Online Reputation Management in 2011

Online Reputation Management: Techniques and Tactics March 28, 2011 Omar Ha-Redeye AAS, BHA (Hons.), PGCert, J.D. CNMT, RT(N)(ARRT)

Overview
Part 1 - Introduction to Online Reputation Management
Part 2 - Control or Influencing Public Perception
Part 3 - Evaluating Your Online Presence

Reputation of the 50 Largest Canadian Companies

Social in the Front Seat
Christopher Barger, Global Director of Social Media, General Motors
“ The brands are now baking social into their overall marketing budget. It’s incorporated into all the programs.”
“ We can start thinking about a social strategy that is more in line with the rest of the strategy for marketing, rather than picking off opportunities piecemeal and hoping that they fit.”

What About Small Businesses?

Part 2 – Control and Influencing Online Reputation
Data Privacy Day: Perceptions study
What people do to manage their online reputation
Divide between personal and professional identities.
Use measures to protect and manage their online reputation.
Apply both proactive and reactive methods of reputation management.
Divided about ability to manage their online reputation and on ownership of issues .

Reputation Defender to the Rescue...

… Or Not?

"Google is not God, it is not the First Amendment, and it's not the truth. It's probably the best machine of the last 10 years, but it's just a machine."
Michael Fertik, founder of Reputation.com, January 20, 2011

Omar’s 4 Steps to Reputation Management
Dedicate
Collaborate
Mitigate
Litigate

1. Dedicate
Web presence is part of branding
Reliability creates loyalty
Time commitment
Scheduling posts
Long-term planning
Can be as little as 15 min. a day
Content is king
Regular posts; predictability
New, original content
Or is it?

2. Collaborate
Collaboration is Key
Links are still basis for traffic flow
Be aware of rel=“nofollow”
Link to other reputable sites
Link internally to related content
Build relationships
With related material
Other websites/writers
Don’t “Flog”

Political Blogger Alliances
Blogging Tories (www.bloggingtories.ca/)
300 blogs, avg. 3,000 readers/day
Liblogs (www.liblogs.ca/) ‏
New Democrats Online ( http://www.newdemocratsonline.ca/ ) ‏
Formerly Blogging Dippers
Progressive Bloggers (www.progressivebloggers.ca/) ‏
Blogging Canadians
All parties and non-partisan

Collaboration Tools
Track inbound links
Reciprocate
Acknowledge
Microblogging
Twitter
Facebook Status
Use short urls
Tiny.url (2002)
Tr.im
Link rot issue
Bit.ly

Internal Group Collaboration

3. Mitigate
Create web presence in advance
<name>.com
Own brand on social networks
Verify social media accounts where possible
Monitor regularly
Google Alerts
SocialMention
BoardTracker
Adapt to changes over time

Shel Israel
Author in Silicon Valley
“ Naked Conversations, How Blogs are Changing the Way Businesses Talk with Customers” (2006)
“ Twitterville” (2009)
Hosted an online talk show, Global Neighbourhoods with Shel Israel
Lorne Feldman registered ShelIsrael.com (2008)

Rep Mgt Enters the House
Mr. Jason Kenney (Calgary Southeast, CPC): Mr. Speaker, the only additional element that the hon. member has brought to the Chair’s attention relates to a matter which is in no way, shape or form within the purview of this House or your honour and it never has been, and hopefully never will be, that is to say, the registration of domain names on the World Wide Web. I understand my hon. friend opposite is learned with respect to parliamentary procedure but I must infer from his remarks that he is stupefiedly (sic) ignorant about the commercial practices on the Internet.

JasonKenney.Org

Stay Above the Fold

4. Litigate

Litigation is only an option of last resort
Extremely costly
Not time effective
Potential for backlash
Know and assess adversary
Seek non-confrontational resolution if possible
Address through 3 rd Parties
Potentially public permanent legal record
Google Scholar now indexing legal cases
Do not engage in flame wars

Pre-Litigation Options
Simple request
Educate
Discussion page on wikis
Provide your POV on own site
Notice-and-Takedown
Enforce copyright, trademark
Warning letter
Ignore completely

When Not to Litigate
Don’t litigate when
The view expressed is:
an opinion
true
Metatags
Keywords vs. ads
Fair use (copyright)
Political (usually

Better to litigate:
History
Litigation
irresponsible commentary
Malice is not needed
( Hill v. Church of Scientology)
Anonymous bloggers
Reveal identity through proceedings

Vigna v. Levant , 2010 ONSC 6308
Judgment released November 18, 2010
Plaintiff was a lawyer with Canadian Human Rights Commission
Sued Ezra Levant, lawyer and political activist, for blog posts on his site
Judge awarded $25,000 in damages, and ordered defamatory posts removed
costs decision on January 26, 2011 awarded over $32,500 plus taxes

Anonymity is a Myth
R. v. Cuttell , 2009 ONCJ 471
3 rd Party custody of confidential information does not automatically extinguish any reasonable expectation of privacy
rights reserved by the third-party vis-a-vis
York University v. Bell Canada Enterprises , 2009 CanLII 46447 (ON S.C.)
Use of Norwich order
Privacy interest v. interests of justice
Limited for specific purposes, not absolute
Privacy interests overridden by s. 7(3)(c) of PIPEDA
Cohen v. Google, Inc., Index No. 100012/09 (N.Y. Cty. Aug. 17, 2009).
Skanks in NYC (Blogspot)
pre-action disclosure

