Twitter is in a Catch 22 situation; it is stuck between local country laws and the freedom of speech of the Internet users and has opened its doors to censorship.

To abide with the law of the land in different countries, the microblogging site has decided it MAY ‘reactively withhold’ offensive tweets on a country-by-country basis. Well, so much for being the free-speech platform that it was all this time!  Twitter has even cited reference of ‘pro-Nazi’ contents for users in Germany and France, to substantiate its move in its blog.

In a world comprised of different people with different ideas, this move from Twitter has been welcomed by few though the large chunk of Twiterati is wary and complaining. 

About ‘country-wise’ tweet removals, the social networking service provider has not acted on anything ‘offensive’ yet, though has assured that it will intimate the user whenever it does the same and do so in a transparent manner. As for the removed contents (of country-specific users) – it will be available for ALL other users in different countries.

With Facebook and other social networking sites expanding and incorporating new applications, Twitter it seems is trying hard to spread its wings into new regions of the world. After the China debacle when it got blocked there, Twitter is cautious about its market moves.

So, is Twitter losing its reputation for free speech while wooing countries like China back into its fold? What do you think?

Google’s most popular feature with searches is ‘suggestions’. The suggestions sometimes appear much before you have finished typing. Many wonder how Google knows what you are exactly looking for.

After a court in Italy held search engines responsible for suggesting offensive terms, Google had elucidated that “search suggestion service suggests words potentially connected to the words that users type on the Google search field”.

So that might be the reason when my friend typed ‘Arindam Chaudhuri’ on Google and it suggested the word ‘Fraud’ associated to the name. The user was surprised by the suggestion because Arindam Chaudhuri is the Director of IIPM (The Indian Institute of Planning and Management), a private B-School in India. He posted the screen-shot on Twitter (http://twitpic.com/5f6t8h) on June 22, 2011 for all to see.

Next I decided to do a quick search about IIPM, unfortunately the word ‘Fraud’ showed up next to the name.

Following this, somebody who claims may be representing ‘IIPM and Arindam Chaudhuri’  committed a fatal error, she shot a mail from her personal email ID to the user asking him to remove that picture, else face legal action. The mail further claims that they have settled the issue with Google, but Google gracefully refused to comply unless this picture is taken off.

I am skeptical if IIPM did this since they claim to be one of the premier B-Schools in India, with the so-called best think-tank heading them. Secondly any third-party who sends a mail on their behalf threatening legal action is only going to put the institution in bad light. It only endorses what Google is suggesting.

How can you hold the user responsible for what Search Engines suggest? The Management Guru should know that taking legal action on every negative comment is not the solution, since there are plenty of bad mouthing that happens on the Internet. And with the kind of suggestions that comes up during searches, it’s obvious that users will click on the forbidden combination and you further lose credibility. What you ought to do is to figure out why it is so, and then sort it out amicably. Your reputation is at stake and your prime concern should be to deal with negative contents about you on the Internet if you are really that great an institution; after all everybody deserve to keep their goodwill intact. Let sense prevail!

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.

Social Media has been an excellent vehicle for businesses to promote their brands and products for years, and with a theoretical audience of over one billion users it’s a trend that’s set to continue for the foreseeable future. From that, it’s of little wonder that slowly people are starting to realise the potential for charities to make their mark on this global audience for the betterment of their respective causes. But what happens though when lines get crossed and businesses and charities start working together, and it becomes difficult to see exactly who’s getting the better deal?

Let me start out by saying that I am in no way against charities, or generally disagree with what charities are trying to do simply on matter of principle. I’m a big fan of some charities and I believe supporting a cause comes down to an individual’s ability to connect or relate to an issue, rather than being fundamentally for or against charities in general. Social Media has been instrumental in raising awareness for good causes who would otherwise not have the resources or the voice to speak out and be heard by so many people at once. In extreme circumstances Social Media has even proven invaluable to relief efforts in the face of natural disasters and has paved the way for charitable donations on a scale we’ve never seen before.

