LookupPage Blog | Professional Web Presence and Visibility

Leaked Documents Lead Apple Into a Reputation Management Crisis

I

Today, a document was leaked by Boy Genius Report that shows Apple knows about the reception problem in the new iphone G4 and is teaching their employees how to "respond". While consumers have been complaining about the reception problems that the phone has for several months, Apple -- which is known for their excellent customer serivice -- has not only been slow to reply, but has told customers that the problem is not with their Apple phone, but in general with all cell phones.

According to Mashable, here are some of the reputation management phrases that Apple is trying to use to convince customers that it isn't their product:

• The iPhone 4’s wireless performance is the best we have ever shipped. Our testing shows that iPhone 4’s overall antenna performance is better than iPhone 3GS.
• Gripping almost any mobile phone in certain places will reduce its reception. This is true of the iPhone 4, the iPhone 3GS, and many other phones we have tested. It is a fact of life in the wireless world.
• If you are experiencing this on your iPhone 3GS, avoid covering the bottom-right side with your hand.
• If you are experiencing this on your iPhone 4, avoid covering the black strip in the lower-left corner of the metal band.
• The use of a case or Bumper that is made out of rubber or plastic may improve wireless performance by keeping your hand from directly covering these areas.

While these kind of tips may seem funny to a reader, now that this internal report has been leaked it looks like Apple could have a reputation management crisis on their hands, along with a lot of angry customers.

How should Apple respond?

It isn't going to be easy to convince Apple customers that the iphone isn't defective -- especially now that their internal memo has been leaked. For the companies sake, they should launch an investigation into the defective phones and invite customers who think their is a problem with their phones to visit a retail store and have a unique check done of the phones. Apple needs to bring some hard evidence to the table if they expect to quell this quickly growing product reputation crisis, they need to make it clear to customers that the leaked document was not meant to cover up a problem with the iphones.

They also should get online and start responding to what will be a flood of blog posts, comments and social networking conversations of both angry customers and nervous potential customers. Apple has to make a huge effort now to be there for their customers and make sure that they prove to the public that either a) their phone isn't defective or b) that if it is, they're willing to take care of their customers and recall the iphones.

What Good is a PR Blog

Years ago, companies and high profile individuals hired public relations representatives to make sure that their messages were getting out to the public via the print press. Being someone’s PR representative was a tough job, you had to be well connected to media personal and shmooze with them on a regular basis in order to get your stories published.

Today everyone has the ability to publish their stories online for the whole world to see in a just a few minutes. And while that is a tremendous new power that companies and high profile individuals are discovering, it’s still important that you incorporate the wisdom from PR professionals.

Write About Events and Happenings

Keep your readers up to date on the different events and appearances related to you, your company and your brand. Post photos, videos and captions, share related articles on your PR blog -- keep the conversation going and keep your brand in people’s minds. This is the best way to make headway with your blog, to connect and create new fans and followers and most importantly, to make sure you message is getting out.

Keep Up with Comments

Before you launch your blog, you need to decide if you’re going to let people comment. Some people are afraid that comments will open the conversation up to negative feedback, however disabling comments and cutting off the conversation can be even worse because it doesn’t give you the opportunity to communicate with your fans or followers. Consider opening your comments, moderating them and responding effectively when necessary.

Let Fans / Critiques Connect with You

Connect your readers to your other online identities -- perhaps your facebook fan page, LookupPage profile, or Twitter account. No matter what it is, make sure that your readers can leave the blog and visit another place that supports your brand.

Dealing with Cyberdrama

This week the NYTimes ran an article entitled "Online Bullies Pull Schools into the Fray". The article detailed if schools should be held responsible for cyberbullying between students. While the school provides an institution to hold responsible for bad cyber behavior, most schools argue that they aren’t responsible for what happens in cyberspace. In the real world, there isn’t any institution to hold responsible for bad cyber behavior. Most people and companies either have to fend for themselves, or hire a high quality reputation management company to improve their online reputation.

