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Keeping Up On Your Brand Reputation with Firefox Extensions

Tracking your brand reputation on search engines, Twitter, Facebook, and other sites is an integral part of good reputation management. To be truly effective, however, you’ll want to check in regularly to see what’s changed, and how you can best get everything back on track. This can be greatly expedited through a liberal use of appropriate Firefox Extensions, which can speed up mundane tasks, and give you data that otherwise would take a great deal more time to work out on your own. These extensions are some of the most useful and affordable tools to help you build your online presence and manage your reputation effectively. 

Of course, one of the best Firefox Extensions for managing your reputation is the simple search widget included with Firefox – you can use it to search not only Google, but almost any site you might find yourself referenced on, without having to directly visit the site and find the search, saving you a step or two each time you search.

UpdateScanner

This is a convenient, free, and easy-to-use Firefox Extension that helps you track when updates are made to a webpage. While some sites have RSS feeds that can do this task for you, many do not. If one of these sites mentions you regularly, or if you anticipate data about you being changed there, you can use UpdateScanner to be immediately informed when the information changes.

coComment

Perhaps one of the most useful reputation management tools available, coComment is a way to track all of your various online discussions in one convenient place. The Firefox Extension keeps track of every site you post a comment on. When people respond to your comments, you are immediately informed. You can choose to be informed via the extension, by RSS feed, by a Google Gadget, or by email alerts. This makes it much easier to remain on top of hundreds of diverse conversations, ensuring you respond in a timely manner to anything that needs your attention, improving your online reputation and helping to interconnect you with large communities. The extension works with virtually any site, including all of the major blog platforms, YouTube, Flickr, the NYTimes, and many others.

EchoFon

There are a myriad of Twitter Firefox Extensions, but EchoFon is one of the most robust and least intrusive. It sits as a small icon on your bottom bar, and when you receive a new message or are referenced in a Tweet a small box appears and tells you what was said. You can also use EchoFon to post new updates, to save yourself from moving out of your browser. EchoFon pops up a chat-like display when you click its icon, giving you full Twitter functionality.

Facebook Toolbar

The Facebook Toolbar extension is exactly what it sounds like: an extension that adds Facebook functionality to any open Firefox tab. You can post updates, as well as see Friend activity. This will let you seamlessly stay integrated in conversations with your follower base, without having to constantly be checking Facebook to check for new updates.

Online Reputation Management in 2009

The truth is, online reputation management has been important for some time. But it’s really in the last year that people have caught on to how truly crucial it is to landing and keeping a good job, and to keeping a brand untarnished. In 2009 a wide range of new applications appeared to better assist people in managing their online reputation – not coincidentally, 2009 was also the year that the social networking platform went truly mainstream. While in 2008 these platforms were still to some extent the province of the highly tech-literate, by 2009 it had become virtually unheard of for people not to have an account at least on Facebook, and sites like Twitter also became pervasive parts of the business world.

Even before this sea change, however, online reputation management was already critical. In 2007 the Ponemon Institute performed a comprehensive survey of businesses, and discovered that more than half of the businesses polled used the internet to screen potential employees. A similar study reported a third of all businesses used a basic web search to see what information came up first on applicants. These numbers have continued to grow. 

At the same time technologies like Twitter and Facebook continue to encourage people to share more and more information about themselves. While these technologies offer some great opportunities for online reputation management, they also have the danger of allowing people to share information that would not be appropriate for a potential or current employer to discover. Uploading pictures of a wild night, posting angry missives about a past employer, or demonstrating undesirable viewpoints in a blog post might all seem perfectly reasonable in the moment, but in the long run they can damage career prospects, and even result in a lost job.

There is a growing awareness that what is said on the internet does not, in fact, stay on the internet. There is a dawning understanding that things posted are permanent, and can be found by anyone. These realizations have provoked the need for some way to deal with lapses in judgment, the innocence of youth, or simply changing desires and expectations. If things cannot be easily removed or shut off from a public search, some alternative measure is needed to minimize the chances that someone important will stumble upon them, or discover them while searching.

