Brand Reputation Management Advice

Submitted By: James Gunaseelan

One of the biggest problems with hiring a contractor is that you do not know if they are capable of doing the job. And as you can imagine, it is very important that you hire the best contractor for any job that you need done in your home. After all, if you do not hire the right contractor you may not be totally pleased with the results. So when it comes down to it, you need to learn about a contractor’s reputation before you hire them. But of course, this is easier said than done. You need to consider what it will take to do this, and then move forward with the process.

The best way to learn about a contractor’s reputation is to get references. Although this is not a full proof way of making sure that you hire the best contractor for your project, it is something that can help nonetheless. When it comes down to it, references will go a long way in telling you what the contractor did for them, and of course, answering any questions that you may have. The only bad thing about references is that your contractor will only give you the contact information for people who they know will give them a good rating. But even then, it is better to talk to somebody than nobody.

Believe it or not, you can learn a lot about a contractor’s reputation by simply asking them a lot of questions. Instead of finding a contractor and then making a hiring decision right away, take the time to more or less interview them. Ask as many questions as you need to get a good feel for their personality as well as their past work experience. You want to hire a contractor with a good reputation, and the ability to communicate effectively. By interviewing each and every contractor that you are considering, you will more than likely get a good feeling for which one would be best.

Author: Susan Chiang

Online Reputation Management is fundamentally the art and science of establishing relationships between an organization and its key audiences. Reputation involves supervising and assessing public attitudes, and maintaining mutual relations and understanding between an organization and its public. The function of public relations is to improve channels of communication and to institute new ways of setting up a two-way flow of information and understanding. Most public relations practitioners were and are still recruited from the ranks of journalism.

The First World War stimulated the development of Online Reputation Management as a profession.

“When I came back to the United States, I decided that if you could use propaganda for war, you could certainly use it for peace. And propaganda got to be a bad word because of the Germans.. using it. So what I did was to try to find some other words, so we found the words Council on Public Relations,” commented Edward Bernays, while describing the origin of the term Public Relations.

At present public relations as a career option exists in private companies or government institutions that actively market their product, service and facilities. Public relations training courses are widespread in educational institutions. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, there were 122,000 public relations specialists in the United States in 1998 and approximately 485,000 advertising, marketing, and public relations managers working in all industries.

As public image is important to all organizations and prominent personalities the role of public relations specialist becomes pertinent in crisis situations. Public relations agencies provide important and timely transmission of information that helps save the face of the organization. In the words of the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA), “Public relations helps an organization and its public adopt mutually to one another.”

Public relations is effective in helping:
* Corporations convey information about their products or services to potential customers
* Corporations reach local government and legislators
* Politicians attract votes and raise money, and craft their public image and legacy
* Non-profit organizations, including schools, hospitals, social service agencies etc. boost support of their programs such as awareness programs, fund-raising programs, and to increase patronage of their services

By: Joseph Pratt

When it comes to Reputation the driving philosophy that underlies even the most minute aspect of a campaign is that perception equals reality. This is as true as ever in the Interactive Age because anyone with Internet access has the ability to voice his or her opinion on the World Wide Web. Internet users now have the ability to present their opinions for public consumption on blogs as well as websites. Thanks to the advent of search engines, websurfers may access any perspective of the online debate (be it positive, negative, or indifferent) ranging in topic from iPods to real estate.

Google has profoundly changed advertising on the internet as well. What distinguishes search from other online marketing strategies is that search provides each individual user with specific information based on their initial inquiry. Often, this information comes from obscure corners of the Internet, thus giving strength to voices that may have gone unheard.

This democratic media revolution brings new challenges for Public Relations- the art dedicated to communicating a business’s message to its audience. No longer is PR concerned with the relatively sparse inlets of effective television, radio and print – now, thanks to the Internet, Public Relations has to actually contend with …gulp …the public!

So it makes sense that PR efforts must now encompass the expanding world of search and, in order to survive in the marketplace, your business needs the PR benefits that come as a result. Search Engine Optimization should be utilized by Public Relations professionals to ensure the standards of their client’s image. A comprehensive Reputation strategy must incorporate search as a means of building or maintaining a client’s image.

The survival of conventional PR then becomes a question of updated technology. When choosing a Public Relations company to help your business maintain an image, it is no longer a question of who has the longest track record, but who has the longest reach. If your PR company doesn’t have a search division of its own at its fingertips, don’t expect your campaigns to extend beyond the traditional paper and print. In this sense, it was a natural extension of ICMediaDirect.com to announce its Public Relations division after the successes of its Search and Research divisions. Finding that much of the work performed for SEO and SEM was already inherently related to the new Search-influenced PR, the launching of a PR division in a company long familiar with the details of this industry is no surprise.

How do they relate?

Let’s take an imaginary attack on Sunshine Widgets. A disgruntled entity could simply start “blogging” against it. They could harp on a single unfortunate incident, or flat out tell lies about Sunshine Widgets, and its corporate ineptness. It wouldn’t take much.

Perhaps Sunshine Widgets runs TV and print ads. These efforts would be undercut by some chap with a blog running a disinformation campaign. Unfair accusations or charges would appear every time someone searches for ‘Sunshine Widgets’. No company, big or small, real or imagined, can afford bad press that pops up with every user search. At this point, the necessity for a comprehensive Public Relations strategy becomes clear.

Sunshine Widgets could, through a practice commonly known as Search Engine Optimization (SEO), be proactive in asserting its corporate voice, thus re-asserting its sterling brand image. The variety of interactive channels to engage in allows Sunshine Widgets greater ability to define its desired message. Here are the ways in which it would benefit from a search oriented Public Relations campaign in the face of these random blog attacks:

• Blog search engines, like Technorati.com and Delicious.com, are growing rapidly in use and popularity. This suggests that online users, when looking for “what the real story is”, are curious not only as to “what people think” but also “when they think it.” For example, there were a lot more ‘Sopranos’ searches on the day before the season premier than there were six months before – and blog searches give you the latest on what bloggers are currently writing, as opposed to search engines which may not take the information posting date into account. Therefore, through Search Engine Optimization, anyone searching the internet for ‘Sunshine Widgets’ would be returned information that is not only accurate with regard to content, but up to date as well.

• Sunshine Widgets could issue press releases to announce company undertakings, strategies for the future, as well as past successes. Press releases are the most widely used means of communication employed by a company and are integral in shaping public perception of your brand. By distributing press releases online, a company has the ability to communicate its immediate message to millions of consumers instantly.

• Sunshine Widgets could engage in a paid search (PPC) campaign to drive searchers to landing pages of Sunshine’s choosing. While driving sales numbers becomes secondary to building brand image, a paid search campaign also fuels greater traffic to a company’s website, and the company that drives more users to its site helps shape its own reputation – and reputation, it bears repeating, is very important.

These campaigns would all use different tools to achieve the same goal, better public corporate messaging. The benefits brought to the company would vary too. For instance, all of the content published on the web will not only “put the word out there”, but crowd out any negativity from some renegade’s message. A single, angry blog will not be able to cloud a business’s message provided that company maintains an effective PR campaign. The many different messaging formats should insulate from this danger.