A reputation management campaign means controlling the results that web users see when they conduct a search for you, your business name, your brands, and your products or services. A little negative press can go a long way to damage a reputation but by burying these negative posts and replacing them with positive or informative pieces it is possible to improve your reputation and even win new customers and more business. Setting up social networking profiles with sites like the following 3 is a great way to start any reputation management campaign.

1 – LinkedIn

LinkedIn is arguably the best and most popular social network that is dedicated to professionals and service providers. You can create a profile that links to your home page and you can add existing contacts while using the site’s features to help make new contacts. A great way to essentially post an online CV that anybody researching your name will find.

2 – Naymz

Naymz is one of the more popular contenders for the LinkedIn crown and it has a number of benefits. It offers more features for free, especially those features that are specifically designed to help you develop your network. It is especially popular with entrepreneurial professionals too.

3 – Newsvine

Strictly speaking, Newsvine isn’t really a social networking site but is more of a social media or social publishing site. Create a profile and add news articles and general interest pieces with links in order to generate traffic and create a buzz. Used well it can generate some good traffic and some excellent links.

Many businesses, websites, and individuals turn to social media optimization because it can be used to benefit their businesses or websites through marketing, brand building, and reputation management.

Unfortunately, the nature of social media and social networking websites is such that they can quickly take up all of your time logging in and checking and answering messages.

If you set up a Facebook account or a LinkedIn profile to help you bury negative search results then getting embroiled in lengthy conversations and looking up old school friends won’t help.

Online marketing and Internet reputation management are not mutually exclusive and indeed the act of creating and promoting your own web pages so that they perform well in search results could be considered a practice to benefit both.

Look for social sites that enable you to create a profile and then check back occasionally to see how things are going. It’s possible that a potential lead has made contact especially on some of the better networking sites for professionals but if you become a regular user of Twitter and MySpace then you won’t have much time left for running your business.

There are many types of social website. Social networking sites allow you to create a profile and then reach out and connect with others. Bookmarking sites provide a convenient means to bookmark your favourite pages and even make them public. Social media websites allow you to share videos, photos, and other forms of media.

Using a combination of these sites can help you improve your reputation and drive high quality traffic.

This article couldn’t be more right–in terms of online reputation management, there simply is nothing worse than British Petroleum’s handling of their recent oil spill. Online and offline, the press has been handled awfully.

“Obviously BP’s first priority is stopping the torrent of oil coming from the ocean floor a mile down in the Gulf of Mexico; the second priority (pursued simultaneously) is containing the damage from the spreading slick on the surface. Next to these tasks, formulating a social media strategy might seem trivial, secondary, or even inappropriate – but as marketers and PR folks will tell you, this should have started the instant the disaster was reported to BP’s management,” says Sass

It is easy to imagine why BP would neglect to tackle this problem online in light of the magnitude of the oil spill. But if they want to survive as a company with a decent image, they’ll have to confront their bad media sooner rather than later.

Social media has seen a massive boost in its popularity and widespread use with individual consumers, businesses, and organizations. Internet users are not only able to establish their own websites, blogs, forums, and other types of web page. They can also create profiles and establish a following on increasingly popular websites such as Facebook, Bebo, LinkedIn, and many thousands of others. By doing so it is possible to promote the appearance of being a professional in any field while also helping to promote a website and generate greater traffic for that site.

Another great benefit of effective SMO, or Social Media Optimization, is that it also assists with an effective online reputation management program. In business terms, reputation is everything. A good reputation can spread virally especially on the Internet but perhaps even more important to the website owner is the fact that a bad reputation will almost certainly spread and stick unless you do something to counteract the problem. Social media websites are one of the most popular avenues for people that feel they have grievances and they are equally popular with consumers and businesses looking for some kind of indication as to the value of your product, company, or individual reputation.

Bas posts about a company name or individual name can quickly reach the top of search results. While comments that are proven untrue may eventually be removed, the mroe proactive response to such a post is to bury it lower down the search results – establishing and managing online profiles with social media websites can play a major role in this act.

All companies should have a decent websites these days–even small, local, businesses need to have a place where their customers can check their opening and closing times, products offered, etc. However, websites are more important than just offering basic information.

If there is one reason why a company needs to pay attention to its website, it is to manage its reputation. If something goes wrong, this is the first place we will look. Despite corporate Japan’s overall indifference to the web – reflected in continuing poor scores – Toyota has been using its global site (not toyota.com but toyota.co.jp) to apologise to the world. “We deeply regret the inconvenience and concern”, it says in a home page splash.

