Online reputation management services can help to shape the success of customer’s online marketing campaigns, and the direction of their marketing campaigns in general. One article I recently read, over at SearchEngineWatch.com, one of the best websites for topics regarding online marketing, gave a great example about pizza.

I don’t get pizza often, but when I do, I find myself going with the familiar. I tend to get the same pizza from the same place. It’s simple, straightforward, and requires no thought or effort. And let’s face it, if I’m ordering pizza, I obviously don’t want to put in effort.

However, in a recent discussion with a colleague, we weighed the pros and cons of stepping out of our safe, normal, routines and trying something different. Only by trying something different could we find something new. I think he was talking about business or something, but I was hungry so that’s what I got out of our conversation. Try a new pizza place.

Now there’s this little pizza shop not too terribly far from my house that I drove by all the time but had never tried. Me, being the adventurous sort, decided that finding their phone number online and calling them really wasn’t that much effort so I did the deed and typed their name into Google and whammo — universal search result.

The number was right there on the SERP. I didn’t even need to visit their site, but I was intrigued and compelled to click on a link, right under their name, to two reviews. If I was going to try something new and it moved people enough to review it multiple times online, then I definitely wanted a glimpse of what was in store for me.

What was in store for the author was an odd review about patrons not having to be worried about being robbed. While the review was likely originally placed in the restaurant after a hold up or something in an attempt to help clients feel more safe. However, the author of the article points out that the review now just seems ludicrous and is likely to drive off, rather than bring in, customers.

http://searchenginewatch.com/3640929

LSI, or Latent Semantic Indexing, is a complex document indexing system that uses keywords, relationships, and other factors to provide users with a means to find relevant information. It is based on topical search as much as it is on keyword search so that if you search for a specific keyword such as “search engine” it would not only display semantically related results like “search engines” but related terms like “Google” or “meta search engine”. It’s the kind of system that is used in libraries and on the website Metaweb.

Metaweb is, if you will, a complex online reference library and it indexes data in the same latent semantic way. What’s more, it’s also now a part of the Google search stable that continues to expand. Google has purchase Metaweb in order to offer its users a continually updated and improved search experience so you should expect integration of Metaweb data into Google’s own data some time in the future. Considering Metaweb has details on over 11 million real world places, people, or objects the integration could take time but it is likely to come at some point.

SEOs and online marketers are constantly being presented with new and unique opportunities and obstacles that need to be overcome. Google has introduced some semantic results of its own. Local business listings, videos, news, blogs, and shopping results are some of these and compared to the opportunities that Metaweb presents they could be considered relatively simplistic in their indexing. Stay tuned to see what’s next.

When you ask seasoned veterans of the Google Reputation Management industry for advice on how to avoid being a victim of online defamation or libel, their number one reply is always to take preventative action–be proactive, rather than reactive. If you wait for something to happen, they say, it will. If you take the time to prevent online libel, it is less likely to happen and less likely to be effective–win, win.

Some of the most obvious ways that you can prevent any online libel from occurring is to purchase your domain name. For example, if your name is Alex Hernandez, you ought to consider purchasing AlexHernandez.com. Secondly, you ought to take all of the domain names and usernames for that name on messengers, like Yahoo or MSN, and on free blogging sites, like Wordpress and Blogspot.

Facebook was once a site that was only open to college students. It is still most popular amongst young professionals, college students, and high school students. However, the older generations are increasingly using the site to stay in contact with children and grandchildren, according to recent surveys.

However, those who are 55 and older are also the most concerned about privacy controls. Over 16.5 million people over the age of 55 use social networking sites, with Facebook being the most popular, but those people still have major concerns about identity theft, viruses, etc.

These people are probably the least likely to hurt their own reputations online and, consequently, need online reputation management help.

Twitter has brought the term microblogging to the fore of virtually every online marketer’s mind. It has particular benefit to online reputation management services because microblogging can be a quick and simple but highly effective way to post regular updates on the Internet. What’s more, sites like Twitter and Posterous can be combined so that updates on one site show on others. You can even integrate them into social networks like Facebook for potentially even greater exposure.

Twitter may be the benchmark by which all microblogging platforms are measured but there are a great many other similar websites as well as some that really break the mould.

One example of a microblogging site that attempts to do things a little differently is 12seconds.tv – rather than enabling users to post limited textual posts, it instead poses the challenge of posting short 12 second video blogs. Anybody that has attempted to condense useful information into short snippets will now just how difficult this can prove to be. It can also be integrated into other networks giving you a great way to show off video on otherwise text based networks.

There’s literally thousands of social networking and social media websites and not only would it prove fruitless to join them all, as you wouldn’t have time to post regular, high quality posts to them, but it would also be impossible because there are so many. Choosing those sites with platforms that interest you the most and offer the greatest benefits is a good way to ensure that you enjoy the greatest benefits of the sites.

The third annual Online Measurement and Strategy Report has been published and it shows that, surprise surprise, online reputation monitoring is the fastest growing analytic niche over the last year. Over the last year many people, and companies, have begun to realize exactly how important online reputation management really is.

