Blogging can be a highly beneficial way of promoting a website, generating traffic, and improving the opinion of your potential clients and partners. The regular addition of naturally written content not only tends to mean a large number of keyword optimized pages but it also generates trust from others and subsequently more links to your blog. Blogging can also be used for Internet reputation management by burying negative online press and replacing those results with your own pages.

The links that you include in the blog are important. Keyword rich links are beneficial to improving search engine result pages but rather than using those that are relevant to your industry there are other keywords you should consider.

If you use your own name in any form of communication then you should research your full name and aliases to see what shows up. Use major search engines and consider using services like Google Alerts and Yahoo Alerts.

Potential clients will also search for your business name and any other names your business might use. What’s more, if you use a URL for your website that differs to your company name then you should research this too.

Other keywords to consider researching include the names of executives within your company, product names, and known brands. Leads will often research these names using the Internet because it is quick and easy. If you find negative results or you simply want to manage your reputation for the future then add links including all of these relevant keywords.

LinkedIn is a website where professionals, especially young professionals, can network with each other. The site enables users to create profiles which will then display pictures, resumes, work histories, etc. Various individuals can indicate what business they work for–the various people who work in that same business will then be connected to each other.

Signing up for LinkedIn is fairly easy and simple. The website is dynamic and easy to use once you are signed up too. Most importantly, the site is trust by Google. This means that when people search for your name on Google, your LinkedIn profile is one of the first things they will find. Nothing could be more professional than having LinkedIn appear at the top of your results. This is an important attribute for those who need help with their online reputation.

LinkedIn is one of the most popular social networking sites for professionals. It allows users to add a professional profile that includes details of their work experience and also enables them to link up with people they know through existing careers and previous ones. Naymz is being touted as a major contender to the crown of professional networking website.

Naymz does very well in search engine results. If you’re attempting to bury negative press from the search engine results and replace it with your own spin then using social networking sites that appear in search results is important.

Naymz enables you to view profiles of other users, including those people you don’t know. You can then connect with users that you don’t know. With LinkedIn and other professional networking sites, you have to know your connections in order to add them to your network.

Naymz is still a relatively new site, and doesn’t have anywhere near the number of users that LinkedIn is able to boast. It is also lacking in a Groups section which many users of other social networking sites find to be useful. However, its search results and promising features make it a beneficial site for joining and adding your profile.

There are certainly higher profile sites than Naymz but it is growing in popularity and as such it is likely to become a real player in the future. By signing up now and creating a profile you can potentially get ahead of the crowd and help manage your online reputation.

Most companies understand there is an inherent risk in creating social networking profiles on Twitter, Facebook, or Myspace. The positive is that customers have an opportunity to spread word about your business and deliver helpful feedback. The negative, of course, is that they could possibly say very negative things about your business. Venting about your company on Twitter or Facebook could expose it to a good deal of criticism and cost your business customers.

With the appearance and growing proliferation of other social formats, such as Twitter, companies have begun to embrace this potential for collaboration. Social networking has evolved from personal networking to become a medium for mass communication. Many companies now view sites such as Twitter, Facebook etc. as valuable marketing channels.

The rest of that article, linked below, has a good deal of good advice for companies using social networking sites concerning security. Protecting against hackers and spamware is almost as important as protecting against Internet libel.

http://www.expresscomputeronline.com/20100426/securityspecial01.shtml

Too often in the business reputation management industry we hear from businesses who have fired an employee or parted ways with a partner only to be slandered online and have those negative comments appear in Google or Bing results. This does untold damage to the company’s reputation despite their having done nothing to deserve this negative attention. Now, we have a social networking site that basically wants to do the same thing–but for individuals.

A new website is betting you’re willing to dish about your co-worker’s job performance just as you would a Netflix movie or an Amazon purchase. The site, dubbed Unvarnished, came out of private beta testing last week and aims to create an open forum to rate professionals in the workplace — for better or for worse.