Online reputation management attempts to solve the problem using the tools at hand. By maximizing the visibility of positive materials, either pre-existing or contrived for this sole purpose, less desirable material is buried deep in search results, far beyond where most employers will ever look. It is a simple and elegant solution, and one that is becoming more and more necessary as more employers turn to Google and other search engines to vet candidates.

So while the need for such tools certainly existed prior to 2009, the understanding was not yet fully there. 2009 was less the year online reputation management was discovered, and more the year most people caught on to how critical it is to securing a good job, and maintaining positive reviews at an existing job.

The Importance of Online Branding for Politicians

While the new marketing space of the internet has repercussions for all sorts of personal branding, it is perhaps most important for politicians. By their very nature, political figures are expected to be in touch with their constituents, are discussed frequently, and are held to a higher standard than virtually any other brand. At the same time, they are generally facing a very active force trying to tarnish their brand, in the form of their opposition. As a result, online brand management is a crucial part of achieving and maintaining success as a political figure.

It is a truth of politics that if an opponent is utilizing a form of media that a politician isn’t, then they control the discourse absolutely. Nowhere is that more true than on the internet. If a political brand is left unattended, it is certain that eventually the opposition will become aware of this and have a field day with it. Public perception is shaped more and more by what is read online, and without careful brand management the online space can become quickly inundated with negative spin.

One of the most important tools to managing an online political brand is simply being fully available through as many means as is possible. Politicians should have a Twitter presence, a blog, and pages on every major social networking platform, like LinkedIn, LookupPage and other niche networks. This allows them to stay in touch with their constituency whenever a problem or concern arises, to tap into massive numbers of supporters for projects, and to undertake spin control when necessary. It also limits the opposition from dominating those spaces and having free rein to say whatever they choose.

Controlling search results for the political brand is also crucial. The first page of search results in any major search engine should lead to sources friendly to the politician, or at the very worst neutral. Having a weak Google and search engine strategy can result in opposition candidates and parties creating pages that outline perceived faults in the politician, to undermine their credibility.

More and more people turn to the internet for primary information about a political candidate, and it is imperative that this information be controlled to prevent damage to the brand. The tools used to manage a political brand are much the same as those used to manage any personal brand, and rely primarily on creating high-relevance pages that show up as first page results for the brand. Free services such as Facebook, YouTube, and Flickr can all be used to provide landing pages that give information about the politician and outline their stances on key issues. Services with a nominal fee, such as LookupPage, can also be used to help ensure first page visibility.

If the worst does happen and the political opposition ends up on the first page of results, it is important to realize that this can be changed by building up inbound links, adding more high-value landing pages, and rallying supporters, negative sites can be buried on page three or four, far past where most people browse.

Review of the Best Twitter Monitoring Software

Twitter is an incredibly powerful tool not only for getting the word out about your personal brand, but also for tracking discussion about your brand, be it your business or yourself, online. Millions of users are constantly tweeting away about everything imaginable, and sometimes their tweets will be about you or  your business. Learning to track Twitter can not only help you understand what your clients are looking for, but also identify any problems they might be having. Recognizing and fixing these problems immediately, without even having to be contacted, is an incredible strength.

Twitter Monitoring Services

There are many different Twitter monitoring services out there, but one of the most effective, and completely free, services is Monitter. The interface for Monitter is robust, but can be used simply by entering your brand name into one of the three search bars. A long list of every tweet using that phrase will then appear, and it will auto-refresh roughly in real time. 

Using Monitter to the Max

To truly leverage Monitter, however, you’ll want to take advantage of the fact that it has a built in RSS feed for every search. This means that you can integrate Monitter with an RSS feeder to effectively be updated every 90 seconds on any new tweets that reference your brand. This is an incredibly effective way to manage your online reputation, as it allows you to catch problems as they arise and address them quickly and efficiently.