It’s nothing new for companies or businesses to be associated with specific charities. Some of the best results charities have seen have been due to working together with big brand names and there’s an argument for a charity that “any publicity is good publicity”. How far though is that argument being pushed by businesses today, and where does the line get drawn between that which is in the best interests of the charity, and the best wishes of the firm ‘promoting’ the charity?

I came across an interesting Tweet yesterday (or, more specifically, a ‘Re-Tweet’) from a celebrity whom I shall not name, which read:

DPGplc DPG plc [rt] by [name_removed]
@[name_removed] We’ll donate £5 to SANDS (Still & Neo-Natal Death Society) for every celebrity RT of this post. #CIPD11

My first impression of that Tweet was that it seemed a little lacklustre and insincere. I’m naturally a cynic and am sceptical about… well, most things really, so that reaction wasn’t exactly uncommon. But then I took a closer look and started looking at it objectively. The concept was simple enough; the company “DPG plc” (Development Processes Group) were sending Tweets to every celebrity/high profile user they could find, claiming that every time one of them Retweeted their post, they would donate £5 to charity. For the purposes of this article I shall ignore the fact that this was blatantly spam and say that on the surface, this seemed simple enough. A business is for all intents and purposes pledging money to a charitable cause.

Three things bugged me about the post right away. To begin with, it was making no effort to explain anything about the charity and, more importantly, it gave no obvious way of obtaining more information. If you want to try and raise awareness of an issue, you want people to care so ‘context’ is pretty important (despite the 140 character limit being fairly inhibitive at times). Furthermore, once you’ve got somebody’s interest/attention you want them to be able to easily access further information. Twitter has a built-in feature that automatically shortens links, so the (approx) 20 remaining characters from these posts were more than enough to contain a link to SANDS, the charity in question. Further investigating also showed that there was also no mention of the charity anywhere on DPG’s Twitter account or their own website (which doesn’t get a link).

The second thing that annoyed me was the fact that the post specified that DPG were only willing to make any contributions upon celebrity endorsement. I can see the logic behind this argument from a marketing perspective – celebrities are deemed more influential than Joe Twitter and thus upon a Tweet by a celebrity the message is theoretically reaching a larger audience. However, given that the post specifically stated that they are only going make a donation upon a ‘celebrity retweet’ implies a desire to specifically be associated with fame, rather than being concerned with raising awareness. If they wanted to do the best job they could, they’d want everyone to be Retweeting and learning about the charity and volunteering help. One way of interpreting this would be to conclude that DPG are more interested in making people aware of their gesture than they are in helping SANDS.

Onto my final and biggest gripe: the ‘hashtag’. That bit at the end of the Tweet which reads “#CIPD11″. For those who aren’t particularly familiar with Twitter, a hashtag is a way of linking Tweets to create discussions between users who aren’t necessarily following each other. A ‘topic indicator’, if you like. You can click on a hashtag and see every recent post which has it included, and wanting to know what #CIPD11 is and how it related to the charity; I clicked it. Turns out that the hashtag is actually nothing to do with SANDS or any other charity, it’s The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development’s Annual Conference and Exhibition. In other words, a big networking event to discuss ‘Human Resources’. And no, before you ask, there is no connection between CIPD11 and the Still & Neo-Natal Death Society. None on the website dedicated to this conference, nor on any other websites discussing this conference. Nor does CIPD11 appear anywhere on the website of the charity, either.

I also want to make it clear that this is not a DPG scam, as one of the trustees from the charity was keen to defend these Tweets when I questioned DPG’s methods:

TravisCerys Peter Brady
@kenhalfpenny @dpgplc I am a trustee of said charity it is a marketing concept that @DPGplc are prepared to pay £5K to us for these RTs

Peter Brady, founder of the Jude Brady Foundation raises a good point when it comes to discussing the ‘ethics’ dilemma as mentioned in the title of this article, and we’ll get to that in a bit. I’d like to note at this stage that nobody that I spoke to from SANDS or DPG knew anything about the arrangement, but then it’s not entirely uncommon for financial matters not to be common knowledge amongst all members of a company so they couldn’t really be scrutinized for that. But, it was a little disappointing that nobody was available to talk to, whether it be SANDS, DPG or even Peter Brady himself to clarify the details of the agreement.

