Become a Part of the Conversation

"Become a part of the conversation" is a common maxim of the online reputation management forum. The "conversation" of course is the combination of all the official sites, news reports, press releases, blog and forum posts, and related industry sites that offer up information about your name as a company or an individual. These are the sites that are defining how your name is perceived online, and whether they are offering up factual information (positive or negative) or inaccurate information, an opinion is being formed throughout the world based on them. Reputation management campaigns typically focus in on the top 10 search results for a given name and it's a good bet that there is some sort of combination of blogs/forums, official pages, personal pages, and news sources showing up for each name out there. So what does "becoming part of the conversation" mean? It means that the best way to exert influence over the search results and the "voice" of the net with regards to your name or company brand is to contribute to it actively and through the appropriate channels.

It is important to first identify those appropriate channels - is there a large forum that discusses your industry? Is there a blogger that has come to be viewed as authoritative source of information for your field? Spreading positive information to these types of sites can go a long way in assuring that those top 10 results will be a source of growth for your brand. A convenient reality associated with online rep management is that most of the sites that are of any concern for influencing your rep are stocked full of user-generated content. Search engines are quite in love with blogs, forums, and news sources. They offer up an extremely large amount of content / pages for the engines to crawl, and oftentimes update it on a daily basis. But just about any blog that is out there slandering your brand, and absolutely any forum, will offer you an undeterred path for response - just make one. Reputation management is all about controlling those user-generated, Web 2.0 sites, news articles and press releases, and optimizing your own sites. Spread the good word, apply some basic SEO, and enjoy the comforts of knowing that your online reputation is helping grow your brand or name, not hurting it.

reputation management