A Beginner's Guide to Online PR and Marketing

How to Protect and Defend Your Brand Reputation Online

(please use Twitter hash tag #ormd for questions)Chris AbrahamPresident and COOcabraham@abrahamharrison.com@chrisabraham

Daniel KruegerDirector of Client Servicesdkrueger@abrahamharrison.com@d13vkUS +1 202 657 4769UK +44 20 8144 5671DE +49 30 7012 5980Site www.abrahamharrison.comBlog www.marketingconversation.com

Online Reputation Management Defined

Online reputation management, or ORM, is the practice of consistent research and analysis of ones personal or professional, business or industry reputation as represented by the content across all types of online media. It is also sometimes referred to as online reputation monitoring, maintaining the same acronym.

AKA Search Engine Image Protection (SEIP) Also known as Search Engine Reputation Management (SERM)

Online Reputation Management Defined

ORM partly formed from a need to manage consumer generated media (CGM)

The Cluetrain Manifesto speaks to the ease with which one may initiate and amplify conversation online

You need to participate, engage, communicate!

Google Alerts & Tweet Beep

Google Alerts are your friend

Use it liberally

Learn Google search argumentschris abraham

[chris abraham]

chris+abraham

chris OR abraham

Chris-abraham

www.google.com/alerts

Google Alerts & Tweet Beep

Google Alerts provides alerts via email as well as via an RSS feed

Create alerts for products, services, and the members of your staff and competitorsGoogle Reader, etc

Mandatory Alerts and Monitoring

We at Abraham Harrison, LLC, don't generally do steady-state reputation monitoring.

That said, we all have loads of Google Alerts set up for everything.

We have recently been using SM2 by Techrigy for Social Media monitoring.

Don't forget Google/Yahoo! News, Regular Search, etc!

Mandatory Alerts and Monitoring

Negative conversation can still start on message boards

Twitter can be like wild fire

Blogs are still powerful

Keep your eyes on the Web!

If You Can't Remove It, Hide It

Countermeasure: Decoys, Chaff, Flares

A countermeasure is a system (usually for a military application) designed to prevent sensor-based weapons from acquiring and/or destroying a target.

Preemptive action of countermeasures is directed to generally prevent lock-on of a threat sensor to a certain target. It is based on altering the signature of the target by either concealing the platform signature or enhancing the signature of the background, thus minimizing the contrast between the two.

Reactive action of countermeasures is directed toward break-lock of a threat already homing in on a certain target. It is based on the tactics of signature imitation, augmentation, or reduction.

One or more of the following actions may be taken to provide softkill:- Reduction of signatureGoing stealth or going offline

- Augmentation of signatureDuck decoys, squid ink, anti surface-to-air
missile flares and chaff

Countermeasure: Decoys, Chaff, Flares

Preemptive Countermeasures: Inoculation

Chris Abraham Blog

Marketing Conversation

Abraham Harrison LLC

Twitter Page

Facebook Profile

LinkedIn Profile

YouTube Director

Flickr Profile

Friendster Profile

Jaiku Page

Pownce Page (RIP)

Tumblr Page

Utterli Profile

Friendfeed Profile

QIK Profile

Cleaning Up a Crime Scene

Most clients want a clean up

Generally, clean ups are done after the reputation crime occurs

Sometimes, we're retained during the crime, to minimize exposure

Crisis management ORM campaigns are like repairing homes during a rocket attack

Dominate Your Search Results

I have been writing chrisabraham.com since 1999

I have accrued 5,387 posts over time

Along with cabraham.com, abrahamharrison.com, marketingconversation, and a dozen social networks and aggregators (plus time, energy, work, writing, and commitment), I am well-inoculated against attack

So is my company and my staff

It's never too late

Dominate Your Search Results

Search Engine Optimization 101: Textuality

Search Engines only know what you feed themThey are desperate for textual content

Google doesn't make any logical leaps
yet

Make sure your language is 'biodiverse'How do your customers search?

Most corporate sites are designer-builtFlash, sliced graphics, bespoke CMS

Architectural consistency is essentialGoogle recognizes popular blogs and
CMS sites like Wordpress & Drupal

Blogs can speak in pings and trackbacks Google loves them

Always use user-readable URLshttp://ahllc.us/about v. http://ahllc.us/node/124

Meta tags work: meta, description, alt, title

Pronouns are the enemy of textuality

Search Engine Optimization 101: Textuality

Google perceives the web page-by-pageAssociations are inferred through links

Sites are a collection of interlinked pages

Topicality and relevance are link-based

Separate pages on the same site can have different PageRanks.