Ratings and Ranking Sites
RateMyProfessors.com
RateMyTeachers.com
RateMDs.com
Foda et al v. RateMDs, Inc ., California Northern District Court

The Ratingz Network
CampRatingz.com
ChildCareRatingz.com
ClubRatingz.com
DrugRatingz.com
LawyerRatingz.com
RadioRatingz.com
VetRatingz.com
AccountantRatingz.com
CollegeDormRatingz.com
MechanicRatingz.com
RestaurantRatingz.com
SalonRatingz.com
SkiRatingz.com
TVratingz.com

Location-Based Ratings

Case Study: The Obama Campaign

A Global Brand

My Barack Obama (MyBO)
Focus on what matters; use the online tools to organize offline action.
Incite the right actions; Building incentives that reward the right type
Leverage creativity; engage with the campaign on their own terms
and Neighbor to Neighbor (N2N)
Making users comfortable
Creating small and frequent campaigns

Customized Email
The Mandate:
Mobilization — Ensure a consistent messaging strategy that encompassed both short - and long-term communication objectives.
Messaging — Reinforce the campaign’s overall new media strategy to encourage offline action.
Motivation — Draft compelling content that would invite voters to contribute financially to the campaign.
Meaningful content — Provide supporters with meaningful and relevant content that was applicable to their personal situation.

SMS and Mobile
Always let users opt in — All aspects of the campaign’s text messaging program depended on voluntarily offered information
Create a conversation — The Obama team was unique in its use of SMS text messaging because the campaign staff responded to inquiries and feedback.
Portable engagement — The campaign’s innovative iPhone application made supporting Obama easy everywhere you went.

The Obama Blog
Tell a story — The campaign regularly profiled grassroots organizers and featured compelling guest blogs
Use an old feature in a new way —standard comment section transformed iinto an area of lively discussion and debate
Provide a digital gateway —positioned the blog as a gateway for supporters to discover other ways to participate with the Obama movement (MyBO, emails, etc.)
Lead by example —publish content and feedback provided by supporters reinforced through example the philosophies that guided the campaign

Social Networks – Obama Everywhere
Be where your consumers are
Make sure it fits
Understand online social etiquette
Transform social networks into distribution platforms
Embrace internal and external content

Video
Build a history
Speak directly to consumers
Share your content
Different types:
Life streaming
Campaign created
User generated

Analytics and Ads
Think like the end user
The power of iteration

Twitter’s Largest, On Ice

Part 3 – Tools and Techniques

Establish your Brand
Become a broadcaster…
… and beyond…

Monitoring Page Rankings
Technorati: an Internet search engine for searching blogs
Not updating properly recently
112.8 million blogs (2008)
Alexa rankings
# times users with toolbars visit site
Can be inaccurate
Subject to manipulation
Google PageRank ( U.S. Patent 6,285,999 )
Does not consider relationship of page to referring resources
depends on the number and quality of inbound links

SEO v. SEM
Search engine optimization (SEO): increasing the volume or quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via "natural" or un-paid search results
Search engine marketing (SEM): a form of Internet marketing that seeks to promote websites by increasing visibility in search engine result pages (SERPs) through the use of paid placement, contextual advertising, and paid inclusion

SEO Basics
Google ranks web pages according to perceived relevance and authority
possible search terms by the user (keywords)
SEO not an exact science, more of an art
basic principles are well-established
easily understood
readily implemented by the non-technical.
algorithm is a closely-guarded secret, constantly changing
intelligent guesswork
relative importance of factors
analysis and experience of what works

Blogging is Vulnerable

Types of Factors
2 sets of factors affect page ranks
On-site and on-page factors
inherent value of your pages
design and structure of your website generally
layout and content of individual pages
Off-page factors
how others value you
number and value of links from other sites to your pages
work consistently at gaining and retaining these “votes”

On-site and on-page factors
website IP address
server location
domain name of website
URL of page
title of page
meta description of page
freshness of page content
links on page to external websites
page “theme”
website “theme”

Off-page factors
number of links to website
PageRank of links to website
number of links to page
PageRank of links to page
text in links to page (anchor text) page click-through rate (CTR)
“ stickiness” of page
total number of pages on website

Monitoring Tools
Google Alerts
Site Analytics
eBay
Twitter
Learn about staff
LinkedIn
RSS Feeds

Blog Monitoring
BackType Blog Comments Monitoring –
indexes conversations from blogs, social networks and other social media
alert function with e-mail updates when search term mentioned in a comment
BlogPulse
complementary tools to analyze the data
Google Blog Search
Technorati
was the leading blog search engine
indexing millions of blog posts in real time
tracks the authority, influence and popularity of blogs

Twitter Monitoring
Monitter
real-time Twitter monitor
up to three keywords at a time
TweetBeep
hourly Twitter alerts via e-mail
specify keywords, people and links
Tweet Later
track your @replies
Twitter Search
formerly Summize
Influence Tools
Klout
PeerIndex
Retweet Rank
Twitalyzer
Twitter Grader

Link Monitoring
BackTweets
specific links mentioned on Twitter
WhoLinksToMe
tracks backlinks
sortable by anchor text, origination, and by the target URL
import links from Google Webmaster Tools for enhanced analysis
Dead link tools
Link Traffic tools

Litmus Test = Google

Google “Reputation Management Lawyer”

SEO Tools

Thank You
http:// OmarHa-Redeye.com
omar.haredeye@Gmail.com
@OmarHaRedeye

Online Reputation Management in 2011

by Omar Ha-Redeye on Mar 29, 2011

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Online Reputation Management in 2011 — Presentation Transcript