When dealing with any type of Public Relations, Reputation Management, or Marketing on the Internet, you will inevitably face the question of how to use Google, Yahoo!, MSN, and Ask to your advantage. These search engines are the primary way people find information. Search Engines are the new yellowpages (even though there are online yelllow pages which can be extremely helpful, especially when searching for local businesses only).
Search Engine Optimization is a massively growing industry worldwide. If you want lots of helpful tips in that arena, visit an SEO blog. There are dozens to choose from.
Online Reputation Management inevitably crosses paths with SEO and search engine marketing. Even if you were to address your PR problems with a traditional, non-SEO involved approach, as long as you post your comments, press releases, or explanations online, you will inevitably affect search engine rankings. That’s part of SEO, so you might as well make yourself comfortable with the idea. Yes, you will want important people to say positive things about your company, employee, product, or service, but you’re wasting effort if you don’t take advantage of some basic SEO principles to help you get the most bang for your buck.
In case the term “SEO” feels awkward on your tongue (or in your brain), here are five ways that Reputation Management and SEo are already similar (these should make you feel more comfortable):
- Search Engine results are the most obvious measuring stick of success or failure
- Utilizing Title/META tags whenever possible are very helpful
- Press Releases are your friend
- Blog responses and fresh positive posts are valuable assets
- Link Building campaigns to your positive pieces boost their credibility to search engines
To manage your rep online, you’ll need to employ a mixture of skills including copywriting, SEO, and marketing.
More to come…
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February 26th, 2007 at 3:58 pm
Very right! The main difference between SEO and Reputation management, though, revolves around consumer generated content. You can optimize as many landing pages as you want, you’re still the one doing it and will not scale without getting caught by spam filters, rightfully.
I am no brand expert, more on the social search side of the equation and clearly companies own their brands less and less. Consumer generate media is exploding. 44% of internet users are content creators according to Pew. With easy to publish tools like blogs and RSS content feeds, everyone can be an author. Users are online expressing their opinions. Consumer generated media has already reached an inflexion point, and the technology emerging (data mining, machine learning, computational linguistics, semantic categorization, …) will be disruptive to marketing research, branding, positioning, communication.
-arnaud
February 26th, 2007 at 4:34 pm
Consumer generated content is often what causes a PR crisis, and occasionally the source of a PR boost. Online Reputation Management (ORP) campaigns do face the obstacle of consumer generated content.
At one of the recent DFWIMA meetings, a Yahoo! representative pointed out that some companies have failed to boost their online rep by paying someone to write positive blog comments about the company. These people pretended to be regular consumers who were defending or praising the companies. Then the people were found out to be employees or agencies in contract with the companies. That kind of publicity only makes things worse.
One of the best things a company can do is to provide a blog and/or public forum on their website for people to voice their complaints so they can be addressed promptly. Even after having done this, however, it is probably necessary to utilize software which searches the web for damaging comments so that the company can attempt to respond to each with a positive or helpful attitude.
Harnessing the power of the users/consumers is by far the most powerful method of reputation management, as the Yahoo! reps pointed out. Brand evangelists are your biggest allies. They have influence over others and they are passionate about their preferences and opinions. This is where each company must decide how to approach ORP in the way that seems right to them. Faking user personalities can blow up in your face, as we have seen in the news this past year. Still, the power the people wield should be carefully considered when developing a strategy.