly arranged under a timeline of years and months. For users who have made the cheesiest status updates and other cringe-worthy quips( in hindsight) it will require a dedicated period of time to go back and decide what should be highlighted or removed from the timeline before its published for all to see. Yes, there is a ‘Publish’ tab to click after doing the necessary changes before the timeline goes live. So what are the advantages?

For the storyteller in you the Timeline is a chance to make a picture perfect string of events in your life all with a snazzy cover picture option that comes as a banner on top after weeding out what you don’t need. Here I’m thinking of celebrity reputation and their PR machines as the first converts in making the Timeline a personal saga – a wall of fame! For the rest of us, as the Timeline can be taken as far back to the birthday, it can be built up with Life events, maps with photos of places been to and so on… to a well-documented chronology of our life.

So, yes, there is a huge opportunity for reputation management with the Facebook Timeline and this can further move on to brand pages as well. Facebook has said that for now the Timeline is focussed on individuals and not brands, but its safe to assume it’s just a matter of time before companies and brands have their own Timeline of accolades!

With Google + and  Twitter coming out with brand pages and other changes being done in interface and Apps, it’s raining brand pages in all platforms. Google is maintaining that the Google + Vs Facebook race is not a social networking attempt to upstage Facebook.

While Twitter is flying high with fly.twitter – a swanky mobile interface and a better web page in the hope to bring back the users from applications like Echofun, Tweetdeck etc.,, not all Tweeters are happy! Avid Twitter users are left wondering if Twitter’s changed from what it was known for in the beginning – a free platform for people to microblog, begin trends, tweet to sport-stars, celebs, politicians, authors and journalists to make a change like it did in the Egypt crisis and revolution.

Write in to us about your Facebook Timeline experience and we’ll feature your comments in a follow-up post.

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.

I got a friend request from a total stranger on Facebook last week. The only thing we had in common was mutual friends. As always I declined that request. But then why would anybody send friend request to people they don’t know, strange but that’s what Social networking is all about. To my surprise I saw my colleague accepting this request from the same person. I then wondered if I had gone overboard by declining a request from somebody with potential caliber? I enquired with my friend and he had not clue; he accepted the request only because there were few friends in mutual circle.

I later learned that Facebook is sending friend requests automatically without users’ consent. I thought Facebook is a great place to be in touch with friends and it contributes to web searches. But if it is going to ask me to add people I never want to, I might then have second thoughts. This latest glitch has already earned the wrath of users from across the world.

Facebook on the other hand has stated that this latest development has nothing to do with their official feature. They suggest that some rogue Facebook applications could be responsible for this, The Herald Sun reports.

Isn’t it that Facebook is one such online brand that everyone trusts and the reason why users enter their personal details.  It’s so vague to believe that anyone can develop a Facebook application and Facebook never bothers to check the authenticity. Maybe the level of trust Facebook enjoys, that users end up giving access to their account to such third party applications.

ReputationManagementFor.com – Every brand to survive needs that driving force called trust and you cannot qualify by overlooking any factor that leads to trust deficit. Today the pressure is on the companies to maintain that faith with every association they make- business or social; it should be imperative for any organization. So, what’s taking Facebook so long to set things right before such Applications eat up their reputation?

Canada’s technology champion, Research In Motion Ltd is scrambling to remedy back its reputation, as an extensive series of lingering service blackouts around the world left millions of BlackBerry owners in the dark without access to emails or instant messages. The international confidence in RIM plummeted.

Last week, blackouts that began Monday in Europe, Africa and the Middle East spread to North America, knocking BlackBerry users in the United States and Canada off-line. Service disruptions were also reported in South America, Hong Kong and Japan. The annoyed BlackBerry users around the world took to Twitter and Facebook to vent out their anger. This is an example oh how the reputation of one company can be spoiled within minutes with one mistake.

RIM is now working “night and day” to correct the problem, which was caused by a core switch failure within its own infrastructure. Making matters worse for the company, this week, RIM’s chief rival Apple Inc. is making the latest version of its mobile operating system, iOS 5, available to iPhone users. The new software includes iMessage, an instant messaging technology that is exclusive to Apple devices and that duplicates many of the same features offered by RIM’s BlackBerry Messenger platform, a key differentiator for the company.

As the disruption hit North America, shares of the BlackBerry maker dropped more than 4% at one point in Toronto Stock Exchange trading.

Do all hotels need to give a thought about reputation management; is this a critical new function in the travel industry? The answer is ‘Yes’. In the era of volatile social networking,  how a potential customers’ buying decision is influenced by traveler’s reviews is an important factor to be considered. Well precisely; it’s about monitoring, examining and responding to reviews and opinions of your hotel and taking part in social media to mold the perceptions of your brand.

Hotel industry has realized the importance of online reputation management, but is not sure how to handle the complexities of online reviews and comments.  Hotels have been prompt to adopt social media, but I believe a lot of hoteliers are mixing up priorities.

ReputationManagementFor.com- suggests that Hotels need to have minimum Reputation Management and Social media understanding.  Why? This is because it is regarded as a marketing tool that almost touches every aspect of a hotel, from operations to revenue management.

Talking about social media, Facebook and Twitter can be competent channels to involve travelers to get them to speak, but the buying decisions are made on review sites. Hoteliers should know the difference that people go to Facebook to socialize and that TripAdvisor is not for shopping but it’s a review website. And the minimal hotels should do is to monitor and respond to online reviews.

It is also crucial to note that reputation management is not about attempting to eliminate negative content. It’s a fictitious statement. It’s about genuineness and transparency since your business deserves the best.

