Tag Archives: Online reputation management

Online reputation management, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Reputation Communications' online reputation management glossary

Algorithm

The formula search engines use to rank websites and determine whether they merit appearing on page 1 or elsewhere in search results.

Authenticity

The quality of being genuine; a valued quality among bloggers and the larger online community.

Astroturfing

Writing fake comments and reviews.

Branded Content

Content that promotes and cultivates a rapport between a targeted audience and a brand’s products and/or services.

Black Hat SEO

Using unethical methods to attempt to raise the ranking of websites in search engine results.

Content

Information delivered in any medium, whether text, videos, podcasts or images. (When two or more media are juxtaposed it is described as “multimedia content.”)

Content Aggregator

A software or web application which collects, combines and publishes a range of syndicated web content (such as news headlines, blogs, podcasts and video blogs).

Content Farms

Companies which create low-quality Internet content with the goal of having their content rank highly in online searches.

Digital Assets

Online images, multimedia and textual content files.

Domain Squatting (also known as cyber squatting)

Registering or using a domain name with the intent to profit from the goodwill of a trademark belonging to someone else. The cyber squatter then offers to sell the domain to the person or company who owns the trademark contained at an inflated price.

Doxxing

Tracing someone or gathering information about an individual using sources on the Internet, then publishing their private information with malicious intent.

Forum

An online discussion site.

Link

A URL name or description providing an instant connection to a different Web site or section of a Web site. A Web site’s page rank on Google (and other) searches is influenced by the number of links pointing to it (“inbound links”), and the quality of the sites they are linking from.

Linkbait

A marketing technique to increase a website’s popularity by providing content that entices visitors to include a link to the website at their own sites.

Link farms

A website created solely for the purpose of increasing the page rank of other sites with indiscriminate outbound links. Most search engines penalize sites connected to link farms.

Name space

A person or company’s name online.

Online audit

An assessment of a subject’s online image: typically a person, business or organization.

Online communities

Social networks where people communicate online. Also called “virtual communities.”

Online image

A subject’s online reputation. Mainly determined by the content appearing in top results in a Google (or other search engine) search of the subject’s name.

Online monitoring

Real-time monitoring of the information available about a person, business, organization or other topic on the Internet, including on social media.

Online reputation management

Establishing, improving and monitoring the publicly available online information about a business or individual.

Page rank

A continually changing value based on a complex algorithm assigned to a Web site or page to determines its position in a search engines’ results – the higher the page rank, the more likely people will find the web site or page.

Search engine optimization (SEO)

Strategically designing a Web site so it gains a higher page rank and consequently attract more new visitors.

SEO-optimized

Website or page that has been designed to be accessible to search engines and improve the chance that the website will be found and ranked by search engines.

Social media

Online communication between people using a variety of platforms, including blogs, forums and Twitter.

Social network

A network of individuals connected through a social media platform such as Facebook.

Sock puppet

An email or social media account set up to publish fake online content.

Transparency

Openness and sincerity in online communications.

Troll

A person who sows discord on the Internet by posting inflammatory, extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community.

White Hat SEO

Search engine optimization techniques that involve no deception.

Viral Media

Content that attracts new viewers mainly through word-of-mouth in social networks and possibly result in significant and rapid visibility.

For more in-depth information, read The Essentials: Online Reputation Management FAQ.

 
 
Internet Legal Issues, , , ,
reputation management for lawyers

For all the attention that fake news, mistaken identity and bad reviews attract, a more common issue for many people are lawsuits they or their organizations are involved in. Legal notices always rank highly on the Internet. They can dominate search results for years, blemishing an otherwise stellar online profile. Now law firms publish information about such “news” on their sites, even when they have no involvement in a case. That, too, can appear on the first page of a Google search in your name. When legal blogs also republish the information,  it saturates your Google results. None of it is easy to displace.

In 2015, we blogged about Jodi Kantor’s New York Times article, “Lawsuits’ Lurid Details Draw and Online Crowd.” She observed how the details of certain lawsuits—especially lawsuits pertaining to sexual harassment—are gaining large online audiences. The parties involved in those lawsuits saw their online images dominated by those details.

University of Maryland law professor Leigh Goodmark foresees “a future in which virtually no legal document — an eviction notice, a divorce pleading with embarrassing details — would be safe from public consumption.”

Effective online reputation management, and building a strong online presence, is the best way to protect yourself from the damage those documents could cause. That’s because when you do not own and manage your own message online, you have no defense against such content, however frivolous or unmerited it is.

 
 
Online reputation management, , , , , , , , , ,

I recently described online reputation management to a group of new acquaintances. This is what they had to say:

“It enables people to achieve the future they want,” observed a media executive.

