Online Brand Reputation Management Themelis Cuiper

Themelis Cuiper is social media expert
@Themelis_Cuiper




Online Brand Reputation Management


Reputation management is the process of tracking an entity's actions and other entities' opinions about those actions; reporting on those actions and opinions; and reacting to that report creating a feedback loop. All entities involved are generally people, but that need not always be the case. Other examples of entities include animals, businesses, or even locations or materials. The tracking and reporting may range from word-of-mouth to statistical analysis of thousands of data points.

Reputation management has come into wide use with the advent of widespread computing. This is evidenced by a recent front page story in the Washington Post featuring several online reputation management firms. Reputation management systems use various predefined criteria for processing complex data to report reputation. However, these systems only facilitate and automate the process of determining trustworthiness. This process is central to all kinds of human interaction, including interpersonal relationships, international diplomacy, stock markets, communication through marketing and public relations and sports.

A number of enterprise reputation management software solutions exist in the international market. These software services are typically designed to connect organisations to their stakeholders, track the orchestration of stakeholder engagement and analyse, measure and manage the results.


Search Engine Reputation Management

Search Engine Reputation Management (or SERM) tactics are often employed by companies and increasingly by individuals who seek to proactively shield their brands or reputations from damaging content brought to light through search engine queries. Some use these same tactics reactively, in attempts to minimize damage inflicted by inflammatory (or "flame") websites (and weblogs) launched by consumers and, as some believe, competitors.

Given the increasing popularity and development of search engines, these tactics have become more important than ever. Consumer generated media (like blogs) has amplified the public's voice, making points of view - good or bad - easily expressed.

Search Engine Reputation Management strategies include Search engine optimization (SEO) and Online Content Management. Because search engines are dynamic and in constant states of change and revision, it is essential that results are constantly monitored.

Social networking giant Facebook has been known to practice this form of reputation management. When they released their Polls service in Spring 2007, the popular blog TechCrunch found that it could not use competitors' names in Polls. Due largely to TechCrunch's authority in Google's algorithms, its post ranked for Facebook polls. A Facebook rep joined the comments, explained the situation and that the bugs in the old code had been updated so that it was now possible.

Also until social sites like facebook allow google to fully spider their site then they wont really have a massive effect on reputation management results in the search engine. The only way to take advantage of such site is to make sure you make your pages public.

It is suggested that if a company website has a negative result directly below it then up to 70% of surfers will click on the negative result first rather than the company website.

Online Brand Reputation Management

PR
The goal is good public relations. Being mentioned in social media can be a threat if there is criticism, but can also generate benefits if such criticisms are reversed. The material monitored includes professional journalism and user-created content. The service arose from a desire to influence consumer generated media

As internet user generated content grew, it affected internet search results; the desire to change those results followed.

EBay was one of the first web companies to expolit feedback from consumer generated media. By using user generated feedback ratings, buyers and sellers were given reputations that helped other users make purchasing and selling decisions. A countervailing service is emerging which exposes reputation information suppressed by online reputation management companies.

An online research report stated in August 2008 that the UK market for online reputation management would grow in that year by around 30%, to an estimated value of £60 million.