Monitter has many other features as well, including widgets that you can embed into your site. This means that any tweets that reference your brand will be immediately replicated on your own site, giving your customers a central place to view information about you as it comes in off the wire. And while Monitter is free, it still offers a wide range of robust features.

CoTweet Advanced Keyword Monitoring

A more extensive Twitter monitoring suite can be found in CoTweet, a platform built for businesses to interact with their customer bases. CoTweet allows you to build an account that constantly tracks a large number of keywords and phrases, so that you can catch every possible mention of your brand. CoTweet can then send you updates in many different ways, and at the frequency you request. CoTweet can be used with multiple accounts, and in addition to Twitter monitoring features it includes the ability to schedule tweets, thread conversations, and a number of other functions to help you more seamlessly manage your Twitter reputation. 

Successful Brand Monitoring

By using one of these, or any of the other free Twitter monitor services available, you will be able to keep a close eye on your presence on Twitter. This is important for everyone from the small personal brand to the manager of a large company, as it allows you to take care of small problems before they become large, and to shape your online reputation actively.

Interacting with your users, clients, and potential customers via Twitter means more than just waiting for them to tweet you directly, it means being proactive in solving their issues and reaching out to contact them after they express an interest in your brand. With a good Twitter monitor service and reputation management sites like LookUpPage, you will have the tools you need to always be well informed and to continue improving your reputation online.

Will Users Forgive Google for Exposing Their Identities?

Image by Getty Images 

One of the most influential companies in the world is the search-engine and information technology giant, Google. Although users around the world love Google for the many tools it offers to make their lives easier, recently Google has rolled out a number of services which people see as violations of privacy. These technologies include Google Buzz, Google Streetview, Google Mail, and even the core search engine.

When Google Buzz rolled out in February, Google Buzz users had their Gmail contact history revealed on their public Google profile. Every email sent and chat message exchange was available for the public to see. A boss could see an employee emailing competitors, a partner could see their significant other emailing an ex, and any number of other revealing situations.

Since many people did not know how, or did not realize that they need to opt out of this Google Buzz feature, it has led to cries that Google is showing sensitive information without explicit user consent. A related concern is with the mobile version of Google Buzz, which by default reveals the exact location a person was at when they made a post.

In response to a recent outcry over privacy concerns, Google CEO Eric Schmidt was quoted in The Register saying, “If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.” This cavalier attitude towards privacy has led some Google users to question whether they can simply forgive Google pushing Google isto an ever growing  reputation management crisis.

Analyzing The Crisis Response

However, Google, for its part, has been quick to respond to their reputation management crisis. The company has integrated features allowing users to turn off updates about their location, and to stop information about their contacts from being shared by default. While many people feel this is too little too late – and indeed, that the fact they made these changes is tantamount to admitting wrongdoing – others believe the company is making a genuine effort to correct an error in judgment.

Whether the public ultimately accepts Google’s attempts at reconciliation remains to be seen, but in similar cases in the past the company has shown themselves to be adept at addressing concerns, explaining their logic, and making amends for any damage that was done.

Improve Your Google CV with Videos and Images

Once you’ve started to get your Google CV under control, you’ll want to also look at the results that come up on Google Image and Google Video searches. These results may be radically different from your traditional Google CV search, and the last thing you want to show up on an image or video search is an unflattering or embarrassing picture or clip of you. 

The easiest way to get rid of an undesirable image or video is to push it off of the first page of results by getting other images or videos to replace it. While eventually Google and other search engines will use facial recognition software to automatically tag images and videos, for now they rely on things like the Alt and Title tags of an image, and surrounding text. In order to make images you choose come up first, simply rely on tags that hit the keywords you are targeting. 