“I had always thought of online reputation management as suppressing unwanted Google results,” said another. “Now I see it entirely differently. It is about positivity and being proactive about the story that Google tells about you. It is a major career development tool and establishes you as a leader.”

Online reputation management is a cutting-edge industry that enables you to shape the public’s perception of you and your organization by taking control of the story the Internet tells about you. That can entail anything from optimizing the order in which that information appears in a Google search to the creation of new content.

Your Challenge

One challenge for many professionals is the third-party content. You may be mentioned on blogs, consumer or employee review sites, legal reporting sites and high-ranking media outlets. Counter-balancing and replacing that type of content with new, positive and authentic material is an essential online reputation management (ORM) strategy.

Google prizes well-written content that is not duplicated elsewhere on the Internet. It can punish fake news, tricks and “black hat” strategies used in some ORM programs.

That is why using only ethical ORM and high-quality content is important. Our approach is to develop online messaging, blog and social media content, website creation, thought leadership and public relations strategies that are custom-made to support your image while attaining your online reputation goals.

Your Future

This month, while you envision the future you want for you or your company, assess whether your Google results are conveying the image you want the decision-makers in your world to see. Consider these questions:

  1. Who is your audience?
  2. How do you want to be perceived by them?
  3. Is that how you appear when they research you online?
  4. What future do you want to achieve?

If your Google and other search results are not delivering the image that supports your answers, I invite you to make a list of everything you want to create, change, or publish on the Internet. Then, contact us.

We specialize in working with executives, professionals, and their organizations. Our typical clients hold leadership roles in their industry, or are mid-level professionals actively building their careers. In addition, we have a long history of assisting VIPs and high-net-worth individuals with their online reputation goals. To learn more, visit Reputation Communications.

This post was excerpted from our September eNewsletter. It kicks off a new monthly series that will hit on every part of online reputation management and provide you with actions you can take to enhance yours. Please share it with your friends, and join our mailing list to receive future editions.

 
 
Crisis Management, Interviews with experts, , , , , , , , , , , ,
Robert Weiss: Video Content Creator

Video content is king in the search engine optimization (SEO) world. In the reputation and crisis management world, it is a critical communications tool. We asked Robert Weiss, president of MultiVision Digital, a business video content marketing agency in New York, what you need to know to utilize online video content to your best advantage.

Why is online video content an important tool for online reputation building and repair?

Reputation management is the process of populating or refreshing the first page of Google with relevant content that will resonate with the searching audience and thus achieve a high ranking. Over the past few years, online video content has become the content of choice for many people. They are seeking out video more and more because it gives them what they are looking for — an informative picture of you and your business. So when people go searching for your company’s name and/or an issue, you can have your informative and relevant content come up in the SERPs (search engine result pages) to provide the answers and information they are looking for. Google gives preference to the best content that provides answers to their customers’ questions.

How do you advise readers to plan their reputation management video content strategy?

If reputation or crisis management is your objective, plan to create many videos within a budget rather than just one video with a high production value. The first step in this approach is to stop thinking about video. Instead, think about your business. What questions are people asking about it? Who in your organization is working on interesting things to resolve your clients’ issues? Once you have these answers, create an online video production plan to best support those talking points. That way, when people search for your company, and the issue at hand, the video content that you have created, and you have control of, can outrank any new story that might get published.

What are essential steps for a video content marketing strategy?

Create video content that answers common questions your customers have. These might be about how your product works, or about the process that you go through to deliver your service. Create several bite-size snippets of video content that inform, educate and show how and why the people at your company do what they do. If addressing crisis management, the content should illustrate what you are doing to resolve the issue at hand. Be transparent. Allow your team working on these products or services, or on problem resolution, to tell their part of the story in a compelling way. Another approach is to create thought leadership videos to counteract any negative rankings. Educate and inform people on new ways to look at your products, services or operational process. Inspire them to say “wow, I didn’t know that” or “I have that problem and didn’t even know it.” Don’t sell. Inform and educate. Enlighten your audience while giving them insight into your organization. Thought leadership videos, in conjunction with other crisis management videos, go hand in hand in building up positive content that you have control of and downplaying any negative press.

What role can video play in social media?

Once you have an online video content marketing library, you can use video to respond to any social media post. Because social media plays such a critical role in crisis management resolution, instead of replying with impersonal text responses, you can give your consumer base a high-touch, personal feel for your organization and how you’re going about resolving the issue at hand, in real time. Showing people is more effective than telling them. This is what makes video critical to any type of crisis management situation. When you can present videos that show your side of the story — again, not one video, but many videos that cover many different aspects of the story — while highlighting the people on your team who are working to fix the problem, it goes a long way in managing the narrative. Further, because video gives the most amount of information in the shortest amount of time and can convey a story with emotion and conviction, these videos can also be used to follow up with those news outlets that are creating negative stories about you, to convince them that you’re doing the right thing in responding to the problem.

