Online Reputation Monitoring Tips For Beginners

By theo3299 | Published January 22, 2012

Let’s consider for a moment that you, or your company, are new to the monitoring of your online corporate reputation.  With so many sites, blogs, communities, forums, and social networks to tackle it can become quite confusing and overwhelming on where to start.

Step back for a moment and consider the following:

Key Consideration

  1. Threats to your brand and reputation will come from negative content that has been published on sites or networks with high visibility or popularity.

Why This Is Important

  • If no one sees a negative comment about you or your organization, its impact to your reputation is very limited.

So Common Sense Says

To start with, monitor the sites and sources that are popular or that have high visibility.  Here are some simple suggestions on where to begin with monitoring your online corporate reputation or online personal reputation:

  • Go with Google – Monitoring the comments, reviews, and rankings in the world’s number 1 search engine will cover quite a bit of ground for beginners seeking to monitor their online reputation.  Aspects worth monitoring within Google are:  Search, News, Blogs, Documents, Google +, Images, Video, and more.
  • Become friends with Facebook – Again, the world’s most popular social network engages hundreds of millions of people with sharing billions of conversations…perhaps about your company.
  • Tweet with Twitter – One of the fastest growing social networks and one of the most popular among fast growing topics that involve popular people and figures.  When monitoring Twitter consider paying close attention to your company name, #yourcompanyname, #yourcompanyservice, #yourcompetitors.
  • Love LinkedIn.com – As the world’s largest business social network, LinkedIn.com serves as a direct portal into the corporate conversation about you and your company.  Monitoring questions, answers, and comments about you and your company is extremely important.

Sample Online Reputation Report

If you are not sure about the status of your personal or corporate online reputation, we encourage you to request a Sample Online Reputation Report by our team of specialists at The Online Body Guard.

Posted in Online Corporate Reputation, Online Personal Reputation, Reputation Monitoring | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Removing Online Comments That Affect Your Reputation

By theo3299 | Published October 27, 2011

The advancement of local search engine accounts in Google, Yahoo, and Bing offer the opportunity for online users to make comments about their experiences with your company.

Depending upon the search engine that is used, comments and reviews that are posted about your business are typically assigned a rating, date, time, and online identity of the poster.

Unfortunately, not all reviews and comments are 100% positive.  Instead, a mix of both positive and negative comments can appear and the reviews are typically based on a true customer experience.  However, sometimes competitors attempt to sabotage your corporate reputation by creating a false online account and posting rumor-based content.

Why Monitoring Your Local Search Engine Account Is Important

  • 47% of American companies’ net worth is tied up in intangible assets like brand equity and reputation.
  • 25% of search results for the world’s top 20 largest brands are links to user generated content.

Top 5 Comment Management Tips

  1. Verify that you are the owner of the account.  (Please see the instructions for this procedure for each search engine as they all have different processes for account ownership and validation).
  2. Sign up to receive email alerts of comments and reviews posted to your account.
  3. When a comment is made make a determination of its intent and react accordingly with a response.  Negative comments require quite a different response that positive comments.
  4. If the commentary or review is negative, ensure that your request for removal to the search engine includes detailed information regarding WHY the comment should be removed according to its online policy.
  5. Repeat.  Quite often comment removal may take several attempts for success.

Related Blog Posts

Online Reputation Warning Signs

Tips for Managing an Online Reputation Crisis

Sample Online Reputation Report

If you are not sure about the status of your personal or corporate online reputation, we encourage you to request a Sample Online Reputation Report by our team of specialists at The Online Body Guard.

Posted in Online Corporate Reputation, Online Personal Reputation, Remove Negative Comments, Reputation Management, Reputation Monitoring | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Where Online Reputation Problems Begin

By theo3299 | Published August 5, 2011

Ask anyone about their personal opinion on the value of using Social Media and most of the time you will get a positive response.  However, consider the role that Social Media can play as a conduit when communicating news that damages a personal or corporate online reputation.

