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Twitter Business Center

Since Twitter swept the world by storm in late 2008, it has been inevitable that the company would begin rolling out additional features that it can ultimately monetize. Unrelated businesses have created thousands of online apps utilizing Twitter’s API, but until now the company itself has been largely dormant. This all changed in a big way in mid-May, when the company announced the beta of its new Twitter Business Center.

Twitter was originally designed primarily for individuals to use, to keep friends and acquaintances up to speed on what they were doing, and to communicate quickly. The underlying premise had a great deal more potential, however, and businesses have already begun leveraging Twitter powerfully to build their brand and spread their messages. Twitter Business Center looks to expand this potential by adding additional Twitter features specifically catered to businesses, however. Although Twitter Business Center doesn’t add a great deal of functionality over the basic Twitter, what it does offer is very powerful.

One of the first things a business account gets is the ability to be Verified by Twitter. In the past the Verified status has been available only to individuals, while businesses had to remain unverified. Although not a huge change, it represents a shift in the way Twitter is viewing businesses as a part of their network. This will also increase the amount of trust customers can have in the businesses they meet on Twitter, so that they are certain when they are following Widgets, Inc., they are actually following Widgets, Inc., and not a competitor out to undermine their online reputation.

Twitter Business Center accounts will also have a Contributor option. This is huge for businesses, which currently are forced to share a single login among sometimes dozens of employees. The Contributor tab allows Twitter business users to add individuals who can all tweet in the name of the business, while still tracking who is tweeting what, allowing larger businesses to much more closely monitor their employees and how they’re using Twitter.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, Twitter Business Center users have the ability to accept Direct Messages directly from any Twitter user – whether or not they are following that user. One of the biggest annoyances for a business using Twitter is that in order to take a Direct Message from a user they currently have to follow that user – cluttering the incoming feed immensely, and shifting the follower/following ratio quite a bit.

With more and more companies offering technical support via Twitter Direct Messages, this clunky system requiring reciprocal following has been a growing problem. Using Twitter Business Center businesses will no longer have that problem, and will be free to accept and respond to Direct Messages without adding to their followers.

Although still in beta, Twitter Business Center will likely roll out by July to a larger audience of businesses. A number of other ideas have been proposed, as well, and once Twitter Business Center is fully rolled out it is likely Twitter will continue to add and refine features to make the service even more useful to their business audience. Once Twitter Business Center takes off, it might be a good idea to hire a online reputation management professional to manage your Twitter Business presence.

The Potential Pitfalls of a Social Media Campaign

Social media has opened up an incredible world of opportunity for online businesses and personalities, giving them a myriad of channels with which to reach out to potential clients, customers, or employers. When used properly, social media can be a far more effective outreach tool than traditional newsletters and email blasts. There are a few pitfalls you should watch out for when using social media for marketing, however.

1. Know the Laws

Different countries and municipalities have different laws guiding online marketing. It’s important to understand these laws, especially as they are beginning to tighten as public officials react to pressure to regulate online business more. In a new widely-adopted code in the United Kingdom, for example, you are required not to pretend to be a consumer (a regular tactic of guerrilla marketing), you must make sure all communications can be identified as marketing materials without being opened, and you can’t use customer databases for purposes other than those specifically stated when the customers signed up.

2. Don’t Overstate Your Case

Customers are becoming more and more savvy as they are barraged every day with online marketing campaigns. As a result, they are tending to shy away from marketing that is overtly in favor of one product or service, or seems to state no downsides and use hyperbole for benefits. As a result, it can be much more effective when using social media to give a relatively unbiased view of your product or service, with only a slight skew in your favor.

3. Avoid Oversaturation

Similarly, people are having to develop pretty extreme filters to avoid being overloaded by all of the marketing material they are constantly faced with. While one or two or even five Twitter updates a day might not be too many, twenty is pretty likely to get you removed from someone’s list, or at the very least ignored. Similarly, posting an occasional special via Facebook will likely generate buzz, but posting three or four and cluttering up people’s feeds is more likely to get you hidden.

While it is possible to manage your own social media campaigns, you can also hire online reputation management professionals to make sure that your personal or business brand is working for you not against you. There are several reputable companies that provide reputation management services and can greatly improve your online reputation.