So how do you integrate online video content into a crisis management situation?

If you are in a position in which you need to create online video marketing content in response to some type of crisis management situation, the first thing to do is acknowledge the issue at hand. Be transparent about the issue. Let people know the steps you are taking to correct the problem. Make sure that you have ongoing video that updates the public on the progress of your undertaking and the people who are undertaking it. Providing the media with controlled stories in which the CEO shows, rather than just talks about, the company’s response to the crisis, helps to deflect the media’s attention away from the CEO and direct it toward how the company is fixing the problem… and will ultimately give a more positive impression to the media and to the general public.

What is the benefit to having a video content marketing strategy in place for crisis management?

We’ve all seen companies that have been hit hard by negative news. Add in social media complaints and protests to the mix and the company can quickly lose control of the message. This can impact sales, shareholder value and reputation for a long time. A sound video content marketing strategy has many business applications, from branding to thought leadership to lead generation to the sales process, but for crisis and reputation management, it allows a business to take control of the message. With online video content, you can show the public that you acknowledge the crisis, convince them that you are taking ownership of it, and keep them apprised of how you are managing the crisis, in real time. Unfortunately, too few organizations have a crisis response plan in place that includes the ability to move quickly on preparing such videos. So the best thing to do is to start creating online video content today and have the experience and resources in place to respond should any crisis occur at your organization.

Robert Weiss has more than 15 years’ experience in digital marketing and sales. His company, MultiVision Digital, located in New York City, has produced more than 560 business videos over the past six years for clients ranging from solo-entrepreneurs to global Fortune 500 companies across almost every industry. MultiVision Digital’s expertise includes concept and budget planning, producing (planning, scripting, storyboarding, talent and editing) and YouTube video marketing services. A graduate of Bryant University, he is also a USA Hockey Level 3 coach. This is the nineteenth in a series of interviews with experts whose work relates to online reputation management.

 
 
Online reputation management, , , , , , , ,

Social innovator and technology consultant Rachel Botsman is the leading global authority on the new era of trust. Her name often surfaces during conversations about the reputation economy. She’s an award-winning author, speaker, university lecturer and media commentator. Her specialism is an engaging and intelligent long-view of how technology is transforming human relationships and what this means for life, work and and how we do business.

A recent EUobserver article, Trust is ‘gold’ in digital age, quoted her on this topic. “Many parts of the world do not appreciate that trust is society’s most precious and fragile asset,” she said.

As early as 2012, she observed that we are at the start of the shift from trusting people more than corporations or government. She called for a measure for this new era, “reputation capital,” defining it as the ‘the sum value of your online and offline behaviors across communities and marketplaces.’ That year at the annual TEDGlobal conference in Edinburgh, Scotland,  she posed this question: “If someone asked you for the three words that would sum up your reputation, what would you say?”

Botsman has spoken of a time where you won’t need to answer with a traditional “elevator pitch,” or even a list of references or credentials. Instead, she sees “a future in which resumes and even credit scores are irrelevant, replaced by an aggregated digital reputation based on our interactions in the collaborative economy.”

“I believe we are at the start of a collaborative revolution that will be as significant as the industrial revolution,” Botsman told the TEDGlobal audience in Edinburgh. She has further explored such ideas as the co-author of  What’s Mine Is Yours: The Rise of Collaborative Consumption. Pointing to services such as the vacation rental hub AirBnB, errand outsourcer Taskrabbit and community-based learning marketplace Skillshare as examples of how “the old market principles of sharing, swapping and bartering” have been “reinvented for the Facebook age,” Botsman notes that “we have moved from sharing information and music online to transferring trust about how we get things done.”

She forsees an “age where reputation will become your most important asset” and “reputation dashboards” will provide “a real-time stream of who has trusted you when, where and why.” Botsman acknowledges that privacy would be a major concern and a simple algorithm or score wouldn’t suffice, but she still believes the outcome would be worth it: “When we get it right, reputation capital creates a massive positive disruption in who has power, influence and trust. Reputation data will make the resume seem like an archaic relic of the past.”

 
 
Online reputation management, , , , , , , , , , ,

You may not realize it, but computer “bots” continually scan the Internet and collect your personal information…including information you don’t even realize is online. Like your address and phone number. It is scoured from such public records as online telephone directories, driver license bureaus and the local courthouses that maintain legal records of property ownership. That has an impact on your physical security as well as your privacy…especially if you are a high-profile CEO.

