Biznology

Everybody indeed wants a shortcut. I just wrote something about this in relation to building online social media communities over on the Huffington Post and so I thought I would extend the idea to online reputation management (ORM) as it’s practiced both in your own life (as the resulting splatter painting of your life online, over time, unintentionally) and as it’s managed by my company, Reputation.com. Like Jackson Pollock, you’re creating a genius work of Abstract Expressionistic spatter painting; unlike Pollock, you’re probably not being remotely as artful and intentional as he was — and this is a problem. The art that is reflected online — and in a rich reduction of everything you’ve every done and ever said distilled into only ten — maybe twenty — results. Read the remainder of this entry »

When speaking about what Reputation.com does, people often think of Online Reputation Management (ORM) as a defensive strategy. And for some, it is. However, Google is often the first impression anyone gets when they’re introduced to your brand online. While SEO is an excellent way of getting your company to the top of search, there are nine other results that come up during these searches as well. What are on them? Are they about you? Are they positive? Are you surrounded by all of your competitors? Are there negative reviews or complaints? What online reputation management does is makes sure that the most accurate, positive, reflection of you, your brand, your products, and your services come up when your prospective clients search for you. How this gets done is up to you; and, like everything, sailing’s always easier when seas are calm. Read the remainder of this entry »

While I concur with Vizzini, the Sicilian from the movie The Princess Bride, that one should “never get involved in a land war in Asia,” sometimes there’s no escape — and taking on Google’s search index, algorithmic prowess, and the natural results of organic search itself is, indeed, akin to getting involved in a land war in Asia. Most folks know only of the fierce fighting associated with organic search engine optimization (SEO), a process by which we write copy, optimize architecture, use keywords, add hyperlinks, and interlink sites in order to associate a keyword phrase with our particular brand, product, service, and site; another, larger battle is online reputation management (ORM). Read the remainder of this entry »

Many hands make light online reputation work. Changing your reputation online is no small task. It’s also a house of cards. You can either do it yourself, about yourself, for yourself; or, you can start the equivalent of an online reputation club, inviting friends, family, your colleagues, and your industry to start building a universe of content that is germane and salient to who you are, what you believe, what you’ve done, and what you’re doing as well as who they are, what they believe, what they’ve done, and what they’re doing.

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Online reputation is a marathon and not a sprint. One thing I have learned over time is that you cannot treat your online reputation like a barn-raising — you can’t construct an entire online reputation in a long weekend by just getting “all hands on deck,” throwing money, availability, strong shoulders, and resources at it all at once; rather, it’s more like building a wooden boat from scratch — you can spend a weekend designing it, sourcing your materials, and collecting all your tools, but some things take time; and, in boat-building, some things take longer than others (stains and waterproofing take time to dry, bending and curving and shaping wood also requires wetting and careful molding).

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