The Benefits of Online Monitoring Services

Online reputation management has become a cornerstone of any successful online endeavor, and even those who aren’t actively doing business online find themselves in need of reputation management to ensure they don’t miss out on job opportunities or lose existing jobs on the basis of negative publicity. It can be a confusing world, and moves at such a quick pace that many people find themselves overwhelmed rapidly. While a simple Google search every few days can provide a great deal of insight, for a truly secure online reputation most people opt to use a dedicated monitoring service or reputation management company. These services have a number of distinct benefits.

1. Cover a Range of Key Phrases and Keywords

When people are searching by hand, they tend to search for only one or two relevant phrases to their brand, since it is time consuming and annoying to repeatedly do searches. A dedicated online monitoring service will allow you to create a large list of keywords and key phrases, and all of the results will then conveniently be displayed in one place.

2. Receive Real-Time Updates

Sometimes even a few days can be enough for a bad piece of publicity to do some serious damage. With an online monitoring service you’ll find out immediately anytime anything changes, so that you can start doing damage control right away. The importance of this level of fast response cannot be over-emphasized.

3. Search Many Different Networks

While a simple Google search is a great start to discovering what your online brand looks like, the truth is there are plenty of other search engines out there, and many site-specific engines as well. A good online monitoring service will check not only major search engines, but also sites like Flickr, YouTube, and Twitter to help you monitor your brand anywhere on the internet.

Using E-Mail Promotion Effectively

Even with the rise of social networking and alternate modes of customer communication, email promotion still plays a huge role in most businesses’ marketing efforts. Email marketing is affordable, can reach a huge potential client base, and is incredibly dynamic. Like all online marketing, however, there are good and bad ways to use this tool. With a few simple tips, however, you can begin using email much more effectively to market your product or service.

1. Distinguish Yourself

The average internet user receives more than two dozen email correspondences from businesses they’ve opted into each week. With that much marketing material coming at them, its very easy for them to just breeze past what you write. It’s important when crafting an email marketing piece to differentiate it from everything else they’re getting – that might mean using dynamic images, it might mean taking a more fun and casual tone, or it might mean catching their interest with a surprising lead in. Whatever the case, it’s important not to get lost in the shuffle.

2. Don’t Overdo It

Since people are receiving so many of these messages each week, it’s important not to make yourself a burden to them. Try to limit your messages to one or two a week if possible. People are generally more receptive to receiving a slightly longer message more rarely than they are to getting short bursts each day that fill up their inbox.

3. Keep Your Online Reputation Positive

Often people will forget email groups they’ve subscribed to, and when culling subscription lists most people first turn to Google. If your company doesn’t come up positively, they’ll likely remove themselves from your email group. In order to continue to have the chance to reach out to the largest audience possible, you want to make sure that when anyone performs a Google search on your brand, the first few things they see will improve your reputation.

Separating Your Personal and Professional Lives Online

In the past most people were very casual about how they interacted online. They might have used the same username on a hobby forum for fishing as they did on their stock trading forum, and would post pictures of them skinny dipping on a social media site where they were connected to their boss and potential clients. In the last few years it has become more and more evident that one’s online reputation is worth its weight in gold, and that this casual interaction between the personal and professional can be very destructive to the professional side of things. As a result, keeping these two worlds apart is an integral part to a good online reputation management strategy.

There are two main modes of enforcing this separation: a casual separation and a truly private separation. Both have their advantages and disadvantages.

Casual Separation

People who enforce a casual separation still generally use their real name when interacting online personally and professionally. Sometimes they may differentiate this in some way – such as referring to themselves as Chuck in personal profiles and postings, and Charles in professional dealings – and other times they may just create separate accounts for the personal and professional sides of their life, but leave the name the same. Having a casual separation means you still have to be fairly careful about how you act, even in your casual mode, since professional contacts will likely still see that material – but by making it clear it is your personal life it will at least retain some distance. On a positive note, many prospective employers and clients do like to see a little bit of humanity in their business dealings – so long as you aren’t being offensive or too over the top.

