As we spiral into, or rather burst into an age where so much is controlled online, a new buzz word has come into mainstream. “Online Reputation” never really had a meaning before Google, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, but now companies need to pay as much attention to this area of their business as they do their offline public relations efforts.

An interesting example of how online reputations can spin out of control is with Twitter. It’s free to sign up so you’ll find many imposters pretending to be another person or company. Often these fakes can get lots of followers and fool many people. Take for example this fake AT&T account, or this Steve Jobs account. Both fake accounts with thousands of followers and free to post whatever they want in the name of a real person and company.

User forums can be a great way for your customers to interact with your brand and each other. They can provide you great feedback and criticisms to help steer your business, but they can also get a bit ugly. When someone is behind the vale of anonymity that a user forum provides, they are free to say whatever they want without direct consequences. You might not tell an intimidating executive in person that his product stinks, but you probably wouldn’t have a problem with that if you were online and out of reach! It’s important to monitor your user forums to find inappropriate or inaccurate postings and remove them. However, you shouldn’t necessarily sensor or restrict users from expressing their true feelings about your business, even if they aren’t flattering. Instead have an executive in your business respond to the posts with the company’s position.

As an example of dictatorship-like control of a user forum, I once posted on the Apple forums that I was thinking about getting rid of my iPhone and replacing it with a Blackberry. I listed all the reasons and then sought people’s feedback. I never got any feedback from my post because within a minute or two of submitting my post it was deleted. I understand why it was deleted, probably automatically, because I used the word “Blackberry”, but in reality, this should have been valuable feedback for Apple and a chance to keep a customer.

What online reputation really boils down to is what appears when someone searches for your company name. If it’s a bunch of anti-you sites than that is definitely going to be bad. You can’t directly control what appears in the search results, but you can help effect it. Try the following:

 

1. Be sure your employees have LinkedIn accounts and that they link to your company website.
2. If you don’t have one, create a blog and add relevant and interesting content about your company and especially your industry.
3. Setup active Facebook and Twitter accounts and be sure to maintain them.
4. Create YouTube videos about your product or service and add relevant keywords and links to your company website in the description.

Keep in mind that search engines are increasingly adding live, up-to-date information to their search results pages, so you will start to see your Tweets and YouTube content show up under your company name. This is all good and essentially allows you to control what people are seeing when they search for you.

The online community is a wild untamed landscape, but that doesn’t mean you can’t maintain a polished image. Practice good social networking habits and keep quality up-to-date information on your websites and blogs, and you’ll have as much control over your online reputation as is possible. Resist the temptation to spend tens of thousands of dollars to have an outside firm do this for you, as there are many that would be willing to. Remember, they don’t have anymore control over the web than you do. You’re a willing (or unwilling) participant in this jungle so speak up!