Online Reputation Management Kristin Keith Be Found Online Sept. 30, 2009

Game plan New Rules Why You Should Care Business Rep Man Personal Rep Man Q&A

New Rules You do not control your reputation, or message, or brand image. On or offline. The only thing you can control is what you say, do, or contribute. Same in the real world. No one cares how large or how old your business is. They care about what you do or say.

New Rules Talking like a robot or a corporate drone doesn’t work. Being real does. People want to see the real you regardless. Your marketing plans (and the future of your career/business) depend on putting your best out there online. ◦63% of a company’s market value is attributable to reputation* Remember: Your grandma can see all of this. Literally. *Radically Transparent: Monitoring and Managing Reputations Online, Beal & Strauss.

The Good News If you do a good deed, the Internet shows that. ◦Help customers on Twitter ◦Provide superior service that gets a great shoutout on Yelp! ◦Create a website or a blog that gets raves and builds a community ◦Promote multimedia assets under your name (a personalized YouTube video or Flickr page)

Why You Should Care Potential and current customers, employees, employers, business partners, friends, family, and romantic relationships all use this to evaluate you. This type of conversation always happened; you just never saw it. ◦78% of executive recruiters use search engines to learn more about candidates; 35% have eliminated candidates based on what they found.* *Radically Transparent: Monitoring and Managing Reputations Online, Beal & Strauss.

Business

It’s A Party, Not A Stage Faux pas include… ◦Talking all the time about yourself ◦Being rude ◦Ignoring other people’s needs ◦Having nothing to bring to the table

It’s a Party, Not a Stage Faux pas really are… ◦Promoting yourself 100% of the time  No one cares. ◦Responding to customers in a way that implies they are wrong ◦Ignoring unhappy customers ◦Not doing anything fun or interesting to promote, or doing those things and never talking about them  Social media is key.  You are there to have fun, to show you are, and to serve others, not to make it all about you or to promote your agenda.

For Businesses A few spots to consider: ◦Page one of Google or Yahoo! ◦Google Alerts ◦General buzz (online news, forwarded info you may receive) ◦Info on:  Message boards/forums  Twitter  Blogs and blog comments

Monitor and Respond RSS reader ◦Free RSS reader services such as Moreover, Digg, Backpulse, Twitter, Google blog, Technorati Additional paid monitoring services available ◦Techrigy or Radian6

Content Crowd Putting out positive content ◦Social media (can use a service like Knowem.com to reserve names)  Official Twitter feed (tools like Tweetdeck work well for tracking and responding) ◦Blog, updated subdomains for website ◦Encourage customers to use Yelp! and monitor regularly to respond

Content Crowd Focus on your own website ◦Start a blog and house it under a subdomain - ◦Add additional pages under separate subdomains for Google love (customer service, contact, etc.)   ◦If your customers cannot contact you quickly and easily online, your reputation will suffer.

Responding to Negative If you have issues with a site like RipoffReport.com or PissedConsumer.com, best to update your website for customer service or add extra portal (GetSatisfaction.com) Responding to Yelp! or Google Local reviews ◦ nsehttp:// nse

Personal

How To Promote Your Personal Online Rep Create a website/write a blog under your name ◦Buy your domain name and link content to it Social networking. Clean it up. Add more value. ◦First: Facebook, LinkedIn, Google Profile ( ◦Then: Video (YouTube, Vimeo), Blog (Tumblr, Wordpress) Microblog (Twitter)

FAQs What if page one of Google looks crazy and it’s NOT ME? ◦Update your Google profile, LinkedIn profile, and Facebook page ◦Add your photo and personal website to as many outlets as possible ◦Make it easy for people to distinguish what is you and what isn’t

FAQs What if I need to remove something that’s less than flattering? ◦If it’s something you own, just remove it. ◦If it’s something you don’t own, contact the owner and ask them nicely to remove it.  If they are unwilling or unable to remove, then double check your privacy settings.

Site list RSS readers/sites for setting up realtime monitoring: ◦ (news sources and blogs for your industry)  Can also check Yahoo! news (news.yahoo.com/rss) or Topix (topix.com/dir) ◦ (RSS reader for individual feeds and mentions of your name) ◦ (for blog comments) ◦ (Google blog search) ◦ (Digg search) ◦ and (photo sharing and bookmarking)  Can use pixsy.com for RSS ◦ (blog ranking)

Site list Paid monitoring systems (good for more complex reporting and realtime monitoring) ◦ ◦ Google alerts ◦Set them up for news, blogs, web and video (or a combo of all) Consider setting up RSS for multiple sets of keywords and misspellings ◦Nike shoes, Big Mac, etc.

Checklist ◦Get a handle on your online rep right now ◦Setup monitoring tools and start reading daily ◦If there are weak areas, start working on them  Customer service?  Competition dominating your online space?  Lack of buzz overall? ◦Build on where you are strong  Provide valuable info or resources to your community in these areas ◦Figure out a plan for defense against future issues  Not if, but when

Questions? Interested in more help? Contact me! ◦ (mobile) or (work) ◦