Reputation Armor

With the recent detonation of popular mobile devices like the iPhone 3GS, Blackberry Tour and Palm Pre, Reputation Armor is seeing a shift to websites that are tailored exclusively for mobile devices. With this increase in mobile sites, it’s important to ensure your mobile site is being found through proper search engine optimization (SEO).

Online marketing for mobile sites is not very dissimilar from standard SEO practices. By utilizing a couple of mobile specific practices you can ensure your mobile site is optimized.

It is no secret  to reputation armor that Google has been tailoring its tools to suit search on the go. Emphasis has been placed on bringing up local results and a new feature to enable users to make a call without navigating a site has proved to be popular already. What Google can’t do however is redesign every web page to be suited to mobile browsing, as such SEO professionals are having to reconsider what they can offer the user if they are using a mobile device to search. Ultimately this is the usual combination of increasing page load speed, reducing bounce rate and making a sale.

Here is how reputation armor makes certain your content is mobile friendly:

Reputation Armor rule #1 :Steer clear of using a bunch of images

Remember mobile screens are only so big, so you need to use the available screen real estate judiciously. With that said, big background images usually don’t render well on mobile devices. Often times a lot of images means a lot of scrolling; this can negate a user’s experience while visiting your site. Plus using tons of images means longer loading times.

Reputation Armor rule #2 : Avoid complex navigation

Less is more! If your navigation is to intricate it will make browsing your site tricky and bothersome. Keep it straightforward and accessible.

Reputation Armor rule #3 : No Flash

Flash is not supported by many mobile device browsers, so why use it.

Mobile site search engines

Seems simple but remember to take advantage of being indexed by mobile site specific search engines like:

m.google.com

Yahoo! oneSearch

dotgo.com

Mobile Web Standards

Follow these suggested w3c mobile standards to help make your content accessible and flexible for multiple devices.

Sitemaps

Upload your mobile sitemap to Google “Google mobile sitemaps” and “Yahoo mobile submit” to give the search engines a full view of your site.

Valid XHTML code

Use only valid XHTML 1.0 code.  Valid XHTML 1.0 is a clean language which makes it easier for search engine crawlers and bots to view.

Every day more sites are becoming mobile. Don’t miss out on potential customers or new traffic due to your mobile site’s lack of SEO. To get started developing your new mobile site or for help improving your SEO, please contact Reputation Armor @ reputationarmor.com

Reputation Armor takes a look at Yelp

Yelp (a local search and reviews online service) offers paid advertising for businesses called the “Yelp Sponsorship Program”.

According to the page advertising this opportunity, this Yelp Sponsorship program allows you to:

1. Add a slideshow of the images of your business.
2. Highlight a user’s review that you (business owner) are most fond of
3. Endorse your business as a sponsored search result and on your competitors’ business pages. Aim towards potential clients while they are making decisions about where to spend their money on a business similar to yours

How’s that sound?  Sounds like you get FURTHER control over your business listing which will help “put your best foot forward” and sneak attack your competitors, stealing all their would be consumers.

Do These Yelp Advertising Features Actually Accomplish Anything?  Or Is it Just A Bouquet Of BS?

While researching this I came across yelpscam.com. The following content is from their home page. But don’t stop there. If you’ve ever wondered about Yelp’s dealings, or are interested in all the hoopla about the potential class action lawsuit, then this site is a must visit.

Online defamation is any false statement, presented as fact, which is published online and which is injurious to the subject’s reputation, whether through neglect or malice. If you have been the victim you do have legal options, but they are quite limited. Most of the legal issues are covered in the Communications Decency Act of 1996.

The Communications Decency Act (or CDA) of 1996 was the first real endeavor by the U.S. Congress to get involved in the regulation and censoring of pornographic or obscene material. The Act was Title V of an omnibus bill called the Telecommunications Act of 1996. The CDA was first introduced to the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation by James Exon, a Democrat from Nebraska, and Slade Gorton, a Republican from Washington.