LookupPage is a reputation management company that provides tools and services to individuals and businesses looking to improve their online presence. Here are 8 reasons why LookupPage why we think that LookupPage is great and can help you combat cyberbullying:

1. LookupPage provides users with a unique way to provide the public with accurate information about you or your business
2. Our unique online profiles put you in control of your online reputation
3. Our People Lookup and Business Lookup help you create strong trackable brand and online presence in major search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing
4. Provides you information about who is searching for you online
5. Allows you to link to your other online identities, websites and articles of your choice
6. Is simple to use for both individuals and businesses
7. The most basic version is free and you can upgrade and use one of the professional packages for nominal fees
8. You can register to use this reputation management tool today

Using LookupPage is a great way to combat cyberbullying and to make sure that you have a strong online presence that is reinforcing your brand and business in a positive way.

How to Increase Traffic to Your Site Using Social Bookmarks

If you have a blog or article that you'd like the world to know about, you have to do your best to market it online and get people talking about it. There are several ways that you can market your articles and blogs online to attract new people to your brand and improve your online reputation. One of the best ways to do this is by submitting your blog or articles that you write to social bookmarks sites.

Digg is one of the largest social bookmark sites online, covering a range of topics from news and sports to current events and technology. As a site with thousands of inbound and outbound link, it has an extremely high rank on Google and can help bring your site to the top of the list. To submit your page is extremely simple, all you have to do is register for a free digg account, submit your url and see you’ll see your website or article show up on one of the top pages.

The second part of digg, or other social bookmarking sites, is the ability for other people to be able to “like” or “digg” your submission. This means that if other people like your article or web page that your submission will quickly start ranking at the top of the social bookmarks page, getting you increased traffic, links and weight in Google.

In addition to digg, there are several smaller social bookmarking sites like Choowawa.com or niche related social bookmarking sites. You can easily find social bookmarking sites related to you or your brand by searching on Google. Most of them work the same way, with free registration and easy ways to submit your articles or web pages. This easy, online marketing trick can quickly get your article or website to the top of Google with little effort and increase your page rank with healthy links for your online reputation.

How to Use Facebook Privacy Settings to Improve Your Online Presence

While facebook privacy settings have certainly been at the top of the news lately, most of the buzz has been about sharing private information worldwide without facebook users consent. Of course this is very troubling, especially for people who use their facebook as a private platform to communicate with their friends and family. However, keeping your facebook private is becoming increasingly difficult, as the social network provides more and more ways for strangers to network online and it becomes increasingly socially acceptable to get to know someone virtually. That’s why it’s extremely important that you know not only what your facebook privacy settings are, but have a clear strategy for using them. 

Create Groups of facebook Friends

One of the most important things that you can do to manage your online reputation on facebook is to separate your different friends into groups. Have family members that you want to have access to pictures of your new house, kids and family vacations? Create a family group for your most intimate connections. Don’t want to remove your album from the last night of college? Share it just with your friends from school. Grouping your friends allows you to determine who sees what and where so that you don’t have to worry that all your different contacts will have the same view.

Preview Your Profile

Unless your facebook profile is set to a very private setting, it’s most likely that you’re name comes up when someone searches you either online or in facebook. Make sure you know what information is being shared with the public at all times. For some people, especially entrepreneurs, politicians and other public figures,  it’s important that your profile can be found on facebook -- it’s one of the best ways to let people know what your company is up to or what is the latest piece of work you’ve published. On the other hand, it’s important to know what content is being shared publicly so you don’t mix your private life with your public life online.

Previewing your profile can also be extremely helpful if you’re interested in how a specific person may view your facebook page. Luckily, facebook has built a special feature into facebook’s privacy settings that allows you to see how each individual views your page -- simply type in their name and you’ll be able to see their exact view and capabilities.

Limit User Capabilities

Part of your privacy settings, which is typically overlooked, is the ability to change how your friends can interact on your profile. For example, perhaps you want your profile to be very professional, so you limit your facebook friends from posting to your wall, but allow them to comment on your posts. Another option is to give specific people the ability to post to your wall, while restricting the ability of other people who may post spam or irrelevant posts / private information.

