Reputation Management

By Young C. Chu

Online reputation management is a relatively a new industry. This has been brought to the forefront of professionals. Due to the overwhelming and unpredictable nature of both amateur user-generated content and professional journalistic content, the visitors are provided with a lot of opportunities. The visitors have to fill out the account registration process that includes email address, geographical location, date of birth and name. This is how the online reputation management called the ORM monitors the online content and spreads the information to the visitors. Many of the contents were user created and user generated.

The journalism contents are sponsored by traditional media and news giants. In many cases, these contents were sponsored by reviews, blogs and specialized websites that dealt with the particular subject. The ORM was formed to mange the consumer generated media. As, the consumer generated media (CGM) grew with the rise of user based online content and the social media, it started to affect the search results, more and more. Hence, managing these results became an important criterion.

eBay was the first company to harness the power of CGM's feedback. By providing feedbacks about the buyers and sellers, the reputations of the clients were known to the customers, who purchased the products. This helped them to decide on their purchase.

There are some review websites that had been abused. Some users practiced fraud and filed many false complaints against various businesses. They got people to post false experience that they had with other companies, although, such an incident had never happened. This is how; they ruined the people's reputations and the company's reputation.

By Christian Heftel

Reputation management is a service dedicated to helping companies with negative online feedback restore their online image, and improve their search results. If your company has a hard time doing online business due to negative feedback from customers on your website or in blog posts, then reputation management may be able to help.

If you are concerned about negative internet comments you or your company has received, than reputation management may be a helpful resource. As you or your business participates in online marketing or sells products online, negative feedback about a product or service you provide can drastically reduce the amount of online business you are able to generate for your company. Typically two types of negative feedback hurt an online business reputation: false negative feedback, or a single irate customer's feedback.

False negative feedback may be put up by competitors who want to hurt your reputation on the online market. Also, although most of your companies' transactions with customers may be overwhelmingly positive, it only takes one dedicated individual with a complaint that is put on your first results page to ruin your companies' name. A single individual or a small group of customers who are dissatisfied with their online transaction can easily retaliate with hostile and overly-negative comments and blog posts. This type of negative feedback can cripple the online reputation of your business by attaching negative search terms to first search results, and by bringing up negative comments and articles when a search about your business occurs.

It is when this negative feedback shows up as part of the first results in a Google, Yahoo, or MSN search that reputation management may help your company. Reputation management offers a wide variety of services to help companies improve their online name. By using various online management tools, they are able to improve your online image. These tools include using blogs, wikis, and social networking sites to generate positive advertising and feedback for your company. These tools are used primarily because they rank high in most search results, and because people who look for services online and engage in online transaction take comments they read about companies on blogs and wikis very seriously.

By Christian Heftel

In a society that becomes more technologically advanced every day, it seems that almost everything can be found on the internet. Consequently, the popularity and efficiency of internet marketing and internet businesses have exponentially increased. However, along with the incredible benefits of the internet--easily accessible information, fast communication, targeted advertising, etc.--the internet can also leave damaging effects on businesses. Bad reviews, negative feedback, unrealistic scam allegations, and harmful product reviews from competitors or careless customers can cause the downfall of a company. Businesses that are beleaguered with these damaging analyses may be the perfect candidates for reputation management help.

Reputation Management companies are experts in helping businesses that wish to improve their search engine-reputations. These reputation management companies use new technology and tools not to delete unwanted business reviews, but to make these reviews significantly less accessible to the public. Along with managing the damaging business information that may appear on popular sites like Google or Yahoo, reputation management companies can also improve the popularity of businesses through internet advertising, informative websites, etc. Moreover, there are several strategies in which reputation management companies use trained skills to improve the status of a business.

One common and effective technique to improve the online reputation of a business is the use of microsites, or smaller, usually independent websites that supplement to the primary website of a business. These sites are considered separate from their "parent" websites, but help to target audiences that may not respond to the main site, assist in building relevant links to the main site, launch products, educate target audiences, and counter other anti-company websites.

Another technique, with ever-increasing results, is the use of social media. By advertising a business through the social links of popular social media sites like Facebook and MySpace, businesses can target specific audiences in specific areas with specific interests, and can improve rapport through positive associations.

Businesses may also improve their internet success by linking to other significant business profiles. Although it is important to link with many different sites, it is most important to link with high-quality and reputable sites. Business profile linking not only allows a business to broaden its audiences and customers with the help of influential companies, but also allows a business to advertise a positive view of its company.