The law’s purpose was to stop, or inhibit, the profusion of pornography, and other obscene material. The word used in the text is “indecent”, but it remains undefined throughout the bill, with no legislator willing to create a definition which clearly articulates what indecency is without including art or creative writing. Indecent remains a term which is subjective in nature—meaning each person’s idea of what is indecent varies wildly. While some find particular art “indecent”, some would find it perfectly fine. The same goes for humor or writing.

What is clear-cut about the act is that it upholds the illegality of defamation, whether slander or libel, on the Internet. However, Section 230 of the CDA specifically exempts Internet Service Providers from liability for defamatory comments. The courts have defined the term “Internet Service Providers” quite broadly, though. This broad interpretation of Section 230 has served to protect Internet Service Providers and third-parties from litigation concerning libel or slander online.

Bloggers, for example, can be sued depending upon their relation to the defamatory content. If they publish the content personally, then they are liable. However, if their blog’s comment section is host to the defamatory comment, then they are acting as an Internet Service Provider and are not liable for the damage to your reputation. To the extent that they act as a third-party, allowing users to use their blogs as communicative outlets, they are exempt from any responsibility whatsoever.

Even in the event that bloggers edit these comments, guest editorials, or republished material—they cannot be held liable. The sole exception to this is if the editing process itself creates defamatory comments, e.g., changing “Chris is not a murderer” by removing the “not”. Similarly, any forum website, wiki, or chat site cannot be held responsible for the defamatory statements of its users. This is true regardless of whether the website has posting guidelines or not—those guidelines have no bearing on who is liable for which comments. Section 230 of the CDA also makes clear that republishing defamatory content is not illegal, assuming the republisher does not add his or her own two defamatory cents.

Also of interest is that bloggers cannot be legally penalized for deleting any comments left on their blogs (the same goes for owners of other Internet Service Providers). However, as noted above, they are also not legally required to do anything of the sort.

Public persons are unique in online defamatory law because they are not afforded the same protections as private citizens. Any public figure, elected official, celebrity, or person involved in a major event must prove that their defamer knew that their comment was false or acted recklessly, neglecting to ascertain the veracity of the claim. This means that individuals who could reasonably be viewed as “public persons” have an extra high hurdle to jump in order to successfully sue someone for defamatory comments—this was done in an effort to protect the Freedom of Speech, especially in the political arena.

It is important to note that context is important in any of these cases. For example, the well-known satirical news website “The Onion” prints many statements which might be regarded as libelous if they were read individually, but in the context of the website and its purpose—the statements are not meant to be taken seriously and are therefore an example of non-libelous false statements. Many political websites are treated similarly because in context the statements are understood to be hyperbole (for example, if one calls a politician a “crook” or a “thief”).

While the CDA provides some level of protection to those who have been defamed, it largely concerns Internet Service Providers. Section 230 protects ISPs by exempting them from liability for users’ defamatory comments. In an increasingly anarchic environment such as the Internet, it can be difficult to sort out the legal issues regarding defamatory statements. While this Act was instrumental in shaping online defamatory legal policy, it does little to define what a victim of defamation is entitled to in terms of legal protections. What it does clearly define, especially in Section 230, is who is exempt from liability in the case of defamation.

Facebook has been approved for a patent which in all appearances gives it exclusive rights to the “news feed”, one of the most key fundamentals of social networking. It’s questionable how easy the firm would find it to enforce the patent.

A technique for displaying a news feed in a social network environment, the method comprising: monitoring  multiple activities in a social network atmosphere; storing the numerous activities in a database; generating an abundance of news items regarding one or more of the activities, wherein one or more of the news items is for presentation to one or more viewing users and relates to an activity that was performed by another user; attaching a link associated with at least one of the activities of another user to at least one of the plurality of news items where the link enables a viewing user to participate in the same activity as the another user; limiting access to the plurality of news items to a set of viewing users; and displaying a news feed comprising two or more of the plurality of news items to at least one viewing user of the predetermined set of viewing users.

