Online Reputation Management 2.0 and Our Mobile Future
July 29, 2008 at 10:22 am | In Articles, Personal Branding, Reputation Management, Success Strategies, eBrand, social media | 18 CommentsToday, on Facebook I was asked to post my contribution to PRWeek because paid subscription is required. 
Note that the title they gave it was “Controlling your reputation is vital,” which isn’t as strong as the title for this post. Being you are my audience and should get special privileges, below is the article I wrote, which touches on the new form of reputation management, what you can do starting today and a future “mobile” outlook. I started preaching this a few weeks ago. This is a very important article, with a few tips, but it acts as a “RED ALERT” notification that you need to do something to protect yourself.
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When it comes to building a strong corporate, product or personal brand, the internet has become the Holy Grail for connecting with customers, friends and co-workers. In this digital age, you must decide which face you want to show to the world. Every action you take can be heard, seen and damage your brand in an instant. You can treat the internet as a personal prison or a world of everlasting opportunities.
Companies, as well as people have actually lost control of their brand, as blogs, podcasts and social networks have given permission for the masses to start conversations about you, whether positive or negative. A quarter of internet users visit social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn (TNS, June 08’) and there will be 145 million people reading blogs by 2012 (eMarketer, May 08’).
The new state of the web calls for lightening fast messages, which was first popularized by the Twitter microblogging service. Despite the growth in messaging, you can keep track of your reputation on Twitter with TweetScan.com and you can set up Technorati and Google RSS feeds for your name or company name. This labor intensive method can be scaled with online reputation management providers.
Messages are traveling at the speed of light
To make matters worse and to raise your anxiety, livecasting and life streaming video websites are starting to become mainstream. Yes, even Hollywood producers like Steven Spielberg have broadcasted online. What started out as Justin.tv, which entitles anyone to broadcast their life, has given rise to other services, such as UStream, Seesmic, Qik, Utterz and Kyte.
Now from your mobile phone, you can take a picture or record a video and have it streamed right to a branded webpage seamlessly. These live feeds don’t enable you to freely edit or copy and paste. Any action you take now can be on the internet live or be recorded for distribution. AT&T now offers JuiceCaster, which allows you to accomplish this same feature for a small fee.
Mobility SCREAMS reputation management
The mobile web will become the number one access point to the internet in the future. As people live life on the run and start to live a life of connectivity and engagement, cell phones will hold our reputation. For example, you could be sitting in an interview and have a recruiter hold their cell phone out to you with your Facebook picture or a blog entry that negatively portrays your brand.
You could be littering by a street corner and someone could be broadcasting that live on the internet. With the power of embedded video, that single clip can be moved and mashed up and appear on 1,000 different websites in a single day. By 2012, there will be 975 million mobile users (Computerworld, May 08’) and 30% of European social network users access them through a phone (Telecom Paper, June 08’). If you want to achieve success as an individual or a company, you need an online presence, but at the same time, you must nurture it and maintain it. This is the biggest challenge of the future and one that companies will devote significant budget to.
You cannot escape these conversations, only see them as an opportunity to face the truth, be honest and monitor your reputation constantly. The days of corporate marketing spin are coming to a close. Your name, picture and logo are all you have now. It’s time for you decide how to best represent yourself, so when people talk about you, they understand and can relay that message to others.
Stop what you’re doing this moment. Conduct a search on your name. What do you find? Is what you discover factual or inaccurate? Develop a strategy to monitor your reputation, communicate with the people who write about you and always be true to your personal or corporate values.
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Dan, exciting times ahead! The mobile web is getting more and more compelling, with plenty of ways to broadcast your brand! I think tools like Kyte.tv and others will make the ‘real’ testimonial and real stories so much more achievable for tech savvy professionals! It does make you wonder why the new Apple iphone has no video capablity and lacks flash support for viewing video formats – I wonder what they have planned?
Comment by Luke Harvey-Palmer — July 29, 2008 #
A lot to think about. The new forced transparency is kind of frightening.
I saw a major stand-up comedian on TV yesterday talking about her hesitancy to follow through with her planned material at a show because she noticed that 20-30 people in the audience were filming her with their mobile phones. She wanted to ask them to put them away, but realized whatever she said and did would be on record too.
This touches all of us. Now everyone is pretty much in the “public eye”, whether we want to be or are aware of it.
Comment by Meg Guiseppi — July 29, 2008 #
nice article.
Comment by ibrahim binshahbal — July 29, 2008 #
Very good Dan!
I think you will be interested in my new blog about online reputation management:
http://online-reputation.axiopole.info/
Comment by Olivier Zara — July 29, 2008 #
[...] Online Reputation Management 2.0 and Our Mobile Future "Mobility screams Reputation Management" [...]
Pingback by 080729 Daily Links for Recruiters (July 29, 2008) | johnsumser.com: Recruiting News and Views — July 29, 2008 #
@ Luke – I think it’s a miss that there is no video. I’d be very surprised if they don’t do it for the next version.
Comment by Dan Schawbel — July 29, 2008 #
Thanks for posting his Dan. I’m one of the Facebook folks who asked you to do this, and I’ll be writing a response to post on http://billso.com/ soon.
Comment by billso — July 29, 2008 #
A google search of my name showed me #2
Internet has pretty much changed the whole ball game in just a few decades.
Comment by MarketingDeviant — July 30, 2008 #
Interesting article Dan! Online reputation management is one of the biggest steps you can take towards controlling your personal brand. I also think it is important to monitor the online reputation of the company that you work with/for. Their reputation will be tied to you and therefore you want to make sure that you’re constantly monitoring.
I recently wrote a blog post providing tips on how to monitor your online reputation: http://snipurl.com/37fyh
-Justin
Comment by Justin Levy — July 30, 2008 #
Thanks Dan for this post. To monitor your reputation online you also have to make sure of your visibility. It becomes a full time job to manage your personnal brand…
Comment by stetoscope — July 30, 2008 #
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Pingback by Personal Brand Measurement | Catur PW.Com — July 30, 2008 #
Dan, another article that shows the strong connection between reputation management and personal branding in the online-mobile world.
Good Work
Comment by maorkap — July 31, 2008 #
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Loved the article! As an owner of a CRM company I will say that it will take time for many companies to jump on board by monitoring their online reputation. Personally, I believe it will hurt them in a big way if they choose to ignore this.
We have developed a program where we will monitor a company’s online reputation and then make recommendations from the data. We may suggest that they utilize mystery shoppers to confirm the problem location, call centers, office, etc. Another choice is to set up an IVR Survey system to be proactive. When these systems are in place, you are less likely to have negative reviews on line about your business.
I think the public is as tired of marketing/advertising campaigns as they are about political campaigns. This is part of the reason why this is becoming so popular. The majority of people believe other consumers much more than they do PR firms.
Comment by Kathy Doering — September 21, 2008 #
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