How to Protect and Defend Your Brand Reputation Online

How to Protect and Defend Your Brand Reputation Online (please us Twitter hash tag #ormd for questions) Chris Abraham President and COO cabraham @ abrahamharrison .com @chrisabraham Daniel Krueger Director of Client Services dkrueger @ abrahamharrison .com @d13vk US +1 202 657 4769 UK +44 20 8144 5671 DE +49 30 7012 5980 Site www. abrahamharrison .com Blog www. marketingconversation .com

Online Reputation Management Defined

Online reputation management , or ORM , is the practice of consistent research and analysis of one’s personal or professional, business or industry reputation as represented by the content across all types of online media. It is also sometimes referred to as online reputation monitoring, maintaining the same acronym.
AKA Search Engine Image Protection (SEIP) Also known as Search Engine Reputation Management (SERM)
ORM partly formed from a need to manage consumer generated media (CGM)
The Cluetrain Manifesto speaks to the ease with which one may initiate and amplify conversation online …
You need to participate, engage, communicate!

Google Alerts & Tweet Beep

www.google.com/alerts
Google Alerts are your friend
Use it liberally
Learn Google search arguments

“ chris abraham”
[chris abraham]
chris+abraham
chris OR abraham
chris-abraham

Google Alerts provides alerts via email as well as via an RSS feed
Create alerts for products, services, and the members of your staff and competitors

Google Reader, etc

Mandatory Alerts and Monitoring

We at Abraham Harrison, LLC, don't generally do steady-state reputation monitoring
That said, we all have loads of Google Alerts set up for everything
We have recently been using SM2 by Techrigy for Social Media monitoring
Don't forget Google/Yahoo! News, Regular Search, etc!

Negative conversation can still start on message boards
Twitter can be like wild fire
Blogs are still powerful
Keep your eyes on the Web!

If You Can't Remove It, Hide It

Countermeasure: Decoys, Chaff, Flares

A countermeasure is a system (usually for a military application) designed to prevent sensor-based weapons from acquiring and/or destroying a target.
Preemptive action of countermeasures is directed to generally prevent lock-on of a threat sensor to a certain target. It is based on altering the signature of the target by either concealing the platform signature or enhancing the signature of the background, thus minimizing the contrast between the two.
Reactive action of countermeasures is directed toward break-lock of a threat already homing in on a certain target. It is based on the tactics of signature imitation, augmentation, or reduction.
One or more of the following actions may be taken to provide softkill :

Reduction of signature (going stealth or going offline)
Augmentation of signature (decoys, chaff, ink, flares)

Preemptive Countermeasures: Inoculation

Chris Abraham Blog
Marketing Conversation
Abraham Harrison LLC
Twitter Page
Facebook Profile
LinkedIn Profile
YouTube Director
Flickr Profile
Friendster Profile
Jaiku Page
Pownce Page (RIP)
Tumblr Page
Utterli Profile
Friendfeed Profile
QIK Profile

Cleaning Up a Crime Scene

Most clients want a clean up
Generally, clean ups are done after the reputation “crime” occurs
Sometimes, we're retained during the crime, to minimize exposure
Crisis management ORM campaigns are like repairing homes during a rocket attack

Dominate Your Search Results

I have been writing chrisabraham.com since 1999
I have accrued 5,387 posts over time
Along with cabraham.com, abrahamharrison.com, marketingconversation, and a dozen social networks and aggregators (plus time, energy, work, writing, and commitment), I am well-inoculated against attack
So is my company
So is my staff
It's never too late

Search Engine Optimization 101: Textuality

Search Engines only know what you feed them

They are desperate for textual content

Google doesn't make any logical leaps – yet
Make sure your language is 'bio diverse'

How do your customers search?

Most corporate sites are designer-built

Flash, sliced graphics, bespoke CMS

Architectural consistency is essential

Google recognizes popular blogs and CMS sites like Wordpress & Drupal

Blogs can speak in pings and trackbacks – Google loves them
Always use user-readable URLs

http://ahllc.us/about v. http://ahllc.us/node/124

Meta tags work : meta, description, alt, title, etc
Pronouns are the enemy of heightened textuality

Google perceives the web page-by-page

Associations are inferred through links
Sites are a collection of interlinked pages
Topicality and relevance are link-based

Separate pages on the same site can have different PageRanks
A flotilla is often more powerful than a battleship
The “juice” you can offer and receive also textual

URLs are less useful than textual links:
Chris Abraham Relays juice better than dropping a URL or a TinyURL or other link-shortening services

Blogrolls and reciprocal linking is still a good trick after 15-years
Google tries its best to read the way you do

Search Engine Optimization 101: Linking

Corporate Blogging
Staff Blogs and Bloggers
Blog & RSS Aggregation
Social Networking Profiles

Proactively register!

