Online Marketing Blog

Note from Lee: This guest post comes to us from Andy Beal, CEO of social media monitoring tool Trackur and coauthor of Radically Transparent: Monitoring & Managing Reputations Online. Andy and I have known each other for many years and in fact, Andy was the first “famous” SEO blogger I had the opportunity to meet in person. He was gracious, helpful and very smart then and continues those traits today. He literally wrote the book on Online Reputation Management and I appreciate his willingness to share practical insights into the world of social media monitoring.

Social media monitoring. Reputation monitoring. Buzz monitoring. Call it what you want, but it’s all the rage. All the cool kids are doing it! However, friends don’t let friends monitor social media without first teaching them the six critical steps that most companies overlook.

One of the best examples of the convergence happening between search engine optimization, social media and digital public relations is online reputation management. This is a topic very close to home not only because our marketing agency emphasizes these practice areas, but because the need for brand and reputation management continues to increase in importance as consumer time spent on the social web replaces traditional media.

Recently I presented on a panel at Affiliate Summit West on the topic of online brand management and it was eye opening for many merchants and networks what goes into a good brand monitoring program. Companies spend huge budgets, time and resources building their brands and reputation. Not paying attention to that investment can be disasterous.

One of the hottest topics that transcends the public relations, social media and search marketing worlds is online reputation management.  Search engines are fantastic for finding things. They’re also a significant contributor to influence online. Blogs, forums, social networks and media sharing sites all offer venues for customers to express their opinions about brands – good and bad.

The influence of search visibility as well as word of mouth on social media sites (the social web) is too significant for companies with any kind of brand equity to ignore. Lucky for readers of this blog or those you pass it on to, there are two upcoming opportunities to learn in depth about how to tackle online reputation management.

Recently I’ve had several discussions with a reporter on how small businesses can effectively use blogger relations and PR to market themselves. Out of that conversation came another topic about Online Reputation Management – not for companies, but for individuals.

There’s a tremendous amount of content and in some cases debate, being generated in the search marketing and public relations communities about the need to measure brands and reputations online. The first step in a ORM program is to start monitoring and there are some pretty incredible and often times costly software tools emerging to do that.

That’s all fine and good for measuring brands or companies, but what if the brand is you?