Losing Control Over your Public Image

Maintaining a low profile in business or in their personal lives is a longstanding tactic used by individuals with high professional positions. Minimizing the visibility that results from too many media interviews or too frequent a presence on social media prevents overexposure and can add longevity to careers. Many celebrities and industry professionals in all sectors have maintained their standing for decades because they — and their managers — have carefully ensured they never become overexposed.

Unfortunately, in the Internet culture, such tactics also means that there can be little online about them that they or their representatives have placed online and have control over. This means that whatever else is said about them online rises to the top of searches and stays there. When you are responsible for the majority of the factual information about you or your organization that appears on the first two pages of a Google search, you ensure that no matter what else is said, it is counterbalanced. When you don’t do that, you have lost control over your public image. It is far harder and more time-consuming to regain it than to establish it in the first place. As a specialist in online reputation management for “influencers,” including advising Forbes and Fortune 500 clients, many of the issues we have resolved for our clients result from exactly that situation.

If You Don’t Tell Your Story, Someone Else Will

Bottom line: telling your story is a vital aspect of managing the reputation of an individual or an organization online and off.

If you don’t tell your story, someone else will.  Effective online reputation management entails “telling your story” online in an authentic way, then making sure that story appears in appropriate online platforms. Your story may be as short as you want it to be. If and when someone attempts to establish a different story, yours will provide a more factual and credible reference.  If you are a high-visibility individual and your story has already been told, there are many ways to add a fresh page to it – or a new chapter.

Celebrities have a range of options to do so. With TMZ paying a reported $5,000 for tips and paparazzi following many 24/7, they face continuous privacy challenges online and off. That is a great motivator.

Related reading: 

Angela Hrdlicka on Protecting CEOs, Private Citizens & VIPs

 
 
Google, Internet Legal Issues, , , , , , ,
Internet law information

We are all increasingly hearing about hot button issues such as fake news controversies, the “digital divide” and the range of narratives influencing public opinion on the internet.

In the United States, those issues are affected by the laws governing free speech and Internet content. At Reputation Communications, we are committed to educating the greater public about the laws, opportunities and nuances inherent in Internet perception-shaping and publishing.

Here at You(Online), we publish the most extensive resources specific to those topics.

Recent highlights include the following articles, which examine the “Right to be Forgotten,” Internet laws and one way President Trump protected his brand–something every public figure and many CEOs should do.

Dan Shefet: Creator of the Internet’s Ombudsman He made worldwide headlines in 2014 when he forced Google to remove links to defamatory information about him. He has since established the Association for Accountability and Internet Democracy (AAID).

An Attorney’s Advice for Removing Negative, Defamatory and Infringing Material from the Internet  Steps to take when you are a twibel target, to sue or not to sue, and “SLAPP,” a meritless lawsuit filed against a defendant in retaliation for speaking out against a public issue or figure.

President Trump’s Astute Online Reputation Management Playbook  Trump’s moves include purchasing 3,643 website domain names with variations of the word “Trump.”

As a trusted source of information on these topics, our blog has attracted a worldwide readership and been cited in leading media platforms. Please share our content with your friends and colleagues who care about these issues…and follow us on Twitter @reputationnews.com.

 
 
Internet Legal Issues, , , , , , ,

Many people don’t know how to ask Google to remove content from the Internet. The first step is to learn what your options are. You can do that by visiting Google’s Legal Help section. An excerpt:

If you’ve come across content on Google that may violate the law, let us know, and we’ll carefully review the material and consider blocking, removing or restricting access to it. Abusive content on Google’s services may also violate Google’s product policies, so before sending us a legal request, consider flagging the post, image, or video for one of our content teams to review.

Understanding Google’s policy toward inappropriate content on websites is the first step in determining whether you have a case. That is explained in Google’s Terms of Service:

Our Services display some content that is not Google’s. This content is the sole responsibility of the entity that makes it available. We may review content to determine whether it is illegal or violates our policies, and we may remove or refuse to display content that we reasonably believe violates our policies or the law.

Google often requires a court order before it will remove content. This is an excerpt from the Court Order section of Google’s FAQ:

If a court has ruled that web pages in Google’s search results or content on a Google service is unlawful, you can submit the order through our troubleshooter for our review. Please note that we only accept valid court orders signed by a judge. We may voluntarily remove the content from our services if provided with specific URLs and if the terms of the court order indicate the content violates the law.

If your issue pertains to defamation,  What to Do When You Are the Victim of Online Defamation, by David O. Klein, Esq. and Christine Rafin, Esq. may be a helpful resource. Another is the Lumen database, a project of the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University.  Lumen is a research project studying cease and desist letters concerning online content. The organization’s goals are to educate the public, to facilitate research about the different kinds of complaints and requests for removal that are being sent to Internet publishers and service providers, and to provide as much transparency as possible about the “ecology” of such notices, in terms of who is sending them and why, and to what effect.