#Digital Reputation - Are You Monitoring Yours?

Recently, I have been reading more and more about “Reputation” either domain reputation, reputable companies that can assist me to improve my PageRank, or personal online reputation. In general companies build reputation with company brand and product brand.

Here is the new buzz “Digital Reputation" or "Online Reputation” Google has some guidelines on “General tips for managing your digital reputation” and Yahoo has a great explanation on “What’s my Digital Reputation?” and both have great insights to keep in mind. Digital Reputation needs to be looked at holistically and following areas should be considered:

• Employees & Temporary Staff
• Review Companies
• Partners
• Independent Research Firms
• Competitors

Digital Reputation is immensely important for companies and for individuals. Companies generally have the backing to do paid advertisement and have research companies write a great article about them and its products and have an “automatic following” or “advocates” with their employees.

Employees can be the greatest asset for a company to build and maintain a great reputation. Most of today's employees are digitally/socially connected, members of variety groups, and have friends in their networks. A company brand team can provide education and enable employees to engage with their social network about their company and their products. Employees should have the abilities to express themselves in their own words as long as they meet company’s policies and guidelines.

In general, companies vet their employees by running criminal records, confirm schooling, verify with given references, and most recently review employee’s public social sites such as LinkedIn or Facebook. A reputable social network can be the deciding factor to get hired.

Future employees may review websites such as Glassdoor, Payscale or Salaryexpert to get more details about companies they’re applying to. These websites hold reviews of former & current employees, especially since the comments can also be left anonymously.

• Employees with reputable social networks and high scores on social influence platforms such as Klout, PeerIndex, Kred, etc. are great to have part of your team. When employees add the companies’ email address to their Google+ profile (Author Tag) both, the company and the employee, will benefit from their reputation and social networking status. Just think when only a couple hundred employees add the companies’ email addresses to their Google+ profile… do the math.
  
  
• Review Companies such as TrustRadius, Peerlyst, IT Central Station or Spiceworks are companies that solicit professionals and ask them to do a review for products or software platform that they’re using. These companies are community platforms that allow professional to see other professionals opinions about products or software platforms as well. I was recently approached by one of them to review a software platform that I've currently utilize, I was rewarded with a $15.00 gift certificate.
  
  
• Partners are also great assets to improve and better companies’ reputation. Just like employees partners are an extension of the company and can leave positive comments in social networks, forums, and communities. Partners many times represent various manufacturers that offer similar products. Partners can persuade their customers to go with one or the other manufacturer.
  
  
• Independent Research Firms such as Gartner, Forrester or IDC can bring information about a company and product beyond customers and partners. These companies can help start-ups to grab the spotlight and can be compared with their already established competitors.
  
  
• Competitors can also influence the digital reputation by exposing weaknesses of their competitors. However, it is always better to become a technology leader in the field of expertise and drive for excellence.

What are good tools to monitor your Digital Reputation?

There are great tools that can be used to monitor digital reputation. Amanda DiSilvestro wrote a great article on Reputation Management Tools. I do want to point out a few:

• Technorati – one of my favorite for blog posts monitoring
• BrandsEye or Brandwatch – great tools all of the basics of reputation management
• SocialMention – it sends alerts for all the keywords & search for sentiments
• Google Alerts – I used in the past, it covers the basics
• Reputation.com – has three option to choose from, personal, small business & enterprise
• Watch Industry Websites - I've been using IFTTT (If This Then That)
• Large corporation may want to institute a training program for the employees, it is also a good way to monitor employee mentions. Use Google's Me on the Web.
• Find Influencers Opinion via Topsy
• Find Instant Social Searches via IceRocket

Summary

Digital Reputation is important for companies and it is challenging to strike the right balance. It reaches beyond the digital footprint and should be monitored closely just like SEO/Search.

Digital Reputation is very important because search engines like Google consider it as another ranking factor.

Remember it is much harder to rebuild from a bad reputation than to maintain a good one.

Related Posts:  

• Who Is Setting the Tone for Your Online Reputation
• Digital Reputation Management with SEO, Social Media & PR
• The Definitive Guide to Online Reputation Management