The great thing about both images and video is that there are a number of free, high-relevance sites you can upload your media files to, and these services all have built in tools to tag the media with the key words and phrases you want. Sites such as Flickr, Picasa, YouTube, Vimeo, LinkedIn, and LookupPage are all great places to post images and videos that reflect well on your online reputation. 

Best of all, Google and other engines tend to weight newer content more highly than older content. That means that if you post a new image or video with the same keywords as an old image or video you want to get rid of, Google will tend to rank your new media more highly than the old. It therefore doesn’t take too much effort to clean up your Google video and image legacy online.

"Can I Quote You?" Managing Your Online Reputation in the Age of the Internet Reporter

In days of yore, when reporters were writing articles they had to make dozens of telephone calls to track down celebrities and their public relations representatives to get contextual quotes. However today, reporters have started taking quotes for their articles directly from the web--making it more important than ever that high profile individuals know how to craft their online reputation and use social media to their advantage. 

While it’s easy to imagine how this new type of reporting could get out of hand--tweets taken out of context and facebook posts altered for articles--these powerful new online publishing platforms also have the ability to help set the record straight and be effective crisis management tools.

Take the case of celebrity Lindsay Lohan and her x-girlfriend Sam for example. When RadarOnline, an online celebrity gossip magazine, published an article about Lindsay’s x-girlfriend beating and chocking her, Lindsey took the web. She tweeted, "This is become a bit much...Samantha R never raised a hand to me. I've never said she did. Enough is Enough. Focus on more important world issues." Shortly after publishing this tweet, a more popular news source, US Magazine, picked the story up and published her tweets online--allowing Lindsey to set the record straight.

By having an established presence online, Lindsay Lohan was able to communicate directly with her fans and the reporters always following her every move. She no longer has to wait for someone to contact her and write a favorable story because she can use twitter, facebook and other social media to connect directly with her fans and set the record straight. In addition, Lindsay’s tweets also created the space for Sam, her x-girlfriend, to respond publicly and now the two have a unified public presence denouncing RaderOnline’s accusations.

While it is possible to manage your own online reputation, as Lindsay did in this case, their are also many services that help celebrities and high profile business people set the record straight. For example, by registering for LookupPage, users have the ability to create a webpage with positive content and track who views their profile online. In addition, LookupPage has one of the highest rankings on Google, so every user that signs up can be sure that their positive profile will be at the top of their Google CV, an accessible place for internet reporters and followers.   

How To Manage Your Google CV

As nearly everyone knows by now, Google is one of the most powerful search engines and providers of online tools. When people are interested to know about you or your business, one of the first things they do is search Google. That’s right, your Google CV is the first impression people have of you, so it’s important to know how to manage your reputation in Google effectively. Here are a few tips to get you started:

Know What’s Crawled Before You Sign Up 

Every day dozens of websites ask visitors to register with their names, create a username, and establish identities in online communities. While it’s illegal to share your email with third parties, many websites and social networks have no problem sharing your name or username with Google and you can be sure that many of these websites will be some of the first results on your Google CV.

Before you sign up to a website, check to see if the website is crawled on Google. See what kind of content is showing up and then determine if you should register to the site and what information you can list there.

Keep Track of Where You’re Registered

As people register to more and more websites everyday, it can get challenging to keep track of all the separate accounts and identities that you or your business may have online. If you have a Google Account you can easily sign up for Google Docs and use a spreadsheet to keep track of all your usernames and passwords. This is a highly effective way to make sure that as you establish more online identities, that you’ll be able to update them with you or your businesses’ information easily and not leave any old information on your Google CV.

Register to Websites that Improve Your Google CV

Most people and businesses have an idea of the image they would like to portray online or an image that they’d like customers to associate with their brand. The best way to craft your Google CV is to register to high ranking websites that will improve your online image. Today there are thousands of niche social networks that rank high on Google and can improve your online identity. Some social networks, like LookupPage, rank especially high on Google and are built for helping users create a positive image online. 

