How to Manage Your Reputation from Your Phone

Managing your online reputation is critical to maintaining a strong internet brand, but it does require a certain level of vigilance and commitment. One way to make this a bit easier is to build into your workflow a number of regular updates and check-ins, which can be greatly assisted by using a number of phone-based applications. This allows you to manage your reputation on the go, helping you to always keep on top of things.

There are three types of phone software that will best help you manage your reputation: Twitter clients, blog software, and RSS feeders. For the most part these applications are free, although some may have a nominal fee to download them.

Manage Your Twitter

Your Twitter presence is one of the most important reputation management tools you have, and a number of programs exist to facilitate Twitter interactions via your phone. The most popular Twitter client, by far, is TweetDeck, which allows users to easily update their Twitter and Facebook accounts, and regularly refresh complex searches that can help you track what is being said about your brand. Although TweetDeck does not have support for many smartphones, it does have an iPhone app, available free.

BlackBerry users have a number of strong options, including UberTwitter and Seesmic, both of which offer thread searching to help you look after your reputation, and the forthcoming official Twitter client from RIM. Android users have more and more users each day, but the most robust client currently available is Twitroid.

Manage Your Blog
 
Updating your blog is another aspect of managing your brand that can be managed via your phone. Although any type of blog can be updated via a built-in browser, WordPress blogs are most conducive to integrated updating. In fact, WordPress makes an iPhone app, a BlackBerry app, and an Android app, all designed exclusively to streamline updating, maintaining, and editing your blog on the go. Many BlackBerry users also use Viigo, which features integrated blogging capabilities, as well as Twitter support.

Track Your Reputation on RSS

Finally, one often overlooked tool to help in tracking and managing your reputation is the RSS feeder. RSS feeds can be built on virtually any parameters, and it’s relatively easy to set up an RSS feed to update when a Google search for your brand name changes, using a service like FeedMySearch. By using an integrated RSS feeder like Manifesto for the iPhone, NewsGator or Viigo for the BlackBerry, or the built-in feeder on an Android, you can ensure you are immediately informed any time the first few pages of searches for your brand name change.

The current trend in app design is towards more robust, full-featured programs that bring together features of multiple programs. As a result, it is likely that over the next year new programs will be rolled out for all three major smartphone systems that will integrate Twitter tracking and updating, Facebook support, blog editing, and RSS feeds. For now, though, a combination of TweetDeck, the official WordPress software, and Manifesto will give iPhone users everything they need; BlackBerry users can rely exclusively on Viigo, or supplement its somewhat clunky Twitter support with UberTwitter; and Android users can meet their needs with Twitroid, WordPress, and the built in RSS feeder.