The problem is that pretty much every social networking site also uses some variant of the feed system. In theory many of Facebook’s current rivals are infringing on the patent.

There is a strong potential that a court might determine the patent can only apply where every detail of the description — which covers issues such as using a drop down menu to filter a particular online friend’s posts from appearing in your feed — is followed by the “offender”. That would give Facebook added protection against people simply ripping off the entire site, but would still allow other sites to use the concept of a news feed.

Two law firm have filed a suit against Yelp for allegedly extorting Cats & Dogs Animal Hospital, based in Long Beach, Calif., in order to take down a negative review.

Beck & Lee Business Trial Lawyers in Miami and The Weston Firm in San Diego filed the suit, according to a Web site that the two firms created.

Both firms painted Yelp as a Web site that preyed on small businesses to increase its sales commissions.

From the suit:

“Kevin [a Yelp sales employee] said that Cats and Dogs could advertise with Yelp for a minimum payment of $300 per month, with a minimum 12-month commitment. Kevin stated that if Cats and Dogs purchased a one-year advertising subscription from Yelp:

a. Yelp would hide negative reviews on the Cats and Dogs Yelp.com

listing page, or place them lower on the listing page so internet users

“won’t see” them;

b. Yelp would ensure negative reviews will not appear in Google and

other search engine results;

c. Yelp would allow Cats and Dogs to decide the order that its reviews

appear in on its Yelp.com listing page; and

d. Cats and Dogs could choose its “tagline,” i.e., the first few lines of a

single review shown on every search result page in which Cats and

Dogs appears (for instance, “Veterinarian in Long Beach”).”

Yelp has denied the suit, telling The New York Times:

“Yelp provides a valuable service to millions of consumers and businesses based on our trusted content. The allegations are demonstrably false, since many businesses that advertise on Yelp have both negative and positive reviews. These businesses realize that both kinds of feedback provide authenticity and value. Running a good business is hard; filing a lawsuit is easy. While we haven’t seen the suit in question, we will dispute it aggressively.”

As the lawsuit’s Web site notes, The East Bay Express has done its own investigation of Yelp, and came up with some damning evidence of its own.

Tweets are very comparable to article headlines so an RSS feed might be the right solution for those who want to read tweets along with their news in a reader. Twitter has an RSS solution only for Favorites, so what to do about the other lists?

Here is a very straightforward and nippy solution:

1. Create a list of tweeps you’d like to follow, or simply access an existing list. If you haven’t created a list before, look in the right column of your Twitter account and click “New list.” Then follow the flow.
2. Copy URL of list.
3. Go to http://twiterlist2rss.appspot.com/ and follow the two easy steps needed to generate an RSS feed.
4. Copy the generated RSS url
5. Enter RSS url in your reader to create subscription

To read numerous lists just replicate the process.

Buying backlinks or text links from other websites is a widely used technique in SEO and online reputation management, but you must be careful when buying links so Google does not penalize your website or BAN your website from Google.

When you must buy text links make it look natural so Google does not know you are buying text links from other sites, Google frowns upon buying or selling text links to create artificial pagerank.

Some Tips On Buying Text Links:

• Do not buy text links from sites that clearly offer them for sale on the website you will be featured on. If they advertise links for sale on the page you are buying a link on, stay away!
• Do not buy links on sites that allow an un-natural amount of links to be on the same page as you. Too many outbound links on a page is bad news.
• Watch out for sites that have adult or casino related links on them.
• Do not buy a ton of links all at the same time; it takes time to buy text links to make it appear natural. Buy 3 high quality high pagerank links a week or a month to be safe.
• Do not buy 1000 links for $99.00 or anything that sound like a dream come true. This will only hurt you.
• Try to buy relevant links from websites that are similar to the site you are linking to.
• Use the correct anchor text. Anchor text is the word you actually link from. If your website is about Cars, do not link from sites about dogs!
• Try linkbaiting to get quality free natural links. Linkbaiting is making something so interesting that other people will link to it without you asking. .
• Do not exchange links with other sites, one-way links are the ticket. Exchanging links is only good if the site you exchange with gets tons and tons of traffic and you will benefit from actual clicks on your link.

