7 min read
The best reputation management strategies are proactive. In other words, if you aren’t actively managing your brand’s reputation, you are already behind.
8 min read
You aren't the only one contributing to your online digital footprint. This article provides ways to protect your online profile from those who would do you harm.
8 min read
Corporate reputation is formed by various factors that shift public opinion over time. These factors include search engine results, news coverage, social media posts, reviews, and other public comments.
8 min read
Online identity management is a collection of techniques used to create, promote, and protect the way a person or company is portrayed on the internet. Online identity management (OIM) often works as part of a branding or reputation management campaign to improve the quality and accuracy of the information that comprises your online identity.
12 min read
If you're here, you probably know exactly why reputation's such a big deal today. You want your personal or your company reputation to have access to the best opportunities, and a bad reputation can prevent that. A great reputation will open doors to fantastic opportunities and (if you're a business) unhindered access to your ideal client base.
Your reputation is the single-most important aspect of your business. It affects everything from the number of followers on social media to your overall business revenue. Here are just a few other benefits of a good reputation:
27 min read
Reputation is the subjective qualitative belief a person has regarding a brand, person, company, product, or service. Reputation is a belief that is socially transferred from one person or system to another.
Reputation is best defined as a third-party perception of your, or your brands, character and attributes. Reputation evolves over time, but it can be engineered. Every time you see an advertisement or press release about a company it's an attempt to somehow change how you think of the company's brand.
Reputation is perception, put another way - it is subjective. Reputation is a malleable thing. Malleable by others, or to some extent by the subject. Reputation perception in a small social circle is less changeable than it is in a large network because it is perceived on a one-to-one basis with no intermediary in-between. How you (person A) feel about the way your friend (person B) treated you is between you and your friend. No person or entity stands between so your friends' reputation is through direct knowledge you have of them.
Most reputation perception is through indirect knowledge. An example of this might be how you (person A) feel about your friends' (B) friend (C) whom you've never met. Everything you know about the person you have yet to meet (person C) has been communicated by the friend you do know (person B). If you friend (B) says bad things about the other person (C) you will probably come to the conclusion that the person you don't know is not a great human being - whether it's true or not. That person in the middle (B) is the intermediary.
The intermediary controls how you perceive the reputation of person C. In the case of a large network like the internet, where you have no direct knowledge, Google is person B.
Reputation perception within a large network (such as the internet) is often easier to change than in a smaller network (a group of friends) because today people depend on search engines like Google, or Amazon, to make decisions for them about the reputation of people, products, services, or companies.
These companies are in effect, person B, and they color the way you feel about things for which you have no direct knowledge. Every time you look at an Amazon rating you are experiencing the opinion of an intermediary. And in most cases you probably trust it. The same is true of Wikipedia articles, Instagram, or Google search results, most people trust them even though they can be manipulated.
In a large network reputation can be improved or damaged by manipulating the intermediary. Reputation intermediaries can be a search engine like YouTube, Bing, Google, Amazon, or Duck Duck Go. Reputation can be improved, or destroyed, using intermediaries because there is no direct knowledge of the facts.
Whether you're selling bottled water or running for President, your online reputation precedes you. By changing how Google portrays a brand you can change one of the main ways people perceive reputation.
In today’s digital environment, reputation is more important, more pervasive, more unforgettable, and more meaningful than ever. It's difficult to build, enhance, sustain, and protect a reputation that'll last (even for a reputation management agency). It’s also easy to neglect, abuse, reject, or shred a reputation in a short amount of time.
A disaster can happen in minutes, circle the globe within hours, and live on to haunt your search results. That's why it's so important to maintain an active reputation management strategy.
Let's unpack what reputation really is.
7 min read
A great brand story improves click-rates, increases dwell time, reduces bounce rate, helps branded content rank better in search results, and lowers the cost of promoting online content because it gets people to do much of the work.
9 min read
One of the first questions we get from most of our reputation management clients is, “How long will reputation management take?” (The next question is of course "How much does ORM cost?")
Their anxiety is understandable considering that more than 80% of consumers now search Google before doing business with a company. What Google’s first page says about your business practically determines how potential clients and partners see you. And this is why determining just how long it will take to conquer that first page and secure your brands online reputation is not as simple as you might think.
13 min read
ORM, PR, and SEO -- what are all of these acronyms for? Let's break them down, and then delve deeper into how they all fit together.
PR, SEO and ORM are all specialized disciplines of online marketing.
7 min read
Don't like the way Google profiles you? Delete it. Can't delete it? Hide it. Can't hide it? Dilute it. Can't dilute it? Suppress it. Google is more important than reality in many ways.
Do you define your reputation, or does your reputation define you? Do you control it, or does someone else? The good news is that perception can flow in both directions - for example when a business or person works to actively curate or repair their own reputation.
5 min read
On May 30th, 2003 it was reported that Barbra Streisand sued a man claiming an invasion of her privacy because he had shared aerial pictures of her Malibu home. Streisand inadvertently attracted more attention to her home by trying to suppress the images. The Streisand Effect is when the action of suppressing something to reduce or remove visibility it causes the opposite to happen. Similar terms include blowback and astroturfing.
4 min read
Our client is a global PR firm with clients in the US, Europe and Middle East. Over the years we have been tasked with a number of interesting projects ranging from helping politicians succeed to boosting search results in Thai and improving search results to enhance hiring. This case study examines a project to clean up search results for a company with detractors using YouTube, blogs and complaint websites.
7 min read
But it’s doable.