Private Separation

Using a pseudonym or alternate identity is a more secure way of ensuring the distinction between professional and personal personas online. In this case you’ll create entirely new accounts, using a pseudonym or internet handle, generally made with a new email account so that even the operators of the social media sites don’t know who you are. Some care is taken to write posts with different grammar or style, so that even those who know you well won’t recognize you. And in the most extreme circumstances you may even want to use a proxy, so that nothing short of a court subpoena can unveil your true identity. This is a good solution for those who want to be able to be completely liberated online, without the danger of impacting their professional demeanor. On the other hand, some care should be taken to infuse your professional presence with at least a bit of humanity – some pictures of you in daily life, fun quotes, or lists of favorite bands or books – so that you don’t look like you’re simply using the internet as a business tool, with no deeper connection to the world of social media and interaction.

70% of Human Resources Personnel Have Rejected an Applicant Based on Online Reputation

 
A survey in four of the world’s major economies – the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and Germany – found that 70% of HR workers had rejected an applicant for information that came up on a web search. The ramifications of this are powerful, and yet the vast majority of people do not take any steps to manage their online reputation to present a positive image to the world.

In the modern world, all it takes is a simple search to turn up photos of drunken revels, rants that might paint a candidate in a negative light, or negative comments from others. People responsible for hiring – and more and more commonly business owners looking to hire a freelancer – are savvy to this, and use Google  for screening applicants. According to the same survey, however, less than 15% of applicants make even the slightest effort to shape their online reputation.

A positive online reputation can be equally powerful, with a full 86% of HR workers in the United States saying that a Google search that showed favorable results for a potential employee strongly influenced their decision to hire the person. Most people interviewed suggested that what they were looking for was somewhere between a negative image and a sparkling-clean online presence that was being used exclusively as a résumé.

Online reputation management is therefore about shaping one’s online persona to be dynamic, interesting, and alive, while still projecting an image of professionalism. Online profiles can be used to show interests and passions that are relevant to the workplace, but may not be appropriate on a résumé. Meanwhile, unflattering material should be removed when possible, and pushed downward in search engine results when that is the only available option.

How Does Online Reputation Management Work

When starting in the world of online reputation management, it can be difficult to get a handle on exactly how everything works. No amount of abstract articles and tutorials will ever serve as a substitute for actual hands-on experience. At the same time, many people are reluctant to jump in and begin manipulating their online reputation immediately – although this can be a perfectly legitimate choice.

One alternative is to create a fictitious person whose reputation you can freely manipulate without any fear of impacting your own reputation. There are two ways to do this: one is to choose a somewhat-uncommon name that already has an established presence, to practice competing with established names and presences; the other is to create a strange name that shows no Google results whatsoever.

The latter is the easiest way to begin playing with online reputation management, and means you won’t be competing with another real person who might need the results you’ll be sniping from them. One easy way to create a fictitious name is to simply combine two common first names and two common last names to make something new, such as, “Janedy Cannelson.”

The next step is to begin creating online content and social profiles with that name, to see what has the most weight. Using the various tools of online reputation management you can populate the internet with the world of your fictitious person. Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, Digg, and other free services are one place to begin creating profiles. A domain name with the fictitious name and perhaps a blog installed is another. Specialized services such as LookupPage is yet another.

Once you’ve created these pages, you can track over time where they show up on Google in searches for the fictitious names. Try commenting on popular blogs, writing forum posts, and being active in all corners of the internet with the fictitious personality. Over time this will help paint a very clear picture of which services are most effective, and which are less so.  

Online Imaging in British Politics

Wouldn't it be interesting to know how the three main party leaders in British politics view themselves?
 
We all know how the World views them as all it takes is a small click online and all sorts of facts and figures appear regarding these leading, and potentially very influential, figures in British politics.
 
Therefore it would seem to be elementary for anyone in such a position to ensure that their online image is professionally managed and that as much positive content as possible can be read online.
 
