Sepp Blatter is the new President of FIFA, the international committee in charge of futball/football/soccer, the sport known officially as association football. Blatter has been under scrutiny for the past two months or so because of a number of blown calls in the 2010 World Cup. What does this have to do with Google reputation management?

So you may have heard about Sepp Blatter’s inauspicious arrival on Twitter. If you haven’t, here’s a summary: The FIFA president signed up in June. He tweeted. He promptly got over 20,000 followers, many of whom sent @replies stating how much they disapproved of him and his organisation.

The rest of the article is well worth a read, even for people who could care less about Sepp Blatter or the International Soccer scene. The author derives four lessons from the story, all of which are well stated.

http://www.heavychef.com/4-lessons-sepp-blatter-taught-us-about-online-reputation-management-on-twitter/

Facebook is a word that is likely to be added to the dictionary at some point, and will almost certainly be included in most people’s list of synonyms for words like social, friends, and network. Make no mistake, Facebook is massive and even the continuous threats of poor security and hacked accounts have done little to stem the wave of people registering as Mark Zuckerberg announced that it has now reached the 500 million registered users milestone.

If you have a business or are attempting to manage your online reputation then you should be aware that many individuals, both professionally and as a consumer, use the site to research products and companies. Even if you’re looking for a job you should also consider that prospective employers are now more likely than ever to search for your name on the social network to gain more information about you as a person. The bottom line here is that if you don’t Facebook then not only are you quite unusual among your circle of friends and colleagues but you may be missing out.

If you are a business or website owner then you can even set up a company fan page and use it to attract new potential customers or stay in contact with existing ones. However you choose to use the site you should most definitely choose to use it in some way.

Is Facebook your world?

Do you spend entire days nevermind hours waiting for friends to post on your wall?

This post at SearchEngineJournal is a good one. It analyzes British Petroleum’s online reputation management problem from the vantage point of an experienced professional who knows the ins and outs of the industry.

So BP’s reputation is obviously on the line. Well, “on the line” is a gross understatement, but you know what I’m saying. And in the search engine marketing world, many have taken notice of their aggressive efforts to manage their reputation online.  According to a recent Search Engine Watch article, estimates near $1M a month in spend between Google AdWords and YouTube advertising. BP has also contracted for $50 million worth of television advertising to help manage their reputation throughout the fiasco. Finally, BP has been quite active in the social media sphere, with a Facebook fan page, Twitter account, YouTube channel and Flickr profile.

To be truthful, the search engine marketer in me can’t help but be somewhat impressed and surprised by their proactive and progressive online approach. I’m used to most companies being so far behind the curve when it comes to online reputation management (ORM), and they really have it dialed. But with that said, as an average American, I’m completely offended.

The company has been very proactive in attacking their newfound online reputation management problem. The larger question, which the author raises in the rest of the article, is whether they are being smart about their activity. That remains to be seen, but the author of the article, and many industry professionals, think BP is doing more harm than good with their online campaign.