There are several useful graphs in the report. Probably the single most interesting is the one that shows that a plurality of companies still don’t measure online reputation management. However, that plurality of 27% is far from a minority, meaning 63% do use some form of online reputation monitoring. Industry experts expect that number to continue to rise.

According to Mashable there has been a lot of controversy following Twitter’s most recent announcement that means third party sponsored Tweets will no longer appear in the user timeline. The uproar has not come from Tweeters who may find that the move enhances their own experience when reading others’ timelines, but instead from the active community of developers that has grown around the Twitter API and the Twitter user base. Presumably, those that have their own income stream based on sponsored ads may also have some reason to air their grievances although some advertising is still allowed.

While third party ads in the timeline are out of the question, there are still other ways to directly monetise your Twitter following. Advertisements that are not displayed in the timeline itself, and are therefore displayed around the edge, are still OK even through third parties. What’s more, you can still use the Twitter run Promoted Tweets service to show sponsored Tweets in your timeline. However, third party publisher applications have proven especially popular because of the greater freedom that they offer.

The move has undoubtedly been taken to protect the user experience (too many sponsored Tweets can be incredibly annoying and can make a timeline difficult to follow with any accuracy) but it has also been taken to help Twitter monetise their own network. Again, there are few that can have genuine argument with this but the big problem comes in the fact that developers feel they have not only been kept in the dark over the situation but have been given misleading and inaccurate information in the past.

Like the old Wild West, the Internet is a bit anarchic–but that doesn’t mean that there is no justice or that there is no way to defend yourself against unfair attacks. Just like the old West, there are tools with which individuals can protect their honor/reputation–and on the Internet it doesn’t require a six-shooter or any risk of getting shot! Wild West 2.0 is a new book on reputation management written by Michael Fertik. In it, he offers suggestions on self-defense against the sometimes-malicious Internet.

Your online identity is made up of all the online content that appears to belong to you. To claim it, you do not need to reveal any information about yourself. You simply need to claim usernames and URLs that mirror or resemble your real name. Create profiles on LinkedIn and Facebook. Visit the most popular user-created content sites—Google Profiles, Twitter, and blogging sites—and register your name, or something close to it, as a username. Finally, register your name as a domain name. It doesn’t require any technical knowledge and, if you use a popular registrar such as GoDaddy.com, costs around $10 per year. By claiming your name across the digital frontier, you will have an established profile in case of a future impersonation attempt or slanderous attack.

This is just one part of a book review on WorkBloom, the rest is well worth reading. One can never be too informed about online reputation management services.

http://workbloom.com/blog/miscellaneous/protecting-your-online-reputation-smart-digital-self-defense-and-insurance-against-damage/

Hotels are one of the many businesses whose websites and online reputation are extremely important to their overall success. Indeed, hotels spend millions each year on online reputations, websites, online advertising, etc. One very important part of the Hotel business is paying attention to online reviews.

It used to be that Trip Advisor was the only major player in hotel reviews, however, consumers now have many other ways to vent frustrations or express positive experiences – and they’re all online on their phones accessing social media platforms.

Two consumer trends are converging in the hotel review process.  The first one is the adoption of Smart Phones as a primary communication tool and the second is the ‘immediacy’ consumer, one that wants to communicate their experiences and touch their communities in the ’now’.   Neither of these trends are going away.   eMarketing predicts that mobile and Smart Phones are going  to double in the next two years.  (12/19/09)

Consumers can update their social network pages via the apps that are available on their phones.  They can push out Tweets on Twitter and post to their Facebook wall the experiences  they have. They can also access review sites like Yelp to immediately post comments.

It is certainly true that reviews are easier than ever to post and more visible than ever before. This is why it is so incredibly important to get out ahead of these problems and be proactive. If you must be reactive, though, the online reputation management industry certainly can help.

http://www.4hoteliers.com/4hots_fshw.php?mwi=5083

Whatever niche you or your business operate in, you can be sure to find websites and portals that are relevant to your industry. Similarly, you can also find geographically targeted websites that are especially useful if you tend to deal with consumers or businesses from one specific area. The same is also true of social networking websites – there are many general ones that are extremely popular but there are also a similar number of sites in virtually every conceivable niche and category.

Whether you’re looking for niche websites to help you improve search rankings or as part of a search engine reputation management program these niche websites can really help you develop the reputation that your business needs. Create your free profiles and become an active member of the community in order to get other users involved – this involvement can help to increase the number of search results for your brand and it can also develop new customers directly. What’s more, your community will tend to grow and grow.

Whether you own an artist’s workshop selling sculptures locally or a multinational non-profit organization you can find niche sites that are dedicated specifically to you. Many of them will enable you to develop relationships of every sort while others will specifically offer you a means to develop working partnerships or to create new custom for your business. Take a look around rather than diving in to the first site that you see because your results can vary greatly depending on the network that you join.