Take Gordon Brown's now infamous pensioner row as an example. The Prime Minister had been on a walkabout in Rochdale when Gillian Duffy asked him about issues, amongst others, relating to immigration. Upon finishing this conversation, Mr. Brown returned to his car - unaware that he was still wearing a Sky news microphone - and proceeded to call Mrs. Duffy a "bigoted woman". Pretty big mistake for a man fighting for his political career.
On hearing Mr. Brown's comments, Mrs. Duffy said: "I'm very upset. He's an educated person. Why has he come out with words like that?
"He's supposed to be leading the country and he's calling an ordinary woman who's come up and asked questions that most people would ask him... It's going to be tax, tax, tax for another 20 years to get out of this national debt, and he's calling me a bigot."
Her nephew spoke for many when he said "It's a massive gaffe isn't it. What can you say? He's made a fool of himself really."
 
Unfortunately for Mr. Brown, this article and many others like it, including blogs and public opinion polls appear in top ranked positions on Google and Yahoo and have somewhat distracted the voting public from the serious subjects which are facing the UK at present.
 
We at LookupPage are always on the lookout for interesting stories relating to online imaging and will keep you up to date through our regular news flashes.

Rebranding Yourself

Reputation management online is generally about competing with negative publicity you have generated, often inadvertently. If you have a common name, however, the situation can become much more difficult, as you may be competing not only with negative publicity, but also with irrelevant results that are about someone else who happens to share your own name – sometimes this may be benign, other times it may be very negative, as in the case where a businessman shares a name with a criminal who has pages of results of court cases.

Depending on the strength of the other people’s results, the ways you respond to this situation may vary. If their internet presence is rather weak, it may be quite easy to simply address the situation as if it were simple negative press, pushing their results down to the point where they don’t show up for most common searches using your name. If their presence is strong, however, it may be worth considering rebranding yourself entirely and hiring a reputation management team to help you

More and more people are choosing to do business under a variant of their name as a way of differentiating themselves online. Often common names – such as John Roberts – may be held by so many people that even landing a single page in the top ten results can be a challenge. By changing your name slightly, however – going by Jonathan Roberts online, for example – you can level the playing field immensely. Often this will lead to a domain name being available, much less significant competition, and a virtually clean slate on which to established your internet presence.

If there is no common variant available, it may be worth considering trying to establish a brand using a middle name, middle initial, or adopting a nom de plume. Although this may seem drastic, if you have a name like John Roberts, it may be much less work in the long run than trying to claim search engine dominance for your actual name.

Online Reputation Management vs. Traditional Public Relations

People who are established in business or public relations often come to the world of online reputation management with a number of preconceived notions which at best are simply incorrect, and at worst can be very destructive. Understanding the differences between the two will allow businesses to more decisively take advantage of the power of online reputation management. There are two main differences that can be most effectively leveraged:

Online Content is Forever

A traditional public relations push is transitory, fading away as people’s memories do. The largest ad buy in the world will only last as long as public perception holds on to it, and without constant money pouring into a campaign the bulk of the public relations purchased will eventually disappear, leaving only, perhaps, a slight bump in brand loyalty.

Online campaigns, in contrast, will last as long as the web does. Search engines index pages, and while to some extent fresh content is given a higher ranking, some of the top results for crucial phrases may be public relations blitzes that are five or ten years old. This makes online reputation management an incredible bargain, and should encourage businesses to invest intelligently in every online campaign, as the cost can be prorated over the years.

This inevitability has a dark side, however. Negative content is equally pervasive, and while negative PR in the traditional marketing world can be left to fade into a distant memory, online it always exists. Online reputation management therefore becomes not only a crucial tool for building new positive sentiment, but also for managing negative sentiment which can’t be erased.

The best online reputation management involves a two-pronged approach, addressing the negative publicity so that potential customers are given both sides of the story, and trying to push negative publicity down in search engine rankings so that its effect on the brand is minimal.

Comparison Is Easy and Authenticity is King

Search engines are the major leveler in online reputation management. They give everyone the tools to compare everything – products, services, and even reviews. That means that some of the traditional tactics of public relations may not only fall short, they may do damage to the brand in the long run.

Massive blasts of PR snippets might make sense in the traditional world – magazines and newspapers in different markets can all carry essentially the same content, and very few consumers will ever be the wiser, assuming the pieces were individually written. Online, however, this strategy breaks down, as a single potential customer might see the same review or write-up on five, ten, or twenty blogs or review sites. That will immediately send up red flags, and cause a distrust of the brand that can be very hard to shake.