Tips From Andy Beal As Found On His Blog:

1. Only buy links from sites that are highly relevant to your web site content. If you sell ring tones, that link from an online florist will stick out like a sore thumb!
2. If the site you are buying links from already has more than 5 paid links on the page, walk away.
3. If the site labels the links as “sponsored” or “paid links” or anything like that, walk away.
4. Be selective in your targeting. Don’t buy footer or sidebar links if you can help it.
5. Vary your anchor text. Try to make your anchor text look natural. If you buy links on 100 pages, and they all use the same text, you’re asking for trouble.
6. Avoid any paid link where the seller is also an affiliate for the broker. Those “earn money selling links”banners? Yeah Google can see those too!
7. Check that the page ranks well for its targeted keywords. If it doesn’t rank well for its own keywords, it will likely not help you.
8. Point the links at different pages within your site. Don’t buy lots of links for your homepage.
9. Try to get the links in a contextual format. A link that is part of a highly relevant paragraph will be more valuable.
10. I guess I should round this out to ten. Don’t worry about buying PageRank. A brand new page may be highly relevant to your industry and rank well, yet the PR shows 0/10. Ignore that, PR takes forever to catch up.

Source: Andy Beal’s Blog: http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2007/12/buying-paid-links.html

Buying links is a risky business but can make a huge positive impact on your SEO and Reputation Management. Is buying text links worth it? Yes! In our opinion buying text links is worth it as long as you do it the right way and don’t get caught by the eye in the web (Google)!

We offer text link consulting and campaigns, contact us for details or for help.

Here is a TON of Reputation Management tools and resources to help you with our online reputation management efforts. These are the same sites that many brands use to manage and repair their online reputations! Reputation Armor not only offers reputation management services, we like to share helpful information, tips, and tools with those who wish to repair their own reputations online.

