8 min read
The big fat guide to Wikipedia statistics
Wikipedia develops at a rate of 1.9 edits per second. English Wikipedia alone includes more than 6 million articles and averages nearly 600 new articles per day.
Reputation X
The Reputation X team is a collection of online reputation experts working in the areas of content planning, reputation strategy, search engine marketing, social media, technical public relations, and other more esoteric realms. We provide white-label reputation management, protect reputations and clean up search results for agencies, brands and people.
6 min read
Commonly used terms related to Wikipedia editing
Key insights
- Wikipedia has its own culture. Knowing the jargon will help you navigate the online encyclopedia.
- There are terms in different categories: about users, policies, creating content, and references.
It’s hard to overestimate the power of Wikipedia. While some other websites could have a bigger effect on your company’s reputation or SEO, few of those websites are edited by the general public.
To understand and leverage Wikipedia, you need to speak its language. Knowing these terms will not only give you a head start into working with Wikipedia the right way, but also provide insight into the politics behind it. Wikipedia’s jargon is in large part concerned with transparency: knowing who edits what and making sure each article is as unbiased as possible.
6 min read
What is digital PR?
Digital PR
(public relations) leverages online media and builds relationships with online journalists, bloggers, and influencers in order to amplify online brand messaging.
The internet has never been lacking buzzwords. A recent rise of interest in digital PR has critics, fans, and link-selling conmen struggling to agree on what “digital PR” really means. As you can imagine, each party pushes its own focus and corresponding language, creating a diffuse concept.
11 min read
Someone trashing you online? Here’s how to identify them
Tracking down who is defaming you online isn’t always easy, but some tips and tricks can help. The key is using tools and strategies to gather identifying information about the anonymous poster. Finding their email and IP address is a good start.
Highlights:
- It has become easy for people to anonymously post false and damaging things about you or your company online.
- You can find out who defamed you online—even if they post anonymously.
- There are tools and tactics available to uncover information identifying the defaming person.
Who might be creating negative content about you online?
It’s an altogether too common occurrence. You see something untrue and damaging about you or your company that someone posted online. Anonymously.
8 min read
How Reputation Firms Cheat
Highlights
- Most reputation management tactics are ethical because they seek to manage the available information about a company without deception.
- There are several ways that an organization can engage in unethical reputation management, including astroturfing, fake reviews, negative reputation website ownership, DDoS attacks, and generating false news about competitors.
Real reputation management involves knowing about, correcting, and balancing information about a person or company online.
3 min read
How to Track Google Search Engine Result Changes
There are many services that track changes in search engine algorithms. Most track Google, some track Bing and Google or other search engines. Below are the top SERP fluctuation trackers.
6 min read
Creating a Wikipedia article that (probably) won’t be deleted
Key takeaways
- Wikipedia will delete a page for a variety of reasons - mainly due to a lack of notability
- You partly control the odds of whether or not a Wikipedia article survives
- The right editors with the right approach in the right circumstances will increase your chances of keeping a page online
Why your company needs Wikipedia
Wikipedia is one of the Internet’s strongest and biggest websites. If you or your company has a Wikipedia page, chances are that page will rank high in the search results when someone performs a Google search. Whether you are developing a page for yourself or your company (frowned upon by Wikipedia), or creating one simply out of interest, these tips will help create a page that has a lower probability of being deleted.
11 min read
Every Type of Wikipedia Article Protection Explained
Wikipedia shows up as the No. 1 search result on more than 56% of all Google searches and appears on page one of 99% of all searches. Part of protecting your brand’s reputation should include making sure your Wikipedia page is protected.
Highlights:
- Some Wikipedia pages are prone to deliberate attacks of false information.
- To prevent fraudulent edits and vandalism, Wikipedia has various levels of page protection.
- There are 11 types of Wikipedia page protection, created to protect different types of pages in specific ways.
10 min read
What Google doesn't tell you about reputation management
Highlights:
- Google’s guide for online reputation management is overly simple (just three steps) and makes it sound like controlling what is written online about you is an easy process.
- In reality, managing your reputation on search engines is time-consuming and labor-intensive, with constant monitoring and publication of quality content.
- SEO and online reputation management are closely interlinked, as the better your SEO strategy, the more relevant results you want to see will be displayed on Google’s first page.
Google’s documentation for online reputation management outlines three simple steps.
- Search for yourself
- Create a Google account
- Remove unwanted content and the associated search results
Sounds easy, right? But it’s not.
9 min read
How to edit Wikipedia anonymously
Highlights:
- Anyone can make changes to Wikipedia, but that doesn’t mean you should. Wikipedia uses artificial intelligence to spot conflicts of interest.
- While it is possible to make an anonymous edit on Wikipedia, you won’t be able to hide entirely thanks to device fingerprinting and IP address tracking.
- In many cases, editing under a username is actually more anonymous than avoiding logging in because it doesn’t display your IP address publicly (though Wikipedia admins can see it).
Anyone can edit Wikipedia. Yet just because you can edit the page doesn’t always mean you should – especially if it’s about you or your company.
9 min read
Whodunnit? Who edited our Wikipedia article?
Key takeaways
- What Wikipedia says about you matters a lot
- Despite the setup of Wikipedia as an open-source program, not just anyone can edit everything
- Seeing who edited a Wikipedia article helps with transparency and understanding the power dynamics on a page
Wikipedia is one of the world’s most powerful websites. What Wikipedia says about you or your company can have a big impact, which is why many companies and organizations have tried to spruce up their Wikipedia pages - sometimes with disastrous effects.