The details strike me as particularly peculiar as well. For instance, how are they monitoring exactly how many celebrities are retweeting their posts? What are they using as the basis to define a ‘celebrity’? People in the industry will know of ‘Listening Tools’ which are used to monitor various aspects of user conduct on Social Media, and to turn around and say “We’re using listening tools” and hope that there’ll be enough people without the knowledge of how this works to save having to justify it any further. Because, to be clear, they wouldn’t have to monitor how many times a single post is retweeted, as their is no “one Tweet” to count. DPG have issued numerous different Tweets, each targeting a different ‘celebrity’. In order for their “£5 per celebrity retweet” to come true, they’d actually have to differentiate between a retweet from a celebrity, and a retweet from somebody who doesn’t enjoy quite the same social status (by whatever standards DPG are using as definition). Could it be that  £5,000 (total) is a figure that DPG has already agreed to donate and the celebrity retweets are all about publicity? Is the £5,000 Peter mentioned in his response just an “upper limit”, and if only 10 celebrities retweet their comments, does this mean the charity will only get £50? Who knows. The only 3 people who have heard of this deal apparently are all unavailable, the entire day. “Okay”. Like I said, I’m a sceptic.

TravisCerys Peter Brady
@kenhalfpenny @dpgplc and just for the record think of how much the profile of our charity is being raised too it's nothing but good for us

So regardless of how genuine DPG might be in their offer, or how they’re going about conducting themselves, Peter Brady does have a point. If, through whatever means, a charity is receiving just a little bit more attention on the back of somebody else’s marketing, is that a bad thing? Is there a a definitive rule which states that companies should be allowed to conduct themselves in whatever manner they choose so long as a) they’re not hurting anyone and b) charities benefit from it in the long run. But then, how does one measure exactly just how much benefit to a charity there can be by simply name dropping them as part of what is, in all reality, a marketing campaign designed to raise awareness of DPG plc and the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development’s conference event.

How tolerant are you willing to be of marketing practices which are clearly using not just the concept of charity, but specific charities, in order to promote their own reputation? Do ridiculously misleading marketing campaigns actually help a company’s reputation, and is DPG likely to gain anything from this? Where should the line be drawn – if at all – between a company and charity forming a mutually beneficial partnership, if the company is gaining more from the relationship. If a company is gaining proportionately more from the relationship – is it even still charity? Ultimately it’s not for me to say one way or another.

When Peter Brady isn’t raising money for a worthy cause (and yes, SANDS is a worthy cause) he works for a company called Mutual Media whose industry is set in marketing, design and print. One of Mutual Media’s clients? DPG plc. I’m not suggesting foul play, far from it. I think what’s happened here is Peter Brady has approached one or more of his clients to ask them if they’d be willing to support a charity for which he is a trustee. I think DPG plc has seized an opportunity to promote themselves, their brand and their trade on the back of this. A lot of companies have found ways to make ‘x’ amount of their financial margin tax-deductible by writing off figures as charitable donations. I think DPG plc HAS the money spare to give to charity, but rather than just do what’s right and GIVE THEM THE MONEY OUTRIGHT, they’ve chosen to make a scene and say “look at us, look at what we’re doing, aren’t we simply the coolest?”. I don’t think any credit should be given to a gesture that’s clearly not been made with the charity’s best interests in mind, and advertising an HR conference under the pretence of charity awareness is utterly morally bankrupt.

The most concerning thing though, I think, of all of this is; if companies are allowed to abuse charities for the sake of self promotion, will this lead to people becoming indifferent to genuine charitable efforts and campaigns? If people are left with the impression that Social Media is being abused by businesses looking to exploit charities, will that in fact lower the number of people willing to contribute to a good cause?

You tell me.

Respond here, or reply to us on Twitter (I’m not pretending to be doing this for charity) at @reputationmgmnt to continue the discussion.

Thanks for reading.

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.

