Social media has certainly changed the way we think about online reputations. Like in the real world, online reputations can now be ruined by one wrong statement.

For Facebook, it’s recommended to use more videos and pictures as users respond to visuals. Most organizations have videos on their website or YouTube channel for recruitment purposes. If your company doesn’t use videos, make this an initiative. Be consistent and use the same marketing collateral so it’s visible across all touch points for candidates.

Twitter has a different vibe and is more about sharing information and establishing a network. Twitter is also an ongoing conversation. It’s easy to hop in and out of various exchanges. With the 140 character limit, one has to be adept at crafting the right “hook” or teaser when supplying a link to content.

Using twitter and facebook effectively makes them great tools. However, if one misuses them, they can hurt you pretty easily. And remember, the reputation is tough to build, but easy to tear down.

There have been many online reputation management case studies in which it was shown that online reputation monitoring could have prevented a big problem from becoming even bigger.

Regularly monitor your brand’s reputation – Search for your business name and see what comes up. Doing a vanity search helps you identify not only where you are listed but also what is being said about your company. You want to be sure your information is accurate and complete. Set up Google Alerts for your name and your business name and choose whether you want email updates or an RSS update. You can also use Google’s Me On the Web, a tool that helps you manage search results on your name.

Google provides lots of tools for monitoring your reputation, which is helpful. However, the key is to do your own periodic investigations into your own brand name.

Repumatic is an online reputation management service founded by Chris Martin, who is the founder and Chief Executive Officer of Reputation Hawk LLC. Chris Martin was one of the first professionals online working in the industry of Internet reputation management. He excelled at an early stage in this career and has been offering web reputation improvement services ever since 2007.

Repumatic is just Chris Martin’s latest business project, but it is perhaps the most impressive project as of late. It automates the online reputation management process to some degree and offers the user the ability to pay nothing and still receive high quality web reputation protection services.

Repumatic is free–not because it is low quality, but because it is such high quality that Chris Martin knows it will spread quickly and bring clients in to his business regardless. There are, of course, add-on services which many clients will find beneficial–but Martin does firmly believe that everyone should be able to do more to control their search engine results pages.

The Internet has continued to change and morph over the years. This has made web reputations far more important than they ever were in the past.

The impact of all this user generated content is that the online world has become a key source for getting bare truth about companies, people, etc directly from end users. You’re planning to buy a property and want to do a quick check on the reputation of a particular builder, simply look it up on the Internet. You’re facing issues with your mobile operator and want to know if there are others facing similar issues, then simply do a hash tag with your mobile operator and search for it on Twitter. You went on a holiday trip and felt that the hotel you stayed in offered lousy service, you can vent it all out on the various travel blogs out there. And likewise for any other product or service you purchased.

All of this can be quite damaging to companies. Many times, people abuse these privileges and powers in order to defame companies they don’t like, competitors, or former employers. This is why search engine reputation management is so important.

Many companies suffer negative reputations because of factors that are beyond their control. For many companies, it is a matter of public perception that cannot be changed. For example, this article on pawn shops shows the problem quite clearly.

Pawn shops are often seen in movies as dark places that influence illegal acts and promote drug use and violence. Perhaps this false stigma causes some people, including BYU students, to shy away from these secondhand stores. Brent Johnson, co-owner of AAA Trading and Pawn Inc. in Provo, estimates that only around one percent of his customers are students. Students who use his loan services are even fewer.

Many pawn shops also suffer from a negative online reputation thanks to various online review boards and comments in which online defamation is the norm. This creates a problem for pawn shops with online presences.

Are bloggers journalists? That is the question that so many people are asking right now thanks to a recent court case. However, this article argues that is simply does not matter.

As the details came into focus, journalists everywhere breathed a sigh of relief. She’s not a journalist; she’s just a crazy lady with WordPress! We don’t need to protect her. But the reason we don’t need to protect Cox isn’t because she’s not a journalist. It’s because, as Carr describes, her information was bad. “None of it was ever proved,” he says. If she had indeed exposed criminal wrongdoing and the Judge had not protected her, we should be outraged. But that’s not the case.

I’d say it matters, but in this particular case it’s immaterial. It serves as a good example of an online reputation management case study–bringing a lawsuit against the person who defamed you can actually spread the defamation all over the Internet.

Probably the single worst thing about online reviews is that they are essentially anonymous because of the inability for readers and websites to authenticate who is actually reviewing the product, service, or person.

Fake Reviews
It is not above an organization to write false reviews about a competitor. The bile spewed forth from them completely buries the good SEO content created by the unfortunate company on the receiving end of the fake reviews. Suddenly, when someone uses a search engine and types in your company’s name, all they find are reviews which state how awful your business is.

As a result, your sales start to plummet and your rival wins. Or do they? You can hire specialist companies to create more SEO content as a means of restoring and managing your online reputation. When you consider that around 75% of customers make a purchasing decision based on customer reviews, those on the wrong end of a fake defamatory review need to take action and fast.

Being able to authenticate who wrote the review would certainly prevent a lot of problems. One online reputation management case study after another has shown that online review websites are often at the center of the problem.

People often ask how do they know if their social media tracking is working properly. Well, this is a pretty good explanation:

If every listing on the first page of search results for your name is about you, has no negative information, and has your contact information so people can get ahold of you immediately after looking at that webpage, then you’re in top shape as far as your online branding goes.

Most people will have to hire a reputation management agency in order to achieve those sorts of results, but it’s a good barometer to measure success by.

Creating a website that can support a profile or blog program is a complicated process if you try to do it yourself or have someone do it from scratch. In both cases it can be a very expensive endeavor, not to mention time consuming. Luckily, there are alternatives. Most importantly, these alternatives do not have to be either expensive or time consuming.

Jimdo is one of the many alternatives that is free. This is a website that allows people to create their own websites for free. Essentially, any website created is a subdomain of jimdo.com, but to most people, the differences are minimal. For individuals who are looking to create a website for Internet reputation management reasons, this is more than enough.

It is not a bad idea for anyone to go to sites like this and register their name. For example, Sue Bronson might want to register SueBronson.jimdo.com before someone who doesn’t have a high opinion of her does so. Once someone else does it, it’s too late. At that point, you’ve no option except to hire a search engine reputation management firm.

There are a host of websites out there for creating free profiles, user-names, and blogs. The trick is to find one which is unique, reputable, and reliable. All of those details can be found at FreeBlogPlace. The website offers free blog space to others, though it isn’t without some pre-conditions, which you’ll have to read on the website. The service is offered free of charge–as a result, one cannot expect world-class service, but I’m told it is reliable.

Once you have created your account and selected the location of your new blog, it is important that you actually contribute something reasonably worthwhile.  The team here at FreeBlogPlace will delete any blogs deemed to be nothing other than SPAM and those blogs that have not been active for 90 days.

Having a real person attend to your issues is incredibly helpful. Especially when it comes to wordpress, there is a great need to talk to someone who can actually answer questions. Sites like these are wonderful for people who are looking to improve their online reputation. Blogs are an essential cog in any search engine reputation management campaign.