Best Practices to Clean Up Your Online Reputation

Learn how to clean up your online reputation with our guide to digital information resources below.

When it comes time to monitor, manage and clean up your online reputation, there are lots of methods to choose from. Some individuals and brands like to focus their efforts on content creation, while others like to use social media and SEO.

No matter what method you prefer to use, it’s important to pair these methods together accordingly so you can find the best results possible.

As with any industry, there is advice, recommendations, paid services and agencies just waiting to gobble up your money to put these “best practices” into work for you.

Instead of trying to sell you on any specific service or model, we will instead provide you with some of the best resources in the industry so you can learn what methods work best and how to implement them yourselves.

Online Reputation Management Resources You Should Know

– How to Manage Your Online Reputation for Free

As mentioned earlier, there are many paid services out there for managing your online reputation. Some of these services are undoubtedly important. However, unless you have a huge business with hundreds of employees and a budget to spend, spending thousands of dollars on ORM is most likely not your priority.

There are actually many ways that you can get started with your own monitoring and management before deciding if you need to hire an outside agency or invest in premium ORM tools and services. These methods include performing a simple Google search on yourself or your brand and seeing what comes up, limiting any privacy and settings that you may have open through social media, viewing reviews on all major review sites like TripAdvisor and also building out your own content with a blog and social media.

– 5 Ways to Protect Your Brand with Social Media and SEO

Simple tasks like setting up a social profile with all of the major search engines can lead to quick improvements in the search results. Since Google loves sites like Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook, they also rank their content in the search results much higher than many other sites. This makes it very easy for anyone to create a site using their personal or business name, while also adding a few brand name listings on Google.

Other methods for using SEO and social media include creating a blog, linking social profiles together, replying to comments and knowing how to portray your online content best with your audience and customers.

– 97 Resources to Better Manage Your Online Reputation

Discover 97 different resources to better manage your online reputation through the use of popular and effective online marketing methods such as content creation, social media, SEO and branding outreach in this excellent ORM collaboration post.

While the concept of 97 resources and methods might seem overwhelming, it’s recommend you use this as a guide to find any new opportunities you might be missing out on.

– How to Improve Your Digital Footprint and Your Online Identity

In addition to worrying about customer complaints and negative reviews, every individual and brand also needs to worry about their online privacy and information they may unknowingly be sharing through social media or other online applications.

The article shows you how to change your Facebook settings, perform a simple Google search for yourself and also how to revise your existing blog and removing any abandoned social media accounts that may be releasing old information or leaving your organization open for unwanted attacks and leaks.

– 4 Ways to Protect Your Reputation Online

WikiHow is known for their generic tutorials and guides on pretty much everything. Not surprisingly, they also have one on protecting your online reputation as well. Like their other guides, this one is also pretty basic, but it does cover some areas that many people simple don’t think of, such as presenting yourself well online with professional and nice looking photos (for use on LinkedIn and resume sites), avoiding spelling and grammar errors on your business web sites and blogs, sharing photos and information that your audience will actually find value in… and of course, thinking before you speak, click or post!

These ideas may be simple, but they are also some of the most recognized negatives by customers and investors that many individuals and brands continue to overlook.

The Many Parts of Online Reputation Management

As you can see, we could talk about the many different components of how to protect your brand and reputation all day. The important thing is that you have a good idea what to look for and knowing how to monitor your brand mentions online.

Should you feel there is too much work for yourself to manage, then it’s time to invest some money in top industry software and tracking solutions or even hire an online reputation management agency.