The new space of reputation management online is booming. Business Week describes it this way:
An industry of online fixers is sprouting to defend clients against damaging information on the Web. With potential customers increasingly heading online to research products and services, bad reviews or complaints that turn up in a search can mean lost business. Reputation management services promise to highlight positive pages and bury offending sites deep in search results.
Most reputation services work by tracking what’s written about a client on the Web, then doing search engine optimization (BusinessWeek.com, 9/10/07), promoting positive pages, and creating other sites that will push damaging references off the first pages of search results. The services are pitched as another tool companies can use in their PR and marketing efforts.
But do these services work? Are they actually resolving misinformation, or simply covering up what’s out there so that it can’t be found? For the fees some of these companies charge, you should be able to get what you need. Several companies said the typical cost for a small business client starts at $1,000 a month. More extensive services marketed to large corporations run into the tens of thousands of dollars.
A new trade association, the Online Reputation Management Assn. is being formed to certify members and promote best practices, because no clear standards exist for what is and is not acceptable. One thing is becoming clear, and that is you cannot simply hire a company to handle this activity and forget about it. You need to be invovled in the process all the way.
Here’s a list to start you on the path:
Comparison of the Top Ten Firms:
Reputation Management Consultants
Reputation.com
My Reputation Manager
What about your “personal” reputation?
When you share a name with a drug dealer, have an embarrassing photo showing up on Google, or just don’t have the most ideal search results when somebody looks up your name, it can be hard to get a job. Lifehacker.com has published articles on how you can better-manage your online reputation, but BrandYourself is a web app that’ll help you through the process so you don’t have to spend hours doing it all by yourself.
Once you sign up, you have to tell BrandYourself what you think of your current search results. It’ll pull up them up for you and you can mark them as positive, negative, or about someone who isn’t you. When you’re done, you’ll get a search result grade and tips on how to improve your results. Next you’ll create a profile that’ll be optimized to sit at the top of your search results.
Finally, you can submit positive links about yourself to help push them to the top of your results. You get three links for free. The premium service costs $10/month or $80/year (with other price points in between) and will allow you to submit an unlimited number of links. The service will also provide you with alerts about good and bad things happening with your search results so you can act accordingly. It’s a really nice way to stay on top of the way search engines see you.