Cross-Posting Posts and Status Updates

Tumblr
Ping.fm

Earned Media Blogger Outreach Campaign

Must have a pitch
Must have a story
Can't make bloggers do anything !

Search Engine Optimization 701

Case Study: The Poor Maligned Pig

Each Search Engine is Very Different

Chum Thyself into Social Networks

autoki.com
autoki.de
bebo.com
blip.tv
blogger.com
blorkut.com
bluedot.com
broadcaster.com
buzznet.com
classmates.com
crackle.com
cyloop.com
dandelife.com
del.icio.us
digg.com
en.netlog.com
en.sevenload.com
facebook.com
flickr.com
flixster.com
flugpo.com

friendster.com
gather.com
gawkk.com
hi5.com
hollywood.com
imdb.com
imeem.com
indenti.ca
jaiku.com
jappy.de
kewego.com
librarything.com
librarything.de
linkedin.com
livejournal.com
livevideo.com
login.live.com
lusitaniansonline.com
megavideo.com
metacafe.com

migente.com
multiply.com
my.opera.com
mychurch.com
mychurch.org
mycorners.com
mygrito.com
myspace.com
ning.com
photobucket.com
ping.fm
plazes.com
plurk.com
quepasa.com
rateitall.com
searchles.com
shelfari.com
skyrock.com
sonico.com
soundpedia.com
spaces.live.com

spanglish.ie
spock.com
stumbleupon.com
tabulas.com
tagged.com
takingitglobal.org
travbuddy.com
tumblr.com
twango.com
twitter.com
upcoming.yahoo.com
utterli.com
viddler.com
video.msn.com
video.yahoo.com
videos.google.com
vidoosh.tv
vimeo.com
vostu.com
vox.com
wamba.com

wordpress.com
xanga.com
xing.com
xuqa.com
yahoo.com
yasni.de
yelp.com
youtube.com

Domain Name Strategy

Google indexes domain names the way it indexes page text
Domain names are the cheapest part of the entire online reputation game

$6-$25/year, depending

Registrar?
Private registration?

Too many folks get frugal here

Promotional and Defensive Domains

ChrisAbraham.com
ChrisAbrahamSucks.com

Register your products, services, and the executive staff
Register domains that link directly to deep site content and redirect there:

AbrahamHarrisonProducts.com

Every URL is Sacred

About pigs, swine and hogs
Theater group
Children's book
Rugby team
Muppet "Pigs in Space"
Show pig site
BBQ site
Guinea Pig site
NIN Song
Local Pub
Pass the Pigs game
Potbellied Pigs
"Pigs Anonymous" site
Industrial pipe cleaners, called "pigs"
Card shop
Baseball team
The bay of pigs

Defensive SEO

We'll often populate a number of domains with a number of blogs using a number of platforms – by hand over time...
Our job is to promote deep links that are positive and neutral and ignore negative listings
We'll create between 5-25+ of these “aggregator” and “boing boing” sites in order to bring attention to deep, old links
The goal is not to promote the sites we build
We only use real content
We promote all listings that are positive and neutral, even “off-brand”

Deep search results are pretty spacey
“ Chris Wilson of 235 North Abraham Lane”

Aggregating Positive & Neutral Content

When we dig deep down we find deep links
Google has limited resources and “archives” old content
Excerpting deep content and deep links onto new blogs reactivates
We call it the “boing boing” strategy
“ Find content, excerpt it, make a quip, and link to source”
All real content

pigsblog.wordpress.com

Our Own Boing Boing Blog Network

These blogs and CMS sites are not intended to be features
They should be simple and you can use free templates
These sites should receive a full SEO treatment

User-readable URLs
Sitemaps
Dynamic meta tags

Use blogger, Wordpress.com, MySpace blogs, Friendster blogs, Wordpress & Drupal

Boing Boing Network

Everything is initially done via hand
Drupal offers great built-in RSS aggregation tools
Setting up your aggregation strategy before you start blogging by hand is essential
Wordpress MU (multi-user) is easiest way to manage a large campaign of blogs
Google does have human reviewers so make it personal

We often use the content of our own blogs to populate the content of other ORM blogs – experiment!

Explicitly Submit Every URL Everywhere

Many SEO experts tell me submission tools are “foolish” and “fool-hardy”
(Maybe I am superstitious)
I have been using submission tools since 2003
Defensive SEO is a SEO campaign promoting everyone else but you

I use Dynamic Submission 7.0
It allows me to import every URL I can collect (my Positive & Neutral list) and submit them en masse to “1000+” search engines automatically

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