For worse, it sounds like. This really is an awful idea–people are going to hate Unvarnished because it is almost guaranteed that anyone who gets profiled on the website will have a very negative reputation. Worse still, I could see junior high and high school kids using the site to cyber bully other kids.

http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1977982,00.html?xid=rss-topstories

Unvarnished is a new social networking site which allows individuals to review your work ethic, personal integrity, etc. Sounds dandy right? Sure–except that the site is anonymous, people will be reviewing your work ethic anonymously. As we have seen in the past, anonymity encourages the worst sort of behavior online. The website could have major effects on web reputation management.

Now anyone can create a profile for you and write anonymous reviews of your work and character. The founders of Unvarnished think this will lead to more honest critiques of people online. But the opposite is also possible: that anonymous commenting will lead to heavily negative reviews of people online.

It seems likely that Unvarnished will simply turn into a place where rival employees or job applicants can trash each other, ex-girlfriends can get revenge, and ex-employers can spread vicious lies–if you aren’t willing to attach your name to a negative review, how much stock can we really put in it?

http://econsultancy.com/blog/5699-if-you-let-the-crowd-control-your-rep-will-you-like-what-you-see

Marketing Week, a UK based website, is a wonderful resource for keeping up with the latest developments in brand reputation management. The article illuminates why Toyota’s brand problems have been so bad and how much it has damaged them.

That lag in real-time response could have cost the car marque up to £7bn in brand value, according to Brand Finance’s valuation estimates. This figure could be devastating at a time when the car industry is struggling to revitalise itself after a protracted economic downturn.

The fact that this much damage can be done to an online brand just goes to show how important reputation management services are these days.

http://www.marketingweek.co.uk/in-depth-analysis/cover-stories/bringing-your-brand-back-from-the-brink/3011206.article

David Loglisci has admitted that he based investment decisions based on whether New York Comptroller Alan Hevesi and his political advisor would benefit from those investments, a clear violation of his authority as a state official. He was the chief investment officer at the Comptroller’s office. Attorney General Andrew Cuomo launched an investigation into the matter.

Cuomo, who made his investigation public last spring, said he has been cooperating with California Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown in a separate probe on the West Coast. Brown is investigating the role played by politically influential marketing intermediaries, known as placement agents, in multibillion-dollar deals between the California Public Employees’ Retirement System and investment fund managers.

If David Loglisci ever wants to go back into public service, or into business, he’ll need a significant reputation management campaign.

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-pension-fraud11-2010mar11,0,2522637.story

Jay Leno’s return to The Tonight Show outpaced David Letterman’s The Late Show by a long mile, apparently. This should come as no surprise, the various media outlets covered the Conan/Leno fight incredibly closely.

About 6.6 million people watched comedian Jay Leno’s return to hosting NBC’s “The Tonight Show” Monday evening, topping his closest rival, David Letterman, who drew 3.8 million viewers on CBS, according to early Nielsen Co. data provided by NBC.

This hints at the fact that Leno may have overcome his significant reputation-problems that evolved over the course of the Conan/Leno dispute. Of course, I’m sure there are still quite a few people, The Tonight Show viewers even, who think less of Leno after that whole debacle. A brand reputation management campaign would probably help, but he certainly has done a lot of damage.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704486504575098114290220940.html?mod=WSJ_business_whatsNews

Yelp! is not just something you do when you stub your foot–it’s a website that lets customers post reviews of businesses online. This is an increasingly common practice, especially for dissatisfied customers. This means that the businesses are having to offer better services, better products–and even free stuff!

To many customers, user-review sites have become the go-to destination for determining the best nearby services, with ratings on dentists, cafes, bars, mechanics and other businesses.

The freebies many owners are offering to salvage their ratings include free meals, exchanges for faulty products and second tries on services such as botched haircuts, Sterling said.

“This ups the ante for businesses,” he said. “You can’t really hide anymore.”

The rest of the article is mostly about the ethics of dealing with customers over Yelp–but it’s well worth a read. Yelp! is a website which can encourage web libel against many businesses, so it will remain relevant.

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-reviews26-2010feb26,0,5795837.story