This is essentially what a website is for–to put out an image and engage in search reputation management.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/61a61f4a-3cdf-11df-bbcf-00144feabdc0.html

International reputation management buffs know what anonymity does to the reviewing process online–nothing good. A new website, called Unvarnished, hopes to mimic the success that business-reviewing site Yelp has had but in regards to individuals. That’s right, the site will allow people to anonymously review…you.

Unvarnished is already raising ethical and legal concerns related to privacy and protection from defamation, with many questions focusing on the fact that the critiques are anonymous. Reviewers have overwhelmingly panned the website.

Unvarnished “essentially encourages defamation because it guarantees a forum for venting…. This forum is designed, in essence, for taking swipes at folks you don’t like. And it’s smartly leveraging Facebook’s very popular format to do so,” lawyer Kristen Dumont told the Los Angeles Times.

I think legal concerns, ethical problems, and the established success of competitor LinkedIn will prevent Unvarnished from doing much, despite the kerfuffle about their system of rating individuals.

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Society/2010/0405/Scant-praise-for-Unvarnished-a-website-for-reviewing-people

Facebook is a wonderful tool for connecting families that are across the world from each other. Friends are able to keep up with each other and news is constantly updated via friends’ newsfeeds. It really is a wonderful resource. However, there are dangers associated with facebook too, which most job seekers are familiar with.

A recent survey commissioned by Microsoft found that 70 percent of recruiters and hiring managers in the United States have rejected an applicant based on information they found online.

What kind of information? “Inappropriate” comments by the candidate; “unsuitable” photos and videos; criticisms of previous employers, co-workers, or clients; and even inappropriate comments by friends and relatives, according to the survey report, titled “Online Reputation in a Connected World.”

Online defamation can be more detrimental than most people realize. The truth is that facebook can be both a blessing and a curse. Job seekers should be careful in their attempts to hide their profiles, though, as this can often backfire.

http://news.myjoyonline.com/technology/201003/44141.asp

This article picks up one something we’ve covered here at the blog before–which is that social networking sites are fun and useful, but they can be injurious to your internet reputation.

There are many reasons one might not want certain photos or comments about their behavior to be made public information, but one of the most important is for your career. If you go to look for a job, certain companies actually go out and search the Internet for information about you. This includes the aforementioned social sites.

Facebook and Myspace can be horrible for your future as a professor, public official, student, warehouse worker, etc–because it has been proven, through surveys of employers, that your online reputation has a great deal to do with whether you are hired or not.

http://www.theeasttexan.com/above-the-law-social-sites-contain-hidden-dangers-1.1263872

One major league baseball player, Torii Hunter, is in hot water over some comments he made about his fellow baseball players. Hunter, a black player, was attempting to point out how dark-skinned Latino players are often mistaken for African-American players–but his comments created a firestorm of criticism, with some people even calling him racist for his remarks.

In the USA TODAY story, Hunter said: “People see dark faces out there, and the perception is that they’re African-American. They’re not us. They’re impostors. Even people I know come up and say: ‘Hey, what color is Vladimir Guerrero? Is he a black player?’ I say, ‘Come on, he’s Dominican. He’s not black.’ …

“As African-American players, we have a theory that baseball can go get an imitator and pass them off as us. It’s like they had to get some kind of dark faces, so they go to the Dominican or Venezuela because you can get them cheaper. It’s like, ‘Why should I get this kid from the South Side of Chicago and have Scott Boras represent him and pay him $5 million when you can get a Dominican guy for a bag of chips?’

“I’m telling you, it’s sad.”

The comments certainly don’t seem to be purposefully inflammatory, though maybe ill-advised. Either way, Torii Hunter is suffering from a fair amount of internet defamation.

http://www.usatoday.com/sports/baseball/al/angels/2010-03-10-torii-hunter-comments_N.htm

I know, I know–if you’re as tired as I am of hearing about Toyota, then this article is not welcome. But this article is one of few that I have seen that concentrates only on Toyota’s reputation, the damage it has suffered, or how it can get back to being well-regarded by the general public.

Toyota’s bungled global recalls has badly damaged its brand image, but while the carmaker faces its biggest-ever crisis, analysts and experts say its reputation is by no means beyond repair.

The Japanese giant, the world’s biggest automaker, has been almost constantly in the spotlight since January over a rash of defects that have prompted the recall of more than eight million vehicles worldwide.

The analysts are right–given time and work, virtually any reputation can be repaired (Jeffrey Dahmer excepted).An Internet reputation is important to maintain.

http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-world/toyota-can-restore-reputation-experts-say-20100301-pbsk.html