• RapLeaf – a website that scours the Internet to find information about a given person based on their email address. Sign up for free and tell Rapleaf about any email addresses you use. Within a few hours, RapLeaf will have results to show you. No longer as impressive as it used to be, the results about me were minimal after weeks of searching.
• Naymz – a “reputation network” that lets you create a profile and then invite people to vouch for you, earning you points and improving your “Repscore”. Once you sign up, use the Naymz Reputation Monitor as another method to see what the Web knows about you. A nice touch is that Naymz lets you see who has visited your profile, which might be handy in seeing which companies are interested in you.
• Wink – claiming to “find people”, Wink pulls in results from a number of sources including Google.
• Spokeo – another people search, this one covers dozens of websites.
• pipl – like Spokeo, a people search with a fairly wide reach. Fast too. Recommended.
• Yasni – I also like this one. Yasni’s search results appear as a profile of the person searched on.
• Whoozy – nice-looking site, I like the way search results pull in information from many sources while concentrating on social media. Worth taking a look.
• zabasearch – a USA-only search, based on publicly-available information.
• PeekYou – this people search only seems to work for Americans even though the site claims otherwise. One thing I like is that it’s easy to search on someone by adding their name to the url like this: http://www.peekyou.com/Jacob_share/.
• iSearch – a USA-based people search that will also find information from USA-based websites and not just public sources.
• 123people – this people search gives you results in slick dashboard format, telling you how many came from which source.
• Whoisi – a people search over social media sites like Flickr. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to work too well- it couldn’t find any of my public social profiles.
• Spock – claims to be “The world’s leading people search engine,” you can search across your Spock’s social network or across the Web. The results page is difficult to read and while Spock did find results in my case, it wasn’t better than pipl or 123people.
• Checkusernames – just what it says, this tool will check over 100 websites to see if your username is being used there. A good way to find out if someone is posing as you or just has the same name.
• myusername – this username checker verifies each site one at a time, a bit slower than Checkusernames, but it shows you which url was verified in case you’re wondering about a possible error.
• Usernamez – fast like Checkusernames, use this and the other 2 username checkers together to quickly check the maximum number of sites.
• WhoIsHim – this tool takes a name and creates a page of direct links to search for that person on social media sites.
• socialmention – a search engine across social media. Use the ‘All’ option first. Annoyingly, putting your name in quotes doesn’t seem to improve the results, making this site almost useless right now.
• radian6 – a paid solution (mostly aimed at companies) that monitors your brand on social media, has a nice interface and reports.
• Joongel’s Social Media search – Joongel lets you search many sites at once. Choose ’social media’ as your category to search digg, StumbleUpon and others simultaneously.
• samepoint – “a conversation search engine that lets you see what people are talking about.” I like the 3-column search results interface.
• RSSmeme – a tool for following the public RSS feeds generated by your social profiles at sites like StumbleUpon or del.icio.us. See what people are saying about you (by searching your name in quotes) or check what you’re sharing publicly.
• moreover – an RSS feed search engine with some filtering options. Very basic interface. There are better tools in this list doing the same task and more.
• Repcloud – a Facebook app that allows you to see what’s being said about yourself or anyone else.
• StartPR – an online reputation tracker that follows keywords and lets you manage the results with favorites, read/not read flagging and other handy features.
• pressflip – create searches and save them for updating over time. You can then ‘flip’ the results that aren’t relevant and pressflip will learn your preferences and improve future search results. For the learning to work well, you’ll need to come back often to check for new results, which is probably not worth the time.
• Swamii – a general purpose continuous search engine. Get results via email alerts.
• Trendrr – track a term or keyword across many sources, compare results (the most interesting feature) and even share them.
• Yotify – create “scouts” that search for relevant information and notify you when they find it. Has some good features like the ability to include friends in your searching but the site is clunky and slow.
• ChangeDetection – track any webpage for changes and be notified when it happens.
• WatchThatPage – another webpage watcher but one with many features like letting you decide what will be shown in alerts.
• TrackEngine – another site for tracking changes on the Internet, this one is feature-heavy but easy to use.
• Versionista – might be the king of following website changes. Versionista checks for updates hourly and will keep up to 5 versions of a page (paid users get more) while allowing you use the site to compare versions or to receive change notifications by email.