How to Connect Your Online Identities and Optimize Your Brand

Today, most people have several online identities online and in different social networks like LinkedIn, facebook, LookupPage and Twitter among others. However, many people rarely make the effort to effectively connect their online identities -- making their online identity appear incomplete and disconnected. Today, we’ll share with you some tips about how you can connect your online identities not only to improve your reputation, but also to help you build your network.

Blogs

Blogs are a great way to improve your reputation. Writing articles, or having a ghost writer, produce relevant content for search engines means that new people who are interested in the same areas and interests as you will be able to find you and your work easily online. If you consistently update your blog, two to three times a week, you’ll be able to maintain momentum and continue to draw new readers to your blog.

However, the power of blogs doesn’t stop there. Today, blogs severe as a extended business card where people can google your personal and company brand and find additional information about you online. In addition, a blog should be connected to your other online identities, for example facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, so that readers of your blogs have a casual way to get to know you a bit more intimately.

Social Networks

Social networks are a great place for you to connect with new people and improve your online reputation. While facebook used to be a social network for real friends to connect, today it’s become much more professional and even serves as a micro-blogging platform for many high profile personal brands.

For people who are a part of more than one social network, facebook allows you to add the urls of additional websites that you are a part of so that your facebook friends can connect with you on other social networks like LookupPage, LinkedIn, Flickr and others.  By connecting your online identities it makes it easier for people to find you and follow up with you online -- expanding your network and building your brand across the web.

Creating Attractors for Unknown Languages

One of the primary techniques used in online reputation management and search engine optimization is building attractors to get inbound links to one of your pages, to increase its search engine relevance. These attractors are sometimes referred to as ‘linkbait’, and are basically bits of online content meant to entertain, educate, or just intrigue blog and other site owners so that they link to you. Designing attractors is a definite skill, and it becomes even more complex when targeting an unknown market – especially if that market is in a foreign country. There are, however, a few steps you can take to create better linkbait, even if don’t speak the language.

The first step is to identify what exactly your target languages should be. To do this, you’ll want to look at breakdowns of internet users in a geographical region you want to open up. If you’re looking at expanding your internet reach into Europe, for instance, you would see the top five internet using countries are: Germany, the United Kingdom, Russia, France, and Italy. Germany is leading the pack by a mile, so to begin with you might choose to target German-language audiences.

Next, you want to do some research on your key phrases in that language. Let’s say you run a business promoting wine. You would run a Google translate on the word ‘wine’, to come up with the German word ‘Wein’. Pretty simple, but maybe too basic to limit the search only to German. You can also use Google’s keyword suggestion tool with Wein, to come up with some other common German phrases searched for in terms of wine. In this case, we can come up with a more specific term, Weintrinken, or wine drinking.

You’ll want to limit your search for blogs for now, to see what the German blogosphere is buzzing about. You can then use the Google Global extension to translate the page results from German into English, so you can understand what you’re reading. Next, go through and perform a rudimentary analysis of what German wine blogs are discussing.

We can separate our search results into different categories to get a feel for trends. Although many German blogs seem to be dedicated to discussing German wines, as we might expect, this search also shows quite a few talking excitedly about Australian wines. These seem to be mostly newer posts, indicating that this is a developing trend in the German blogosphere.

So, after about ten minutes of research we could come up with a pretty simple form of linkbait – a list of exceptional Australian wines. We can create the list, format it to look nice, and provide headers in German by using Google translate – although not a hugely robust tool for longer translations, it works great for translating a few words here and there. Then we can ping the German blogs with our new item, which we already know will be of interest to them, and in all likelihood we’ve generated some solid links from a completely new section of the blogosphere and improved our online reputation.

Six Tips for Managing Your Online Reputation

Managing your online reputation can seem like a monumental task, especially if you don’t have any previous experience in search engine optimization. By taking things one step at a time, however, it’s relatively easy to build a solid reputation management strategy without undue hardship. These six basic tips will provide a firm foundation on which to build a more robust strategy.

