Andy Beal of Marketing Pilgrim fame is perhaps the foremost the expert in reputation management on the Internet today. I’ve recently discovered a great MP3 podcast where Beal shares some of his insights into reputation management. I’ll share the link with you in a minute.

If you have not considered online reputation management then you should start thinking about it right now. I believe this is going to be one of the most important aspects of marketing a business in the future. It already is vitally important, even if you don’t have a website or an online presence.

The essence of online reputation management is simply monitoring what people are saying about you, your company, and your company brand. It could be astute praise or trash talk, but what people are saying about you is vital. Do they like your company? Are they hostile to your brand? Is a competitor tearing you down? Do you have customers building you up? All of that is vital to monitor, especially online where anything that anyone says about you becomes a permanent public record.

You can manage your reputation online relatively easy. It starts with monitoring your company name and business brands to see what is being said about you. Then you implement a strategy to deal with misconceptions and inaccuracies in the portrayal of your reputation. Don’t panic if you find something you don’t like. Instead, deal with it in a level-headed way and address issues quickly without doing further damage to your reputation.

Now that I’ve set the stage for why online reputation management is important, I’ll let Andy Beal tell you a little more about it.

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This entry was posted on Saturday, January 19th, 2008 at 4:49 pm and is filed under Branding and Marketing, Reputation Management. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.