If you’re musing about improving your online reputation, it might help to have an idea of the direction you’re going in. This brief guide can help you formulate a plan and take action.

Brand touch points are like digital fingerprints; they tell a story. What are brand touch points and how do they affect business? Whether you realize it or not, your brand's customer touchpoints are working to help, or hurt, your organization's reputation with consumers. If a potential customer sees brand-related content and it piques their interest, what will they do next? They may perform a branded search (using your company name), in which case it's up to Google what your customer sees. How dost Google love thee?

Advertising and public relations share a common goal, which is to improve their clients’ visibility, usually with a goal of increasing sales or other tangible benefit. In a corporate setting, you’ll often find advertisers and PR professionals working alongside each other in the marketing department along with people from related areas.

What is the difference between SEO and ORM? SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. ORM stands for Online Reputation Management. SEO is generally concerned with getting a website to rank better for product or service-related search terms. ORM is generally concerned with getting many websites to rank well for the brand name. Both are subsets of online marketing. 

One of the biggest stories of last year was the chaos wrought by so called “fake news” articles and publications. Today people often call it by another name, propaganda. Using widely distributed media that tells half-truths in order to influence public opinion has been going on since Darius I took the Persian throne in 515 BCE. In America its been around since the days of yellow journalism and perhaps before. 

When prospects research your company they compare you to your competitors. More specifically, they compare your search results to those of your competition. What they see online can mean the difference between contacting you and not.

Imagine a prospect is making the tough decision between using your company or your competitor. At the last minute they discover something a bit "off" about your company's online profile. Which company will get the sale? 

It could be a review, a lack of publicity, a problem with your Wikipedia page, or many other things. How does reputation play into the buyers journey?

Why do you believe the things that you believe? We like to think that our beliefs are our own, formed from our unique, individual experiences, informed by our own logic, devoid of outside bias. But "confirmation bias" is one factor that quietly pushes us to one side of the fence or the other. In short, people agree with things they already agree with.

There was a time when you couldn't get a chicken soup recipe while sitting on the toilet. Strange but true! It used to be that you asked your mom, or your friends, a book, or your local librarian for information. Today, instead of picking up the phone, everyone from bearded urban millennials to grandmas and dairy farmers turn to one place above all others: the Internet. How do people search? Who gets clicked? Why does search matter so much?

Has any phrase been more divisive and frustrating during the 2016 election cycle and current federal administration than “fake news”? Seemingly innocuous in its phrasing, the term has come to stand for entirely more than just a story with false facts. Fake news—who makes it, who reads it, who believes it, and who profits from it—are all increasingly important topics in modern society, so much so that it now seems Americans live in two separate, competing realities.