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/

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?

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.

June 28, 2010 — More than 60 percent of Facebook users have considered quitting the site because of privacy concerns, according to a recent survey by web security site Sophos. With people slowly losing trust in the social networking site because of its constant, and somewhat sneaky, changes to its security settings, maybe it’s time to look at a new model.

Instead of reluctantly conforming to what Facebook has laid out, thousands of people haven taken their interests and concerns in their own hands and have built their own safe social networking site to keep in touch with a select group of friends, colleagues and people of shared interests.

With services like SocialGO, anyone can customize a site in minutes, selecting from a variety of templates and adding features like messaging and status updates, much like Facebook. Yet unlike behemoth social networking sites, each group can choose their own privacy settings, permissions and a personal URL, along with hosting the site on their very own domain, making it a good white label social network platform for businesses that want to use their own solution. The SocialGO platform allows groups to also create blogs, discussion forums and video chats with its members as well as share photos and events calendars. The site also has a feature known as “concierge”, where they will design the social network site for you and provide full support as you build and integrate the network further.

Thousands of groups are already using SocialGO’s services for professional and personal reasons, including fan clubs, business associations, eCommerce retailers, organisations and a vast number of special interest groups – from pet lovers to video gaming insiders.

With dissatisfaction in Facebook only increasing, last month, “Quit Facebook Day” got more than 34,000 to jump ship – the business of customizing social networking sites will surely grow, as more people branch off to design sites to fit their own needs.

Lack of privacy controls can be a real problem for those clients who already have online reputation management concerns.

12 Seconds used to essentially be a Twitter application but has now attempted to branch out on its own. It’s really a micro video blogging platform and rather than providing users with 140 characters of text it encourages users to post video updates that are 12 seconds or less in length. Great for video blogging regulars that are up to a serious challenge.

Posterous is an ideal choice for those that believe micro-blogging should be made as simple as possible. Sign up using nothing more than your active email address and then you can simply email your most recent updates to the increasingly popular website. It even lets you integrate your Posterous updates into social networks like Facebook and even Twitter.

If you’re looking for a single microblogging platform that enables you to do virtually everything you can with other social networking websites FriendFeed gives you all that and more. You can add just about everything from your Facebook updates to your Tweets to your video blogs and display them all in your FriendFeed feed. The problem with this amount of information is that it may well lead to information overload for you and your followers.

British Petroleum, which is currently facing a lot of heat over their oil spill off the coast of Louisiana is, according to recent reports, buying up Google AdWords related to the spill. They hope to reroute many searchers to webpages which explains BP’s cleanup and restitution initiatives rather than to websites which explain how bad the spill is and how bad it is being handled. Regardless of how one feels about the spill, this news explains exactly how important Google reputation management is.

1 – Job Hunting

Job boards have been overtaken by sites like LinkedIn and Naymz because these social networks are less expensive for the recruiter to use. For the job hunter they can give greater exposure to more jobs and allow a more personal introduction to prospective employers.

2 – Event Promotion

Local businesses and major corporations can get the word out about upcoming events quickly and easily. Join local groups, connect with customers and encourage your customers to let others know. The viral nature of social networking makes it a massive benefit in organising and promoting an event.

3 – Customer Retention

Winning new business is a big challenge for any business, but so too is customer retention. Effective communication is just one aspect of customer retention and by encouraging your customers to become a part of your Facebook, Twitter, or other social network you can engage them using media that they feel comfortable with.

4 – Online Reputation Management

Whether you’re attempting to build or repair a reputation, social networks are highly effective reputation management tools. Many people use search engines as well as social networks to research a company or individual so creating profiles on various networks can help you to improve or bolster your online reputation.

How do you prevent this? Well, there are many websites which reserve your screen-name, company name, or personal name on the many social networking sites–this is certainly one viable option. Another is to create profiles on just a few of the most well-known social networking sites and run them professionally. This will leave you or your company open to criticism, but most industry professionals agree that this is the best way to prevent widespread online libel. Most importantly: social networking is for virtual dialogue and community. It is important to remember that a facebook profile for your local coffeeshop is as much about dialogue as it is about getting the latest announcements on coffee specials. This blogger has some good advice for business owners on this subject.

1 – LinkedIn

We love LinkedIn, not least because it is arguably the largest and most beneficial of all social networks that are designed for use by professionals and small businesses. Create your profile and consider paying the relatively small cost required to further extend your network. A paid account isn’t necessary to get many of the benefits of LinkedIn but it can help. LinkedIn is especially useful to job seekers as well.

2 – Yelp

Yelp is a hybrid site that offers some social networking aspects as well as consumer reviews. You can add, read, and rate reviews of local businesses and if you’re a local business interest then you should definitely consider establishing a profile with Yelp. There are different websites for different countries too, so as well as being a niche consumer review social networking site this is also a geographically targeted one.

3 – Cofoundr

Cofoundr is a niche network for professionals and b2b service providers but specifically deals with those that are in the business of startup ventures. A popular network that can be used to develop an online profile and help build beneficial relationships that will last for many years to come.

They employed a solution in the form of corporate reputation management.

The turnaround in iBurst’s online reputation – as well as customer satisfaction – in just one quarter has been nothing short of amazing. Review of the BrandsEye reputation score firstly shows iBurst mentioned in dramatically more categories online – increasing breadth of conversation it is involved in.

More importantly, the reputation score, which measures the “positive” or “negative” tone or context of the mention, has gone from significantly negative to “a little negative”.

The most important key to this story is that iBurst was proactive. They did not just ignore the problem and expect it to go away–they tackled it and tried to heal their reputation.

http://www.bizcommunity.com/Article/196/16/47804.html