I am not much of a Twitterer myself. Like many social sites, Twitter can at times be too social and drag me away from being productive. However, a post on Google’s Inside Adsense caught my attention today and I am beginning to wonder if Twitter is becoming a necessary tool for reputation management.

The Inside Adsense post was nothing more than an announcement that they had established an official profile and would use it to pass on news and tips and anything else relevant. What caught my attention was the following snippet:

Twitter has given us daily snapshots of what we’re doing right, and what we could be doing better. If there’s an issue affecting many publishers, Twitter is one of the very first places we hear about it.

So Twitter is one of the first places they hear about it. Not via Google Alerts although I am sure they monitor some key phrases there as well.

They do make a good point. You can ‘Tweet’ from anywhere these days including your mobile or cell phone. Mini netbook computers are on the rise and so to is mobile access to the net. People are tweeting their everyday life and are not backward in coming forward to tweet about something that cheeses them off.

You can take one of two approaches to this phenomenon. You can decide not to become too paranoid and to continue on, perhaps using Google Alerts or a similar software package that alerts you to any negative discussions; or you can see it as a proactive approach to reputation management.

Am I a fence sitter? The splinters seem to indicate so. If you are in a volatile market then perhaps including Twitter may help. If you’re in a stable market with a strong reputation already developed then you may not need to watch the tweeting public.

I tend to lean a little towards the paranoia side. Reputation management is an important issue. However, I hate to see an email go unanswered because I was busy tweeting my day away. Used carefully with commonsense and you may benefit. In reality, reputation management starts with you. Twitter and all the other ‘alert’ tools are only there to warn you of a possible negative issue. Manage your business and the opportunity for negatives will decrease – that is where your reputation management really starts.

Recent Entries

• Why A Search Engine Googopoly Is Bad For The Internet
• Blogging For The Sake Of Blogging Is Not Blogging
• How To Create An Effective Social Marketing Tweet
• Internal Linking – Don’t Be Afraid Of The Long Tail
• Adding Your Scotland Based Local Business To AOL
• Don’t Be Too Quick To Dismiss Google Buzz
• Are Guest Posts A Bad Link Building Strategy?
• Can You Overdo SEO?
• Review Sites And SEO For Scotland Local Businesses
• What Effect Will HTML5 Have On Web Design And SEO

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 26th, 2009 at 3:53 am and is filed under 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.