Questions to Ask Reputation Management Companies

February 5, 2010

A knowledgeable online reputation management company or consultant can be invaluable for those with online reputation questions or problems. But buyer beware: there are hundreds of “boiler room” ORM firms run by money guys and their poorly-trained salespeople and third world “technicians.” Hiring the wrong type of company can be catastrophic for your online reputation [...]

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How to Defend Against Malicious Online Impersonation

January 27, 2010

Online impersonation is one of the most dangerous kinds of online reputation problems. It happens when someone else assumes your identity and communicates using your real name, photograph or avatar. Communicating under someone’s else name and identity is online impersonation. It is a crime in most places. Sometimes they’ll hack into your real accounts, other [...]

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Why Reputation Attacks Are Self-Attacks

December 9, 2009

When people get emotional and publish defamatory attacks on the internet, they probably think “I’m gonna show him!” They rarely think about what other people are going to read — between the lines — into their diatribe. We are all interconnected. Attacking others can easily stain your own reputation. image: sahaja meditation What you say [...]

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Personal Domain Name Squatting / Extortion

December 1, 2009

Watch out! People are registering domains that match the full names of high-profile executives, building them up and ranking them, and using the public visibility to financially scalp them. This could only sound like a “good business plan” to a morally and creatively bankrupt person with no ability to create anything valuable of their own. [...]

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8 Emotions that Trigger Negative Online Reviews

November 24, 2009

Most people are fairly lazy and don’t like to write that much. The act of publishing web content – even in casual forms like tweets or blog comments, is usually a pre-meditated, conscious decision rather than a spur-of-the-moment reaction. By the time most people get to writing something up online, they’ve usually done a bit [...]

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A Handy Online Identity Management Tool

October 30, 2008

Keeping track of your various social media accounts and identities can be tricky. Fortunately there is a new web application, NameChk.com that will let you check where your username is registered. While I don’t recommend overloading on social media profiles as a primary online reputation management strategy, it is definitely good to secure your personal [...]

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Sticky Pages: Thoughts on Google’s “Diversity” Algorithm

September 24, 2008

Some online reputation repair campaigns are relatively easy. You build great pages and get links from good neighborhoods and the “bad” content slowly washes away. Other times, it is maddeningly difficult. Seeming impossible. Google’s will find a third-rate slander page (with 1995 design and sloppy writing) and seemingly weld it to #3. You can rank [...]

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Dealing With “Impossible” Online Reputation Challenges

August 14, 2008

Recently, the PR firm representing a very famous and lavishly wealthy public figure called me. One of his projects had gotten a lot of bad press. They asked how much it would cost to remove the negative information from Google. I looked at the search results: A hit piece in the New York Times. A [...]

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A Look at Google’s Webpage Removal Request Tool

July 18, 2008

Imagine that one day, you are shocked to find your business name listed on a pornographic / adult spam page. Or someone has posted as copy of your driver’s license or social security number on a website for revenge. Or what if you search for something harmless in Google Images… and find a deeply disturbing, [...]

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Removing Defamatory Posts & Information with Social Media “Terms of Service”

June 14, 2008

If someone has registered their own domain and set up their own blog or webpage, they enjoy broad freedom to publish almost any personal opinions or true facts – no matter how extreme or unflattering. However, if someone is posting content on a public social media site, hosted blog, forum, or wiki – there is [...]

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