Writing a blog is a great way to build name recognition and establish yourself as an expert in your industry. However to do this, you need to make sure you are blogging about interesting and relevant topics that show you know what you are talking about –  blogging about what you’ve just had for tea isn’t going to impress the people that matter.
This is also the same principle for sites like Twitter and Facebook – in order to impress influential people in your industry and to boost your online profile you need to post things that are relevant and engaging to your audience.

Engaging content is king when it comes to the Internet. Be proactive and create engaging content if you want to save your online reputation.

Last week, Maryland’s House and Senate passed legislation prohibiting employers from asking for a current or prospective employee’s logins to Facebook and other social media sites. Once Governor Martin O’Malley signs the bill into law, Maryland will become the first state in the nation to pass legislation protecting employees from having employers access their social media accounts.

Regardless of whether you pay any attention to Facebook now, you ought to in the future–especially if you’re going for a job interview.

According to comScore’s State of the U.S. Social Network Market, Tumblr is one of the most consistently growing social networks out there.

In December 2011 it had 15.9 million U.S. visitors, which is up from November 2010. Most of that growth has occurred since April 2011.

But this is not just about sheer number of visitors. The amount of time that visitors spend on Tumblr averages around 2.4 hours a month, making it only second to Facebook in terms of user engagement.

That amount of traffic means that Google will rank the site highly. This means online reputation management experts should be focusing on Tumblr as much or more than any other social networking or profile-based website.

While the growing realm of reviews is adding more outlets for consumers to sound off, it’s also expanding the virtual landscape companies must sift through to protect their reputation. One local orthodontist filed an FBI fraud complaint after someone trashed him online. From posting a review of a plumber on Angie’s List to rating a restaurant on Urbanspoon, everyone is now a click away from being a critic.

In a recent study of social media users by Nielsen and NM Incite, most social media said they give online reviews to give companies recognition, but 58 percent said they give negative feedback to protect others from bad experiences. Among 18- to 34-year-olds, 42 percent expect customer support within 12 hours of such a complaint.

This is where web reputation management firms come into play–they are essential to the accuracy of the Internet’s reviews. Reversing overly negative reviews is an important way to correct this issue.

To avoid any indecent Internet exposure, some of the city’s biggest institutions are snapping up corresponding domain names ending in “.xxx” to make sure they are never bought by or associated with adult entertainment websites.Mary Rodgers, who works in marketing and communications at the city, said the IT department had just purchased www.citywindsor.xxx on Tuesday.

“It’s to protect our reputation,” Rodgers said. “We’re not going to use it, but we own it.”

This is actually quite intelligent. If they didn’t do this, some entrepreneur or hobbyist with no scruples could use those websites however he wanted.

The phrase “my life is an open book” has never been truer than it is today. The Internet, coupled with the growing popularity of social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, have exposed many personal histories to anyone with access to cyberspace.

Often, this can result in embarrassing revelations or in online defamation. The answer is likely to turn to online reputation management–it saves time, effort, and frustration in this regard.

If you want people to like you, or at least not end up hating everything about you within 60 seconds of opening your picture gallery, you should avoid uploading pictures that contain: cars, boobs, rude gestures, angry facial expressions, alcoholic beverages, hugs, Photoshopped elements – seriously, no one likes those lens flares – and cartoon characters. Subjects more likely to invoke a positive response are: sensible-looking friends, wedding photos, pictures of children (hopefully yours) and shots taken on a beach, though that might clash with the “no boobs” rule. Smiling is good too.

The “no boobs” rule is one you see violated on a constant basis.

More than that, though, online reputation management is about presenting positive publicity about an unfairly maligned person, business, or organization. When individuals need to use online reputation management, it is often because search engines are displaying negative results for them. The way to fix this is to replace those negative links or comments with more positive ones.

Simply replacing negative content with neutral or positive content is not good enough, though, you have to allow searchers to find not only positive information, but positive and true information! This is currently accomplished by many individuals, businesses, and organizations through the use of online testimonials.

A testimonial is a quote from a customer or former customer about the effectiveness of a particular product, service, or company. This is an effective way to present a positive image because it is not a cultivated statement by a public relations firm or a statement from the President of the company about the way he runs his company, but a review from a customer about the business, product, or service. This makes an impact, as customers tend to trust each other more than the businesses they are frequenting (or considering frequenting).

Those online reputation management campaigns that make use of testimonials will be most successful. This is because a testimonial is what people really want to see when they Google a company, product, or service. Rather than empty rhetoric, they want to see what their peers think about the company, service, or product.

There are many ways to improve testimonials and make them more attractive–such as having people send a scanned signature instead of a text signature at the end of the testimonial. Similarly, having online videos or recordings posted as online testimonials can be advantageous, though it is not always what is good for your online reputation management campaign. It is up to you and your online reputation manager to figure out how best to handle issues like these.

Online testimonials are a powerful way to communicate from a business to a prospective consumer that they can be trusted. There are a host of things to consider when doing online reputation management–one of the main things is considering how you want your “Google Front” to look. Your Google Front is the first page of search results that come up–the links and comments that every single person see.

This is a great article about the power of online testimonials. It is well worth reading:
http://reputationhawk.com/ThePowerofTestimonials.html

Product reviews shown to be effective by research. This entire article is very informative:
http://www.marketingcharts.com/direct/online-product-reviews-most-helpful-in-purchase-decisions-offline-too-3437/

Ways to make use of online testimonials. This is by no means an exhaustive list, but it’s good nonetheless:
http://blog.noriskhomebiz.com/2011/01/29/a-number-of-helpful-hints-for-making-the-most-of-the-impact-of-testimonials/

What to do in order to stop this from occurring? Well, the truth is that you can’t really stop the anonymous miscreants from making their negative comments. What you can do is protect yourself from the entire situation by engaging in preventative online reputation management. If the problem has already occurred, then online reputation management can help after the fact.

Online reputation management doesn’t remove the offending comments, but it does replace it with positive content. This positive content will, thanks to online reputation management, climb its way to the top of the Google search results, which pushes the negative content down. Once the negative content is pushed off the 2nd page, it might as well not exist for how many people are going to see it.

As a brand marketer targeting China, it’s easy to get local PR firms that hire the water army – better known in Chinese as “Shui Jun” – to post positive comments about your company or negative comments about a competitor on the Internet under the guise of e-PR.

This “army” could number from a few hundred to thousands of anonymous Internet users that will delete or post comments to influence public opinion dictated by the PR firms.

The water army is essentially a large group of paid commenters online. They post about your company, product, or service according to how the PR firm directs them to in exchange for cash. This is common in China because of the sheer number of individuals who can be gainfully employed by a Western company or a company with Western clients.