• Notifixious – a handy service that you can use to keep updated about changes anywhere on the Internet and in the way you choose: email, RSS, even Yahoo Messenger, etc.
• notify.me – “choose to have notifications delivered to Instant Messenger, SMS, Email, or Desktop Application.”
• Pingie – will send you an SMS whenever an RSS feed is updated (US-only for now).
• UpdateScanner – “A FireFox extension (add-on) to monitor web pages for updates. Useful for websites that don’t provide Atom or RSS feeds.”
• Google Alerts – a very simple service that sends you an email whenever it discovers search results for the terms or keywords you chose, such as your name.
• Yahoo Alerts – like Google Alerts, but with many more types of alert to choose from. Also, alerts can be sent to Yahoo Messenger or even via SMS (US cell phones only).
• Windows Live Alerts – Microsoft’s alerts service, similar to Yahoo’s in features but based on their own search engine.
• Technorati Search – generate an RSS feed based on what people are saying about you in blogs.
• WhosTalkin – branded as a blog search tool, WhosTalkin is actually much more. With a very simple design, you can search across blogs, major news sites, social media and many others. The site is very fast and found the results I expected to see when I searched on my name. Highly recommended.
• BlogPulse – search the blogosphere and follow the results via an RSS feed.
• Trendpedia – another blog search, what I like about this one is that you can compare up to 3 searches at once to see for example how often your name was mentioned compared to someone else’s.
• Alerts.com – another free alerts service with even more features and kinds of alerts (including job alerts). Use their RSS Feed alert to follow sites that might have negative things to say about you and your work.
• TweetScan – set up alerts based on what people are saying on Twitter. Can also search over Twitter and Identi.ca (another micro-blogging site).
• Listiti – “Get notified whenever your brand / product / company / … appears in Twitter Lists of your choice.”
• TweetRush – “aims to provide estimated stats on Twitter usage over a period of time.” Another way to learn about someone via their Twitter usage.
• Twitter Search – search for a name on Twitter and subscribe to the results via RSS feed.
• TweepSearch – searching across Twitter bios only, TweepSearch is a handy way to get inspired.
• Twingly MicroBlogsearch – Twitter Search on steroids, this tool searches across Twitter and other microblogging platforms like Jaiku and Identica while allowing you to follow the results by email or RSS.
• TweetVolume – compare the appearance in Twitter history of up to 5 keywords.
• TweetBeep – get email alerts based on results from Twitter searches.
• Twilert – same as TweetBeep.
• TweetTrak – track what’s being said about you on Twitter IN Twitter.
• EasyTweets – the paid account types allow some Twitter continuous searches plus a whole bunch of other features that you can get for free elsewhere, but not in one convenient place. For your personal needs, don’t bother with EasyTweets.
• Monitter – lets you track up to 3 terms in Twitter in parallel. Either subscribe to the results’ RSS feeds on watch the tracking live on the fly from the Monitter website. I like this one.
• TweetGrid – even better than Monitter, TweetGrid allows you to choose a grid of up to 9 (3×3) Twitter searches to track in parallel. A great dashboard for following chatter about yourself and companies you’re targeting.
• backtweets – backtweets will show you what Twitterers are saying about a url, which can be useful when that url is your website or an article you wrote.
• Splitweet – use this to manage multiple Twitter accounts from one place.
• IceRocket – a search covering blogs, MySpace and a few other sources, I like how the results are ordered by date.
• Blogscope – another blog search engine.
• Technorati – a past champion search engine of the blogosphere, Technorati still indexes millions of blogs and also lets you create an RSS feed based on a search of your name, for example.
• TinEye – an image search engine, TinEye lets you upload an image and will tell you where it can be found on the Web. Hopefully nowhere if the image is one you’d like to wish away.
• Chatter – a blog comments search engine, follow results via RSS feed.
• Chatterguard – a paid service, Chatterguard watches social media sites for you and provides alerts and reports. Might be worth the price if you’re very active online and have lots of information to track and filter through.
• Yahoo Pipes – with this free service you can create an ego feed, a customized RSS feed that pulls in search results about you from many different sources.
• MonitorThis – this tool takes a keyword and generates searches of that keyword across 19 different search engines, with the results being generated as RSS feeds in one downloadable OPML file that you can import to your RSS feed reader.
• Rich Schefren’s Reputation Monitor – does the same thing as MonitorThis but some of the search sources are different. Also, Rich has included his business-oriented blog feed in the generated results, so remove it right away but keep the rest.
• Filtrbox – funnels and filters any sources of information you choose. Pick the Free option on signup.
• Trackur – an “Online Reputation Monitoring & Buzz Tracking Tool” created by Marketing Pilgrim and reputation guru Andy Beal, Trackur was initially aimed at companies worried about what consumers and competitors might be saying about them online. Trackur is a paid service but there’s a free 14-day trial which might be enough time to discover things that other tools couldn’t find.
