A Trip Back in Time: How People Talked About Online Reputation Management 20 Years Ago

The Internet is growing at lightening speed nowadays and the constantly flowing information is highly unregulated. There have been cases, where a person or certain company has gone through undeserved negative attention for some reason and that caused great damaged to their reputation. This new and rapidly growing field of reputation management works hand in hand with individuals and companies to bring down any negative publicity. There are a number of different ways these online reputation management or ORM companies work to take care and monitor Internet publicity to improve it.

™

image

As we all know, your whole world revolves around your reputation, if you let it negatively affect you, you stand a chance to lose all. If you don't have your reputation intact, you don't really have much. Whether you're launching a new business or trying to get into politics, reputation is everything. However, it has been seen over time by companies as well as individuals that it's very difficult to tone down the any negative online attention on their own. Online Reputation Management companies try to work with any company/individual who wants their reputation being improved and monitored through different methods on a regular basis.

One more method that is used to manage reputations is social media. This includes social networking platforms such as Facebook, Orkut and MySpace where they create positive/beneficial profiles for their clients.

Also, RSS feeds are very common these days, which is why they are also used to improve reputations. ORM services work hand in hand with auto updating content sites like news headlines, blog entries and video to have a better chance in increasing positive results. Many times reputation management companies have used a "blog" to leverage its power in order to give away valuable/positive information about their clients from time to time. Since these blogs get a good search engine ranking, this method can work very effectively when it comes to improving ones reputation.

Apart from this, linking business profiles helps a company or a person connect to more high quality sites. When a certain company that holds a good reputation links to another website who's reputation is being monitored, this gives a boost to the positive publicity for that website.

If you've used Google, you know the site which dominates most of it first page results is Wikipedia. However, the reputation management companies have found that by having their client's own wiki is better than having one at Wikipedia, which is known to be not that effective. The main benefit of having your own wiki profile is control. The creator controls who all contribute to it and how far they should be allowed. With the rise of YouTuube and other video sites, videos are also highly connected to online reputation management. ORM companies also work closely with such websites where video is being shared to get a better position in the search results.

image

All in all, this clearly shows that ORM is a rising industry and there various ways which are being effectively used to keep a tab on the irregular flow of content on the web.

The brand name is every business' most valued commodity.  With the advent of Google toolbar, and the Google search box being increasingly integrated within browsers, most consumers now search for a business, rather than type in the full domain name.  For retailers, this means that it is more important than ever to actively manage search results.

Online Reputation Management (ORM) is crucial to every online retail business.  The first impression a customer gets often comes from the top three hits from a web search.  Customers want to easily find the website; if the actual website is not ranked first, potential clients are given the impression that the business is small, new, or ineffective.  Additionally, if the next few search hits are links to chat rooms, news articles, or blogs with negative reviews, customers may be quick to search for a new retailer.

image

In order to keep their good name well-received, web retailers should be quick to monitor the internet for any consumer-generated feedback regarding their business name, products, or reviews.  If negative feedback is found, it is essential to counter-act this information.  For many small internet business owners, this task may seem daunting; monitoring the web 24-7 is more than most have the resources to handle.

Fortunately, there are many services available, Online Reputation Management many of them free!  For those that wish to have more in-depth spin control, there are dozens of companies emerging who specialize in ORM.  Regardless of the path a business takes, the ultimate goal is the same: to ensure that the brand name is kept safe.