Take a Pen Name

While in some social networks, like Facebook and LinkedIn, is it expected that you will use your real name, many websites give you the option to use a nick name or pen name. You should only register your real name to social networks and websites that improve your online image and brand. For other websites, take a pen name or nickname so that you don’t risk having the website connected to you or your company’s Goolge CV. 

Sign Up for Google Alerts

If you have an account with Google, you can register for Google Alerts and get an email every time Google indexes a new page with your name or your business. Setting up Google Alerts is easy, and helps you to know immediately as your reputation is being built online. One tip: Make sure that you place quotations around your name when you are searching or setting up your Google Alert, this way you’ll get very targeted results.

Why we need to manage our online image and how LookupPage can help

We all work hard, day and night sometimes, to ensure the success of our businesses. We go way beyond the call of duty so as not to slip up and make any kind of regrettable mistake. And yet, there are countless examples of people exactly like this, who have managed to accumulate negative press now available for all to see online. No matter what the product or how good the business, all we really have to depend upon is our reputation.

So what is an online reputation and why is managing it so important?

Wikipedia.com defines reputation management as "the process of tracking an entity's actions and other entities' opinions about those actions; reporting on those actions and opinions; and reacting to that report creating a feedback loop....."

When such opinions are viewed on the internet, it is clear that the widest possible audience can be reached at the click of a button, and one's reputation can be irreversibly damaged in seconds. As the internet is the number one tool used worldwide: be it for information or transactional purposes, the user relies upon the top search engines for accurate and current data, usually depending on results shown on the first page.

It is therefore more important then ever before to manage your online image. Cyberspace is rife with negative bloggers among others and if their content is managed properly, defamatory comments can rise to the top of the search engine results thereby ruining their subject.

On a more optimistic note, LookupPage can help you improve your online image, or as we like to call it, your "Google CV". As we highlighted before, the most important factors in search engine optimization (SEO) is content and links. While you are in charge of the content, LookupPage is responsible for the links. Using our advanced SEO techniques developed by top professionals who know exactly which content to promote and how, you can benefit from first page ranking on all major search engines under domain names bought especially for you, pushing negative comments to lower pages. To start benefiting from our expertise, upgrade to our plan for professionals and follow these simple steps:

1. Sign into your account (or create a new one).
2. Click the "My Account" tab.
3. Click the "Upgrade / Renew your subscription" link.
4. Chose the "Pro" package and purchase.

We look forward to helping you manage your online image and reputation to ensure a safer and fully enriched online future.

NBA Star to Control What His Ex Says About Him Online

Basketball superstar Dwight Howard is used to being in the spotlight for his athletic achievements on the basketball court. It seems that a messy break up with the mother of his 2 year old son has forced the Orlando Magic Center to pursue legal actions against her in a court of law. Howard has been locking heads with Royce Lynsay Reed over defamatory content published online by Reed in October 2009. Reed addressed Howard as a “dead beat dad” in her blog, Twitter account and on an ESPN interview.

The judge awarded Howard a permanent injunction that would stop the cyber bashing by Reed. She was banned from using his name, image or referring to him in any media including the web. This injunction was put to the test less than two weeks later when comments were made on a gossip website claiming Howard has not seen his son in two months and that the reason for the injunction is that he has something to hide. Howard claims Reed made the comments using an alias and is suing her for over $9 million in damages. 

A third and final installment of this battle conducted with the use of social media is from yet another lawsuit filed by Dwight Howard late last week. In this lawsuit against Reed, Howard is claiming she has not only defied the injunction by publishing photos of their son on Twitter but she has also endangered the kid’s well being because Howard is a well known and highly paid figure. Interesting enough, the amount of money Howard is seeking for this lawsuit is based on the amount of Twitter followers Reed has on the popular micro blog. Howard is seeking $500 per follower who was able to see the photo plus the cost of his legal team.  