Ultimately, the internet is driven by authenticity, and customers are increasingly savvy to spotting what is real from what isn’t. A single positive review, written by someone who reads as an actual satisfied customer, can be infinitely more powerful than a hundred positive reviews that ring false.

Case Study – BP Oil Spill

BP recently suffered an enormous public relations disaster, when a drilling rig explosion caused around a million gallons of oil to spill into the surrounding ocean. The spill is forecast to devastate the local environment, negatively impact the Gulf Coast fishing industry, and has led to renewed debate about the safety of offshore drilling. Through it all BP has been relentlessly managing their image online, trying to combat the negative PR as best they can.

A situation like this is ultimately not about avoiding negative PR – it’s about minimizing the damage as much as possible. To that end the focus has to be less on trying to hide or mask the story – which is virtually impossible on a story this size – and more about trying to manage it as best as possible.

The main vector for doing this is through managing negative search results. The number one search on the incident is, understandably, “BP Oil Spill,” and an examination of that search shows that the PR team at BP has been doing their job. At the top of the search are the Google live-search results, drawing from various news sources. Although basically impossible to manage, BP doesn’t fare too poorly here, with much of the focus going to the financial impact of the spill, and a heated discussion over who is responsible for the spill which leaves doubt as to whether BP deserves the blame – an ideal outcome from their perspective.

Video searches follow, and these are very well managed by ensuring maximum Favorite-counts on YouTube are on videos that are neutral or positive towards BP. In this case the videos deal with a strictly factual analysis of what happened (which again calls into question whether BP is responsible), followed by President Obama speaking on the issue – a largely neutral video.

The top organic search result in this case is BP’s own website, and there they have also done a good job covering their bases. The front page features an extensive story on how they are addressing the spill, showing their devotion to dealing with it – while neither admitting nor aggressively denying responsibility. This front page blurb has been tagged so that is shows up in the Google synopsis of the page as well.

Finally, BP has purchased paid advertising for every key phrase that could conceivably be used by browsers searching for information. These ads lead to a special section of their site dedicated to showcasing their Gulf of Mexico response, showing what happened and how BP is doing everything within their power to help.

All in all, it’s difficult to imagine anything BP could have done better in managing what is a nearly-unmanagable PR disaster. They do this by: raising doubt about their culpability while avoiding the appearance of denial, pushing visitors to neutral coverage when no positive coverage is within easy reach, and creating a robust presence demonstrating their response and how seriously they take the issue, to which they then drive all traffic they have control over.

Can George Bush’s New Book Repair His Tarnished Reputation?

If ever there was a group of people who had to wrestle with online reputation management, it is ex-Presidents. No matter what they did during their term in office, there is bound to be some large group of people fiercely critical of their every step. Perhaps no one has faced a harder struggle than George W. Bush – he assumed office just as the popularization of the internet was picking up speed, and immediately incurred the wrath of many of the technorati, who dedicated large amounts of energy towards making searches for his name result in extremely negative material.

His reputation never really improved, and many have said he has a tarnished legacy. A new book due out in November of 2010 aims to undo some of that damage, aiming to shine a more personal light on the 43rd President. The question is, can a book reverse so much negative publicity?

The answer seems to be: maybe. Many presidents who suffered from horrible public opinion numbers – including Bush’s father, George H.W. Bush – have recovered after their term in office ended. Charitable work, bipartisan activities, and yes, book deals, have all helped mitigate years of negative spin.

Bush appears to be taking the ideal tack in managing his own reputation. The book is said to address a number of pivotal decisions he made during his career, and covers not only those which resulted in victory, but also those which were unsuccessful. By taking a humble position, Bush will immediately put his harshest critics at a disadvantage, and by acknowledging where things could have been handled better, he opens readers to be more receptive to his actual triumphs.

Whether or not the book ultimately repairs his reputation, the buzz surrounding its release will likely do wonders for his online reputation. News outlets, blogs, and book sites will all carry extensive reviews which, judging by the building buzz, are likely to be overwhelmingly positive.