• Brandseye – another paid solution, this one claims to be better than Trackur.
• Attenalert – “a web service that allows you to find out who is talking about you, your brand, company or products on websites, in videos, the news and on blogs.” 7-day free trial. Like with Trackur, use the free trial to see if you can find any nuggets that the other (free) tools couldn’t.
• Distilled Online Reputation Monitor – this paid service lets you have a whole free month to test how well it can find information about you.
• ReputationDefender’s MyReputation service – a paid service (currently US$9.95/month) that generates a report of all information it can find about you online and gives you tips on how to react. Don’t be surprised if some of their tips try to get you to buy more of their paid services.
• ReputationHQ – another paid service that scours the Web for information on whatever you choose.
• BeenVerified – calling itself “Background Checks 2.0″, this is a paid service that tries to confirm your resume and your reputation for display on the Web.
• BoardTracker – a search engine that will help you see if anyone’s said anything nasty about you in discussion forums. Many features.
• Big Boards – a forum search engine that covers international sites, it either has many results or none at all.
• BoardReader – a forum search engine with a very wide reach.
• Omgili – another forum search, this one with a full-featured advanced search. There’s even a Hebrew version.
• Yuku Find – yet another discussion forums search engine, it doesn’t work very well.
• Twing – this site also lets you find out what people are saying in forums.
• Linqia – a forums and “communities” search with a nice interface and useful filters, I wasn’t very impressed when it couldn’t find my name and adding quotes had no effect on the search results.
• DataPatrol – originally intended as a way to prevent identity theft, DataPatrol’s alerts and reports can be used to find information about you online. There’s currently a free 30-day trial offered, but the site is only available to UK residents for now.
• BackType – search through comments people – you? – have made on blogs. This is useful because many sites block search engines from indexing (taking into account) reader comments. You can search by commenter’s name like a potential employer would do, or by comment text e.g. to see if anyone has written about you in blog comments.
• Keotag – a site that makes it quick and easy to search blog post tags across many different search engines. Try searching on your full name in quotes and without quotes.
• Commentful – track responses to your comments on blogs.
• coComment – yet another way to keep track of the conversations you’re having on blogs in one place. Their practical Firefox extension automatically records where you leave comments. Stay notified by responses via the Firefox extension, a Google Gadget, email alerts or RSS feeds. Plus, you can decide whether your RSS feeds should be public or private.
• uberVU – give uberVU a url or an RSS feed and it will check to see everything that’s being said about it on “blogs, Twitter, Digg, FriendFeed, Disqus, YouTube and many more. We then figure out the relationships between all those reactions, so you can see them as a threaded conversation.” Its nice user interface left a good first impression. Definitely worth trying.
• Vanno – although specific to companies, this site is worth mentioning because of nice features like user voting and user submission of stories about individual companies. Could a variation based on people be far behind?
• Blinkx – this multimedia search engine lets you find mentions in video clips and their description texts. I love the way the multimedia results let you jump to the exact moment where your keywords are said. Like any self-respecting Web2.0 tool, you can subscribe to the RSS feed of the search results too.

  Read more at: http://jobmob.co.il/blog/online-reputation-management-resources-tips

Many businesses avoid social networking as a marketing option because they belive that social networking is only to reach out to a younger audience and this market is not one they wish to market to. The truth is that this assumption is completely false as many of these sites specifically target career professionals, not teenagers. In a recent survey conducted by the Institute for Corporate Productivity, it was reported that approximately 65% of business professionals use personal and professional social networking sites. Furthermore, the same online survey revealed that most professionals gravitate to social sites like LinkedIn, followed closely by MySpace, Yahoo360, and FaceBook.

There are more benefits to utilizing social networks for your business or brand. One of the largest benefits is the Reputation Management boost that these sites offer. Getting involved with a social network allows you to communicate a highly visible message to your market and keep in touch with potential clients and users of your brand.  

If you have yet to take the social networking plunge we suggest you give it a try and see the positive benefits of using this type of communication platform.

A few sites we recommend you use:

Twitter.com
Linkedin.com
FaceBook.com
Youtube.com

These sites not only are easy to use but they rank very well on Google and may help you with online reputation management and search engine optimization efforts.