Building a Brand Using Free Social Media Tools

Traditional online email accounts are getting less traffic than in previous years. The reason for that is simple, people are emailing their friends directly from their social networks so they do not need to enter Gmail as often as they used to. Social networks are becoming stronger and are no longer used by a specific age group. 

Although there is an argument among different search engines on what is the most searched word of 2009, we feel that the most explosive and important word for 2009 is Twitter. Apparently, we are not the only ones who think this way. Only recently, Google unveiled its real time search option that will incorporate status updates from popular social networks among other real time results.

If you need any further proof on how seriously Google is taking twitter accounts create a fictitious account on twitter and conduct a Google search for that name 48 hours later. Odds are that this none - existing person will rank on the first page of Google thanks to that twitter account. Because of the fact that social media profiles usually receive indexation by Google and other search engines, creating a brand using free social media tools is certainly achievable.

Facebook

companies such as Coca Cola, Pizza Hut and U.S based restaurant Chain  T.G.I Friday’s have achieved considerable success by creating a Facebook Fan page. This can be achieved on a smaller scale by getting your friends and clients to become fans of your service. 

A solid Facebook fan page needs to be able to provide information about the business and possibly provide an added value to the fans of the brand. The Pizza Hut fan page is currently offering a 20% discount on all orders made with the Pizza Hut iPhone application as well as other coupons. 

Twitter

As written above, Twitter is currently enjoying the respect of major search engines. Although getting a large following on twitter takes time and effort, it is certainly achievable. Ranking well on Google for a twitter account is certainly easier if the account is active and tweets on a regular basis. The CEO of Zappos , an online shoe retailer  is using Twitter in order to engage and be reachable by Zappos customers. By being readily available, he is strengthening the brand of his company as being attentive to what the customer wants    

LookupPage.com - while it is not a social network, creating a LookupPage for a business or a professional can have tremendous return on investment (ROI). LookupPage enjoys excellent indexation by Google and creating a profile can help you establish additional positive results that often rank extremely well and contribute greatly to one’s Google Resume.  For example, you can check out Oxford Car Service which created a LookupPage for their business and their LookupPage is ranking extremely high on organic search. 

Can Google Suggest be Modified?

Google search is constantly changing. It seems this time around, Google does not share the information with the end user in the same fashion as it did in the past. Let us start with the obvious, conducting a search for the term “Tony Blair” on Google.co.uk and on Google.com yields different Google Suggest results. That is actually understandable but one thing that is slowly being phased out is letting the user know just how many results there are for every suggested term. Searching on Google.co.uk will still inform you how many results there are for each suggestion, but Google.com only lists the top ten suggestions without sharing any metrics.

Why is it an issue if Google does not share the metrics with the users? 

Analyzing metrics can often lead to improved performance. If people knew how many indexed pages on Google have a chance of “earning” a Google Suggest spot, than they would try to manipulate these results for personal gain. Google is trying to avoid that but by doing so is eliminating an informative metric from ordinary users. The fact that this metric was available and might not be in the future reduces the quality of the search that people can conduct using Google.

How does Google Suggest affect online reputation?

When searching the term “Tony Blair “Google Suggest picks ten options it deems relevant for the time. Once again, there is no real way to know how Google decides what is relevant at any point in time. It is likely that recent queries as well as trending topics on major blogs and news services have an influence on what is suggested. but the bottom line is only Google knows what exactly dictates what is included in Google Suggest and what does not. Recent searches that we have conducted on both Google.co.uk and Google.com for “Tony Blair” brought negative suggestions along with positive ones. A negative suggestion that appeared on both was the word “antichrist”.

If a high school student is researching the former Prime Minister of the UK for a school report and clicks on Google Suggested results for “Tony Blair the antichrist” there is a chance that these results would rank even higher on future searches, this can have a negative effect on Blair’s online reputation. Blair is certainly not alone in this predicament; Google suggestions for Tiger Woods  are mostly negative nowadays as well.