Are you aware of what your customers are saying about you? What about your ex-employees? What about your competitors? Information travels quickly across the internet. Are you listening to the online conversations about your brand? How are these conversations affecting how people view your organization?

Consumers use the web to make buying decisions. A vast majority buys offline, but goes online to research, read reviews and get opinions from other consumers. With the growth of consumer-generated media (CGM) such as blogs, forums, and message boards, information can be quickly generated and indexed by search engines. For business leaders, it is vitally important to actively listen to what is being said online, even if messages are negative. Listening creates the opportunity to take action and resolve internal problems or deal with malicious information, both of which can negatively influence your brand image and your corporate reputation.

Consumers use search engines to gather information. When they undertake a search for your company name or brand, your hope is that your own website is high up on the search results list.Undertake a search on your favorite search engine for your company name and look at the results. Hopefully, your company web site is at the top of the list. But what about the other results in the top 10? What do they say about your brand?

People from all walks of life use search engines to research, and gather information so that they can make informative decisions. If the information they come across during a search relating to your brand is adverse, it can affect the decisions they make. Negative information can ultimately lead to problems in many areas including sales, investor relations, recruitment, financials, image, and reputation. In other words - damage to your brand.

Online Reputation Management combines marketing and public relations with search engine marketing. Visibility and high rankings for good publicity are the ultimate goals, which will in turn push bad publicity down the search engine listings and out of public view.

To monitor manually for your brand:

° Set up Google and Yahoo Alerts to catch the use of your brands in the news.

° Use sites such as Feedster and Technorati to watch your brand in blogs.

° Customize RSS readers for brand tracking.

° Track for all names including brand names, company names, product names, and key employee names.

° Monitor industry-related sites.

Influence online conversations by being actively involved in them. Your participation will give you the opportunity to improve the perception of your brand. Take an active part in your industry conversation by becoming a regular contributor to blogs and forums within your industry. Lead the conversation about your brand.

Engage with contributors to blogs and forums and attempt to build a relationship with them. Make these two-way conversations and use the comments sections to get your viewpoint across.

Once you have put your Online Reputation Management plan into operation you need to maintain your work and continue to monitor results.

Areas that should be monitored include:

° Organic positions

° Pay-Per-Click tracking on your branded terms

° Snapshots of the top 10 search engine results

° News about your brand

° News about your competitor’s brands

° Consumer generated media