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There is a tool called AirCheese for online reputation management that my company has been allowed to beta test for a couple of weeks now. I have to say it is going to be quite the category killer. You can sign up to test the beta and I think they are just letting everyone use it for free. It's wild/creepy what you can see on this thing.

Great post... with some very timely information. Unfortunately there are often negative stories out on the web - and especially in the case of mainstream media such as news websites.. they are not always accurate. In fact they are often highly biased and inaccurate. Having an arsenal of information such as the above should be essential for anyone in business.

Responding to negative comments is a tricky one. We did a whole article on it at http://www.socialtrending.com/blog/8-tips-for-responding-to-negative-com...

As a rule of thumb, responding to negative comments is most valuable when you can effect the change the commenter desires. Responding to someone with a simple "we are sorry you feel that way" type answer will more likely have a negative impact that positive - Comments on blogs draw more traffic / change to the blog which will increase that comments SEO value potentially moving it up the search engine rankings which could lead exponentially more users finding that negative sentiment and associating it with your site.

P.S. Listen to D.M. Scott the guy is a genius

Finally an article that explains what we're attempting to do! At Optimized-Me, we create detailed pages with people's current information - with SEO techniques applied. We even have links back to their accurate social networking sites, and integrate Google friend finder apps for wall and reference posts. All information is approved by the individual.

The goal is to get their optimized-me pages ranked above other online content that may not be accurate, up-to-date, nor wanted.

I'd love to hear feedback on our fledgling enterprise.

Adam

From a personal viewpoint, you want to make sure that your reputation is protected so don't do things like using your real name or likeness on the site.

From a business standpoint, you don't need to let negative PR ruin your online reputation. Just having a reputation in the first place is a success in itself. You can always recover - yesterday's news is old news.

it's getting to be just like in the old days, where people would gossip, and everybody knew everything about everyone. Just in a much larger context.

We don't live in tiny villages anymore, but we might as well, because the information can be found, whether you are living close by, or halfway around the globe.

So good news for the good guys, and bad news for the bad guys.
I hope we will continue to see that this kind of information sharing will be positive. But I do fear the day when major corporations start using this as a way of crushing their opponents.

It really is an excellen article with lot of info for ppl who really care about their online reputation!

Not only is it Google good for keeping track of your own reputation, but your competition as well.

Thanks for the great article. In today's world, monitoring where the customers, prospects, competition, and adversaries are talking is critical to managing one's online reputation. With all the places to leave comments and engage in a conversation, there is a potential for "fractured" conversations.

For example, someone could potentially respond to your company's news releases or other blogs in a variety of places, and other people pick up on that "conversation" and take it to another place, spreading the comments about the company. What makes it fractured is that is can be disassociated from the original comment, leaving the context in a position to be misunderstood. It's a company's responsibility to follow the conversations where and no matter how many places they go.

No discussion of reputation management can be complete without recognising that efforts to mitigate a poor reputation are quite futile if the root causes are not dealt with. In other words, the surest way to establish and maintain a good reputation is to practice 'doing the right thing'.

A lot of this article and the comments seem to be focused on tools and technology. There are plenty of good tools available, whether it is Google Alerts, or a proprietary solution like Andy's Trackur or our AlertRank. The most important part of managing your reputation online is having someone spend the time getting to know who is active in your space. You can monitor blogs and Twitter, but you have to know and be known by the people you are monitoring. That takes a lot of time, regardless of the tool you use.

This allocation of time is something that everyone needs to understand. Reputation management can be made more efficient with the right tool, but it can't become "automated." This is the hard thing to make clients realize. Your best defense in the social media world will be the people you know on blogs and Twitter, so a proactive reputation campaign will include the time spent cultivating those relationships.

Real-time search, G-Alerts, Twitter, and other form of reputation management are certainly crucial for a site or business these days; particularly if you want to be both big AND respected.

Generally, being just one or the other is a road to nowhere...

Xerces is extremely active on Twitter, Facebook & other socialnets; driving traffic is an important part of that -- but so is brand building and monitoring/active mgmt of our rep...

Lots of business think of themselves as local/"offline" and fail to realize just how important these things are to their future success!

This is a great article , dear it is worth reading 10 times.
Its very helfull in maintaining PR of my website and online reputation .

Visiting forums or blogs you are registered to or joined in constantly is an advantage in building good reputation. Be the one who have the last say on things. Don't let others put you in a bad light. Having someone to monitor your activities in the web 24/7 is the key.