1. Treat Everything As If Can End Up Online

It’s tempting to think that emails you send friends or colleagues, or images you send out, will remain confidential forever. Sadly, that’s not always the case. It’s hard to know when something you thought was private will become public, so it’s a good rule of thumb to treat everything as though eventually it will end up online. This is a basic case of the old adage: better safe than sorry.

2. Be Honest With Yourself About Your Flaws and Weaknesses

None of us like to admit where our businesses and brands are weak. Ignoring these weaknesses, however, doesn’t make them not true. And it’s very difficult to defend against negative spin if you aren’t prepared to acknowledge it may be coming. Taking the time to identify your major weaknesses can help you significantly down the line.

3. Always Comport Yourself Well

No matter what you’re doing online – Facebook updates, blog posts, comments, tweets – make sure to speak with politeness and dignity. It’s all too easy to get sucked into wars of words and say something mean – but two years down the line, when that immature comment is one of the top search results for your name, you’ll regret it immensely.

4. Establish an Official Presence

Don’t let your online reputation be dictated by your personal Facebook page or Twitter account. Instead, set up a professional blog, professional social network presences, and act professionally when interacting with other people’s sites. When using your official presences, take extra care to present yourself in the way you want to be perceived by potential clients or employers.

5. Use Google Periodically

Checking in on your online reputation regularly is one of the best steps you can take to make sure everything is as it should be. If you’re very serious about your online reputation you might want to utilize a monitoring system, but even if you forego that option, it is always worth typing your name into Google at least once every week or two to see what comes up.

6. Act Quickly When Things Go Wrong

If you see something pop up on a Google search that reflects poorly on you or your brand, act immediately. If it’s someone you know who posted a picture that looks bad professionally, ask them to take it down. If someone has a critique of your business or brand, address it respectfully and see if you can resolve the problem. If someone is slandering you, see if you can get the offending information removed. Whatever the situation, every minute you let it sit online is a minute it can be destroying your reputation.

Seven Tools for Managing Your Online Reputation

Managing your online reputation can be a difficult task, especially as it is constantly shifting and changing. Thankfully, there are a number of convenient tools – many free, many very affordable – that can make the job much easier. While there are hundreds of useful tools currently available, with more being added every day, these seven tools are some of the most dynamic and robust. 

1. FindMeOn

The first social media management application, FindMeOn continues to innovate and roll out new tools. FindMeOn acts as a way to connect many different online identities, helping to track circles of friends and colleagues who may be spread out over many various social networks. FindMeOn also allows you to register quickly across many different social networks, ensuring you have similar profiles on every major social network.

2. LookUpPage

A powerful program that ensures users can have search results for their name show up at or near the top of major search engines. This landing page can be highly customized, displaying any professional information you might want to be shown, including a link to a personal or professional website.

3. Garlik

A tool to track your identity across the internet to see if you are subject to internet identity fraud. It will help you determine if someone is using your name and engaging in questionable behavior that might reflect poorly on you. Garlik also has tools to track financial fraud, securing you in other ways.

4. MonitorThis

MonitorThis acts as a robust search tool to keep you informed where your brand or personal name is being used on the internet. By combining RSS feeds of searches for every major engine – including Google, Technorati, delicious, Flickr, Yahoo, and MSN – MonitorThis gives you a single feed where you can see virtually any mention of your brand in real time as it appears online.

5. Technorati

The most important blog service you’ll subscribe to, Technorati not only helps boost your blog’s listing, it will also let you know anytime anyone links to a blog post you have. This helps easily keep track of the chatter around you and your brand.

6. TweetBeep

One of the easiest and most robust Twitter trackers out there. TweetBeep can be set to alert you anytime a keyword, hash, or username is mentioned. This lets you easily track when you and your brand are being discussed on Twitter, giving you the opportunity to join the conversation or respond.