The sheer speed with which information gets shared and communicated on a global scale can act as a devastating event in the midst of the following scenarios:

  • Corporate and personal lawsuits
  • Corporate and personal scandals
  • Product defects
  • Product recalls
  • Poor manufacturing standards
  • Corporate Environmental violations
  • Corporate and personal embezzlement
  • Corporate and personal fraud

If you, or your business, find itself involved in one of the above events, consider reviewing the following information for immediate assistance:

Online Reputation Warning Signs

5 Tips for Managing an Online Reputation Crisis

If you are not sure about the status of your personal or corporate online reputation, we encourage you to request a Sample Online Reputation Report by our team of specialists at The Online Body Guard.

Posted in Online Corporate Reputation, Online Personal Reputation, Online Reputation Crisis, Reputation Management, Reputation Monitoring, Reputation Repair, Reputation Report, Reputation Warning Signs | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Online Competitor Monitoring and Market Intelligence Tools

By theo3299 | Published May 3, 2011

Why Monitor The Competition?

Knowing the online strategies and activities of a competitor can be an extremely valuable form of corporate intelligence.  The data collected from online competitor monitoring allows an organization to make critical decisions regarding the company online marketing campaign, research and development, and much more.

5 Reasons to Monitor the Online Competition

  1. Is my patent, or other commercial rights, being violated?
  2. Are my competitors stealing my web content and ideas?
  3. Is the voice of the competition being heard by my target market and customers?
  4. Are my competitors “planting” comments about my company, regardless of accuracy, in message boards, forums, and social networks?
  5. Is the competition’s marketing working better than mine?

About The Online Body Guard™

By offering customizable features that both monitor and manage specific topics and areas such as your company Brand, Personnel, Competitors, Products, Services, Major Social Networks, Major Search Engines, Blogs, Forums, and much more; The Online Body Guard™ is becoming the affordable choice for corporations and individuals seeking a quality online reputation monitoring service.

What company would you like to monitor?

*(denotes required field)
Posted in Competitor Monitoring, Market Intelligence | Tagged , | Leave a comment

5 Tips for Managing an Online Reputation Crisis

By theo3299 | Published April 12, 2011

Sometimes a simple rumor can develop into an online reputation crisis for either an individual or a corporation.  With the surging popularity of social media websites such as FaceBook and micro-blog services such as Twitter, the propensity for content to spread virally (regardless of accuracy) at record speed is at an all-time high.

The ability for these online tools to influence the sentiment of current and future customers, followers, business alliances, and the general public can be a tremendous asset for both individuals and businesses.  However, these tools can also quickly become tremendous online liabilities in light of content including false allegations, lawsuits, product recalls, and rumors reaching their platforms.

If you are in the midst of a personal online reputation crisis, or, your company is addressing an online corporate reputation crisis; here are few suggestions to assist with the crisis management:

  1. Avoid responding to comments, posts, or content in haste and without a strategic plan in place.
  2. Avoid giving continual click credit by visiting the sources that publish negative content and commentary about you or your company.
  3. Know the depth and breadth of the crisis.  Assuming that only one website or search engine contains negative content about your personal or corporate reputation may only be the starting point.
  4. When executing a crisis response strategy, make sure that you or your company knows exactly how the effectiveness of your online responses will be measured.
  5. Determine if your existing resources can successfully address your online crisis and execute the response strategy, or, if the assistance of an outside team is needed.

About The Online Body Guard™

By offering customizable features that both monitor and manage specific topics and areas such as your company Brand, Personnel, Competitors, Products, Services, Major Social Networks, Major Search Engines, Blogs, Forums, and much more; The Online Body Guard™ is becoming the affordable choice for corporations and individuals seeking a quality online reputation monitoring service.

Posted in Online Corporate Reputation, Online Personal Reputation, Online Reputation Crisis, Reputation Management, Reputation Monitoring, Reputation Repair, Reputation Report | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

  • Subscribe to The Online Body Guard




    * = required field