‘Yet another talent lost early’  as tributes to Amy Winehouse pour in, there are quite a few shameless self-promotions going on out to market her sudden death. This post is not to serve as an eulogy to Amy but to point out to companies how not to market on their official twitter accounts during the death of a celebrity.

‘Should Traffic Ever Trump Taste?‘  gives two examples of  such behaviour and we pick the Microsoft UK PR twitter handle post – and yes they were crass enough to post this…

Clearly their later apology and tribute did nothing to cover up the real intention of the tweet.

This is a great example of how not to be a PR handle on Twitter and clearly puts Microsoft UK  in a bad light, despite the opportunity of increased sales of Amy’s music. Definitely a big ‘thumbs down’ from us here at Reputation Management For.com.

Twitter is one of those “new things” that a lot of people keep meaning to get around to, without actually ever doing it. It’s a permanent fixture of the proverbial ‘to-do e-list’. At the end of the day, why bother? Surely it’s just a bunch of people talking about their day, hoping that other people will care that they’re “making toast” and whole lot of other inane nonsense, right?

For the most part, sure. It’s said that “Twitter is for people who can’t shut up, even when they’re by themselves” and yes, we know a few people like that! There is an awful lot of nonsense to sift through before you come across anything half-decent. But then that’s no different from literature – for every “A Brief History of Time” or “Great Expectations” there’s a thousand Dan Brown-esque books that will genuinely lower the collective IQ of human kind.

The simple truth is, if you’re not being a social media Dickens, you’ll just be a… well, you’ll get left behind. At first glance, Twitter doesn’t look like much. With posts being so short, and links being truncated and a lot of conversation not entirely dissimilar from sms-speak, it can be seen to lack substance and therefore fail to capture interest.

But, what most people are still failing to realise is the marketing potential of this social networking site. Some people might even have an account set up, but not really sure what to do with it. So, without further ado, here is the ReputationManagementFor.com guide to succeeding with Twitter:

1/ “Tweeting”
When you “Tweet”, you’re sending a message to all of your Followers (see 2/) and displaying the message on your Twitter Feed (a list of your Tweets). Now, it’s extremely important that you bear a few things in mind whilst Tweeting, as you can end up wasting a lot of time for zero productivity. Don’t over-Tweet, but don’t Tweet sparingly either. A Tweet a week does not an interest garner. These are the most important things you’ll need to bear in mind whilst Tweeting -

• Don’t treat Twitter like an SEO exercise. Nobody cares for unexplained, uninteresting links, and if all you’re doing is linking back to your website, people will generally ignore you.
• Don’t make ridiculous spelling mistakes. Tweets are only 140 characters long, and typos and other errors will reflect badly on your company. Spell it right; sell it right.
• Try not to be too personal, or emotional. You’re marketing your brand, and while that doesn’t mean you should be robotic, attention-seeking will ultimately reflect badly.
• Develop your own style, but unless you’re a professional comedian don’t make every post into a joke. Most people aren’t as funny as they want to be, so try to be tongue-in-cheek about it.

And ideally, every time you Tweet you want your followers to Re-Tweet your posts. That way not only are you speaking out to your Followers, but then also to THAT person’s Followers. And then theirs, and so on and so on. You’ll see “RT” appear in a lot of posts, that’s generally asking you to ‘Retweet’ a post. You don’t have to include “RT” all the time though, as doing so excessively can look desperate and as though you don’t have a reasonable sphere of influence yourself.

2/ “Following”
When you “Follow” somebody on Twitter, it means that you’re going to automatically get updated with every post, or “Tweet”, that that user makes. The idea is that you want to get as many people to Follow you as possible, as to expand your brand awareness and market influence. This is, in a nutshell, the ultimate goal of a Twitter account. Here’s some things you might want to consider when picking who to follow:

The easiest and simplest way of building up your Following is to include obvious links to your Twitter account on your website, and any email correspondence you send out. If you don’t tell people to look for your Twitter account, you’re relying on people looking for you speculatively, and that can be a slow process. Also, you can enter your contact list from GMail, AOL, MSN, Hotmail and Yahoo! accounts to see if the people you already speak to use Twitter. Following people you know on Twitter will encourage them to follow you back, but more on that later.