8 min read
Build a powerful personal brand online using content gap analysis
Highlights:
- Improve your personal brand online by paying attention to what Google reveals about similar people.
- Online content gaps are missed opportunities at generating awareness and interest in your personal brand.
- A successful content strategy addresses customer’s needs at all stages of the buyer’s journey.
- A quick and efficient way to spot and correct content gaps is a best-practices analysis of your competitors.
Don’t be misled by the name. A personal brand is first and foremost a financial asset that generates sales, increases revenues, opens the doors to new opportunities, and enhances online reputation.
Like all other financial assets, a personal brand is an investment—success demands research, planning, strategy, and a diverse portfolio of communications and content.
Most personal brand advice starts with something about being unique, finding your voice, etc. But once you’ve determined what your unique personal brand should say, what’s next? What “content” portfolio do you invest in to build your brand’s value and positive reputation?
What will the canvas of search results reveal about your personal brand, and how do you get Google to show the world what you want it to see?
8 min read
Can you spot a fake Wikipedia edit?
People try to exploit Wikipedia’s open editing policy to add false information, but the online encyclopedia has tools and volunteer teams to suss them out.
Highlights
- Wikipedia uses powerful tools and a large network of volunteer editors to detect bogus edits.
- Wikipedia edits can be tracked by the editor’s username or IP address.
- False information is often quickly removed from Wikipedia.
- If you see false information on a page, flag the bogus content for a Wikipedia editor to review.
Wikipedia can be a part of your reputation management strategy and a great source of corporate visibility and marketing. But it also comes with some risks because it could include all kinds of information: good and bad. It is, after all, editable by the public.
6 min read
The guide to personal reputation management
Highlights
- Your personal online reputation is the information people find when they perform a search for your name online.
- Personal reputation management helps you monitor, influence, and improve your online reputation and personal branding.
- To improve your reputation, you must find what information about you already exists online, compare that to the information found for highly-regarded colleagues, and create a personal reputation management strategy to upgrade areas where your information is negative or poor.
When someone searches your name online or using a social media platform, what are they seeing? Is it something you’d be proud of?
Personal reputation management helps you monitor, influence, and improve your online reputation and personal branding.
7 min read
Does your personal brand statement make you stand out?
The highlights
- A personal brand statement sets you apart from the competition.
- Effective personal brand statements are succinct, emotionally provocative, intriguing, and formatted with purpose.
- Personal brand statements are relevant to entrepreneurs, freelancers, and job seekers alike.
- Powerful personal brand statements answer the questions of who you are, why you’re valuable, what you do, and who you serve.
A personal brand statement has the power to define your professional purpose and allow you to stand out successfully in a competitive marketplace. Let’s take a look at the elements that can be used to craft a great personal brand statement and view exceptional examples that put those elements into practice.
19 min read
The ultimate guide to corporate reputation
“It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently.” – Warren Buffet
Corporate reputation has so many facets, it’s hard to get all the information in one place. We’re here to remedy that. This corporate reputation guide will break down everything you need to know about corporate reputation:
- Definition of corporate reputation
- Why corporate reputation is important
- How corporate reputation is measured
- Reputation risk - What it is and how to mitigate it
- The value of corporate social responsibility
- How to build a corporate reputation strategy
- How to find a reliable, respectable reputation management company
10 min read
Brand stakeholders: Who they are and how to interact with them
Highlights:
6 min read
The impact of company image on corporate reputation
Highlights
- Corporate image and corporate reputation are subjective perceptions that affect how people see and interact with your business.
- Corporate image is more about how a brand makes people feel, while reputation includes people’s perceptions of a company’s products, leadership, finances, social responsibility, and interactions with its customers, employees, and community.
- Both corporate image and reputation can impact a company’s revenue and success.
- Even if you have a good corporate reputation, a poor company image can hurt your revenues.
- Incorporating image consulting into your reputation management strategy can improve your brand’s reach and success.
At a first glance, a corporate image and a corporate reputation might seem like synonyms. There are definite similarities between the two: both your corporate image and your corporate reputation are important subjective perceptions that affect not only how people see your business, but also how and if they do business with you.
7 min read
Can reputation be insured?
Highlights
- Your company’s reputation is arguably its most valuable asset.
- 63% of your market value is attributed to your corporate reputation.
- The Internet and social media have made reputation insurance more vital than ever.
- Reputation insurance policies can be purchased individually or integrated into existing company insurance policies.
- Stand-alone corporate reputation insurance policies are designed to cover any financial losses that relate to diminished sales from a damaged reputation but come at a much higher price than an add-on policy.
Of the many things that we count on in life, our reputation ranks amongst the most important. Often directly linked to our chances for social success, reputation is the intangible standard that affects our personal and professional life in a very tangible way.
5 min read
Online Reputation Management Tools
Tools used in reputation management campaigns
Online reputation management (ORM) tools can be broken into monitoring tools that tell you when a problem may be occurring. The second type of ORM tool is the kind that helps you solve a problem once it has occurred.
The vast majority of reputation related tools can be categorized monitoring / listening tools. Tools that actually help you improve your reputation focus mainly on improving online reviews. There are very few (maybe zero) software options to repair online reputation.
Truly improving or repairing online reputation takes a set of skills no software can match, although it may happen at some time in the future. We've broken down monitoring, outreach, and publishing tools below:
Tools for monitoring, outreach, analysis, and publishing
You can never understate the importance of your online reputation. From who finds you on the Web to whether they decide to do business with you, the image that is portrayed when your name or company is typed into a search engine holds significant power to harm you.