TripAdvisor was the first to introduce review sites for travelers, and today it has 50+ million opinions and reviews on its website. Taking into account the bulk of visitors TripAdvisor has and the amount of reviews posted directly, it is crucial hotels to monitor and react to such reviews and opinions.

We feel TripAdvisor is the most decisive factor of a hotel’s online reputation management program. If a hotel is inactive in social media circuit, it ought to be taking heed and responding to TripAdvisor reviews and use the feedback to improve their customers’ experience. As mentioned above customers have more than dozen options to air their views. Reputation Management becomes more complex with Social Media, because travelers post their views on social sites, review websites or other forums, and monitoring alone can be intense, before you decide what step is to be taken

Social media can be a massive waste of time if we don’t have a clear idea how to deal with it, and still if you clutch on to the orthodox marketing activities it will reflect on your revenue. The way travelers’ decision making and communication mode has transformed dramatically we need to have massive resources to arrest further damage. With the need to adjust to this situation, hotels must keep a tab on the latest happening and publish useful, pertinent content on review sites and social websites.

If you think that the online information about your product is as secure as you thought, I will be sorry to say you are wrong. You never know unless you are tracking your online reputation if any disgruntled customer or competitor is griping about you on Facebook and twitter. A close introspection and we found that Facebook status and twitter updates appear in Google’s search results faster. Why Google? Because that’s where 90% of internet users go to fetch information about you. So make sure what you want them to know about you because your understanding about your brand and product is not what you say, but what Google suggest it is.

Twitter and Facebook have cut a deal with Google regarding updates over six months ago. Other search engines who do not want to be left out of the race are pursuing and seem to have reached similar agreements with social media sites. So it means that if a client or customer happens to search on your Twitter or Facebook username they will see everything and anything that has been tweeted recently or posted on your FB status.

Negatives if any will be visible to any and all of your potential clients. Trust us, if you fail to deal with this you are never going to make a second good impression.

Why do you need to manage your online reputation? It’s anybody’s guess, what will happen if a client or customer researches about your product or service and finds 25 negative tweets and status citing some strange issues on the first two pages of Google.  But what if those 25 negative rants are replaced with positive ones and made to rank above the negative contents?

Ask us is that possible? And ask yourself does your company need it.

Well our answer is, yes it is possible, if you are serious about your online reputation. Remember when you have 25 negative reviews to surmount; you have a serious reputation management problem. Frankly most companies don’t have that much unless their products or service is that bad really. But with reputation management you get a fighting chance to protect what is yours and give your best shot.

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.

They say imitation is the greatest form of flattery. They say that impersonation is a form of imitation. Ergo, shouldn’t impersonation thus be considered flattery? Well, no – not really. Especially not if, whilst impersonating you, they’re actively making you look bad. And unfortunately, this is becoming an increasingly ‘popular’ practice amongst social networking sites.#

We did a piece last year in which we covered an example of Eric Schmidt (former CEO of Google) having his identity “borrowed” by techcrunch.com (done simply for the express purpose of illustrating a point). This was an excellent example of CEO’s needing to manage their personal presence online, in order to preserve their online reputation. Now however with an increasing number of companies opting to have Facebook ‘business’ pages and the likes, it’s more important than ever to maintain your presence over social networking media to save your business from suffering.

When ‘business’ pages were first introduced, as with any new system they took a while to catch on. Only a handful of businesses had pages on Facebook or Twitter, so unless people were specifically advised to; they wouldn’t think to search for companies on the ‘off-chance’ that they’d find content at the end of their websearch. Now however, given the large number of people who’ve put their company names to Facebook pages, people are taking it upon themselves in increasing numbers to search for companies speculatively.

What are these people finding? Are they finding pages that you’ve set up to manage and represent your company in the best possible way, or are they finding a page set up by a third party for malicious purposes because you either didn’t think you should, or hadn’t gotten around to doing one yet? Let’s say you haven’t, and somebody else does it for you. A disgruntled ex-employee, perhaps, or a dissatisfied customer – or maybe even a competitor. All they need to do is a quick image search for your company logo, stick it on this fake Facebook page and all of a sudden people are listening to this person on matters concerning your company as if they were coming from you.

If you’re lucky, this person will be a harmless prankster, looking to make a bit of fun and impress his mates. People aren’t generally complete idiots and wont take a Mike Myers-esque “this man blows goats” comment seriously, but anything written even semi-seriously might pull the wool over a few eyes. The more ‘legitimate’ the page is made to look, the more damage it could do to you if left unchecked. For the same reasons you wouldn’t allow your receptionist to conduct themselves improperly when answering the phone, you don’t want anyone with ill intentions being left to speak to either current or prospective customers or business partners. And if you’re company is traded on publicly, one embarrassing ”announcement” could cause almost immediate financial backlash. Perhaps worst of all, the person might be looking to impersonate your company in order to perpetrate fraud.

That’s not to say that imitation pages couldn’t be setup even in addition to your existing presence, but these pages are easier to deal with. And, if you’re in the habit of pro-actively managing an existing online presence (or outsourcing the work to save the time constraint), negative comments and harmful fake pages will be identified and addressed faster as to minimize the possible damage caused.

We strongly advise that even if you don’t feel you have the time or resources to have a continually updated Facebook or Twitter page, you should still at least have a profile set up to hinder impersonators causing you a headache. 20 minutes work now can save a lot of work later on. For more information on managing your reputation online, and how to handle the intricacies of social media and search engine optimization, give us a call.

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.