7. Cision

Arguably the most robust social media monitoring service available, Cision generates real-time reports on virtually everything happening online. This includes social media, an enormous collection of online forums, blogs, and media sharing sites. There are advanced tools available as well, such as tools to help track the spread of viral stories you get started, to see where they move to, and who is most helping your story along. Cision also offers monitoring services for print and broadcast media, making them many businesses’ full stop monitoring system.

Improving Your Rankings by Managing 404 Pages

When working on optimizing a blog or professional site to get it high in the search engine results, there are a number of things to focus on. Inbound links, keyword density, and relevant content are all crucial to improve your rankings. But there are a slew of tiny steps that can add up to big improvements in your overall ranking as well. One of these is managing your 404 pages to ensure you aren’t losing out on traffic.

The 404 page is the default page that appears when a user types in a page on your website that doesn’t exist, or when another site links to a page that doesn’t exist. This can happen for a number of reasons, but the most common cause is that at some point along the way you changed something about the structure of your site, perhaps accidentally simply by upgrading or changing your blogging software. Since the other sites linking to you don’t know you updated things, their links are now out of date. Some search engines might even keep those pages indexed in their search, but they won’t lead anywhere when visitors click to visit so you'll be missing important connections and contacts and potentially tarnishing your online reputation.

There are two good ways to deal with 404 errors. The first is to periodically check your site’s logs to see what pages are delivering 404 errors. You can then find out where the traffic is coming from, and can contact the blog or site owner to ask them to update where the link points. Alternately, you could create a page with the name that is showing the 404, which can have content of its own, or direct visitors to another page on your site. The second, and more general, way to deal with 404 errors is to create a custom 404 page. Many site control panels have a tool to do this, and it will allow you to present relevant information to your visitors, and to direct them to an actual page on your site. 

Using an Online Pseudonym

In the past ten years a distinct trend has emerged towards using your real name when interacting online. Whereas in the past even businessmen might go by HotStuff58 when posting on forums – even if they signed their posts with their real name – that has changed such that it’s pretty rare to find any adults using ‘handles’ or pseudonyms online. By and large, that’s a good thing – after all, it doesn’t reflect very well on you to be seen with a childish name, and when you’re building your brand you want everyone to know who you are.

In some cases, though, having an online pseudonym can be a wonderful way to act more freely online. With a growing understanding of how important online reputation is – and how permanent anything you say online actually is – many people have begun to feel constrained about what they do and say online. And ultimately, not everything people want to do online will send across the message they want to be their professional face. Maybe you enjoy getting into vigorous (sometimes unseemly) debates on online forums, maybe you have alternative interests that don’t befit a professional demeanor, or maybe you just want to unwind without always worrying what Google will show.

In that case, an online pseudonym can be an excellent way to still have an active online existence without threatening your online reputation. If you’re going to do it, though, there are a few good rules to follow to make sure your pseudonym remains anonymous:

1. Create a New Email Address

Make a new email address on a site like Gmail, and use it whenever you register with a forum, social media site, or other site. If you use your real email address, even if you hide it from the public, the administrators of the site will still know who you are, and that can come back to haunt you later.

2. Choose an Anonymous Pseudonym

You don’t want to use a pseudonym that has a direct connection to you, as it might allow someone to figure out who you are. If you’re going to come up with an alternate identity online, you’re best off choosing a completely random pseudonym that doesn’t have personal meaning.

3. Don’t Use Your Normal Writing Style

People’s manner of writing forms a sort of digital fingerprint which can easily be picked up by others who know them well. If you’re going to try to be someone else online, make sure not to use the same expressions or grammatical idiosyncrasies you do in your everyday online interactions. Either write with flawless grammar, or come up with a few new idiosyncrasies to use only with your pseudonym.

4. Don’t Tell People Who You Are

It seems obvious, but if you want to keep your alternate identity a secret, don’t tell anyone who you are. Even if you think it’s in confidence, all it takes is one instance where they mention your pseudonym to someone else for the entire thing to be ruined, and all of the material you’ve posted under your new identity to suddenly be linked to your professional manifestation. However, if this does occur, you can use a reputation management company to help you build another more effective online identity.