3/ “@Mentions”
If you have a look at your ‘Home’ page on Twitter, you’ll see a few tabs below the Tweet box – one of which says ‘@Mentions’. This might sound pretty self-explanatory, but as with everything else it’s how you use it that counts. A @Mention is when somebody puts an ‘@’ sign, followed immediately by a username. When somebody @Mentions you in a Tweet, it’ll show up both on their Tweet Feed and on your @Mentions page (which your followers can’t see). Circumstances you’d use a @Mention for:

• If you want to show some Twitterlove for another user, @Mention them. They’re then more likely to return the favour.
• @Mention another user if you’re Tweeting their material. Their details do show up on a Retweet, but a @Mention will show gratitude and let the person know you’re passing on their content/posts.
• If you’re Tweeting original content, start the post “RT” and sign it “from/by @yourtwittername” or some similar denomination. It makes it easier for people to find you and associate your Twitter account with the content being (Re)Tweeted.

The other thing that’s important to mention is that you only have 140 characters, so you can’t @Mention too many people. Also, it’s generally considered spamming if you do @Mention too many users without having anything to actually say. Refer to 1/ for acceptable Tweeting, same rules apply.

4/ “The #Hashtag”
While we have already mentioned that this shouldn’t be an SEO exercise, that doesn’t mean that none of the same principles apply. If it helps, think of “#hashtag” as the king of Social Media Optimization – an opportunity to make use of ‘keywords’. People searching Twitter for posts on specific subjects will generally find #tagged posts first. Here’s how we recommend you use #Hashtags:

• If you want to talk about a #subject, #location or #person (without linking to their Twitter account), use the #Hashtag.
• A #Hashtag can be used to emphasise a specific part of your Tweet, and generally adds context to any content or comments you might be posting.
• Don’t overdo it. The etiquette of the #Hashtag dictates that one is enough, two is OK and three would be pushing it. Four is right out.

Twitter posts are also showing up on Google searches. Obviously, it’s unlikely that a Twitter post is going to outperform a highly contested keyword by normal SEO standards, but a clever campaign on a specific subject is likely to get some attention.

5/ “Trending”
A short follow-up to the #Hashtag, we’d like to talk briefly about “Trending”, something that’s far more obvious in Twitter than other popular social media. Put simply, Twitter keeps track of when a term (or #term) is being used a lot on Twitter. It records Trends that appear by geographical demographic, and a general worldwide tracker. Thus, if a #term (with or without the #Hashtag) is popular in, say, the United States; people who’ve set up their “Trend Feed” to the U.S. will automatically be given a list of the “Trending Topics” for that country. That said, you can also look up the topics that are Trending anywhere else too, simply by selecting where you want to see the Trending information for. And, by clicking on the topic that’s Trending (a word that, in this article, would now be Trending in a pseudo-ironic way), you can see a list of posts that have been made that include the Trend-word.

A lot of people can be tempted to abuse the Trending topics to vie for attention, but this is just not cricket. It’s like the guy that has an answer for everything – what can pass for mild amusement at first will soon become an annoyance and generally off-putting. When you feel that there’s a Trend that you have some kind of invested interest in, sure – make a Tweet that includes reference to the keyword, but only if the post actually makes sense. Remember though, you still have to follow the basic rules for Tweeting, as featured above.

There are many, many ways that you can make social networking and social media a profitable exercise. None of which involve using your Facebook or Twitter pages as an ongoing redirect to the sections of your website that you want people to look at. With Twitter, you can specify a website as part of your profile. That’s quite literally all you need, and much more than that is excessive. You need to remember that you’re building a community to support your Twitter page, and not just trying to encourage people to look at your website. If you get the Twitter page right, it will endear people to your company and the site traffic will flow organically onto your page, and that’s the ultimate goal here.

That said, those of you that don’t follow the above advice – thanks for making it easier for everyone else to stand out

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.