A flotilla is often more powerful than a battleship

Search Engine Optimization 101: Linking

Search Engine Optimization 101: Linking

The juice you can offer and receive also textualURLs are less useful than textual links:

Chris Abraham Relays juice better than
dropping a URL or a TinyURL or other
link-shortening services.

Blogrolls and reciprocal linking is still a good trick after
15-years

Google tries its best to read the way you do.

Corporate Blogging

Staff Blogs and Bloggers

Blog & RSS Aggregation

Social Networking ProfilesProactively register!

Cross-Posting Posts and Status UpdatesTumblr

Ping.fm

Earned Media Blogger Outreach CampaignMust have a pitch

Must have a story

Can't make bloggers do anything!

Search Engine Optimization 701

Case Study: The Poor Maligned Pig

Each Search Engine is Very Different

Each Search Engine is Very Different

Chum Thyself into Social Networks

autoki.com

autoki.de

bebo.com

blip.tv

blogger.com

blorkut.com

bluedot.com

broadcaster.com

buzznet.com

classmates.com

crackle.com

cyloop.com

dandelife.com

del.icio.us

digg.com

en.netlog.com

en.sevenload.com

facebook.com

flickr.com

flixster.com

flugpo.com

friendster.com

gather.com

gawkk.com

hi5.com

hollywood.com

imdb.com

imeem.com

indenti.ca

jaiku.com

jappy.de

kewego.com

librarything.com

librarything.de

linkedin.com

livejournal.com

livevideo.com

login.live.com

lusitaniansonline.com

megavideo.com

metacafe.com

migente.com

multiply.com

my.opera.com

mychurch.com

mychurch.org

mycorners.com

mygrito.com

myspace.com

ning.com

photobucket.com

ping.fm

plazes.com

plurk.com

quepasa.com

rateitall.com

searchles.com

shelfari.com

skyrock.com

sonico.com

soundpedia.com

spaces.live.com

spanglish.ie

spock.com

stumbleupon.com

tabulas.com

tagged.com

takingitglobal.org

travbuddy.com

tumblr.com

twango.com

twitter.com

upcoming.yahoo.com

utterli.com

viddler.com

video.msn.com

video.yahoo.com

videos.google.com

vidoosh.tv

vimeo.com

vostu.com

vox.com

wamba.com

wordpress.com

xanga.com

xing.com

xuqa.com

yahoo.com

yasni.de

yelp.com

youtube.com

Domain Name Strategy

Google indexes domain names the way it indexes page text.

Domain names are the cheapest part of the entire online reputation game

$6-$25/year, dependingRegistrar?

Private registration?

Too many folks get frugal here

Domain Name Strategy

Promotional and Defensive DomainsChrisAbraham.com

ChrisAbrahamSucks.com

Register your products, services,
and the executive staff

Register domains that link directly to deep site content and redirect there:AbrahamHarrisonProducts.com

Every URL is Sacred

Every URL is Good

About pigs, swine and hogs

Theater group

Children's book

Rugby team

Muppet "Pigs in Space"

Show pig site

BBQ site

Guinea Pig site

NIN Song

Local Pub

Pass the Pigs game

Potbellied Pigs

"Pigs Anonymous" site

Industrial pipe cleaners, called "pigs"

Card shop

Baseball team

The Bay of Pigs

Defensive SEO

We'll often populate a number of domains with a number of blogs using a number of platforms by hand over time...

Our job is to promote deep links that are positive and neutral and ignore negative listings

We'll create between 5-25+ of these aggregator and boing boing sites in order to bring attention to deep, old links

Defensive SEO

The goal is not to promote the sites we build

Our goal is to promote everybody else's sitesAt least all the POS and NEUT stuff!

We only use real content.

We promote all listings that are positive and neutral, even off-brand

Deep search results are pretty spacey

Chris Wilson of 235 North Abraham Lane

Aggregating Positive & Neutral Content

When we dig deep down we find deep links

Google has limited resources and archives old content

Excerpting deep content and deep links onto new blogs reactivates

We call it the boing boing strategy

Find content, excerpt it, make a quip, and link to source

pigsblog.wordpress.com

Our Own Boing Boing Blog Network

These blogs and CMS sites are not intended to be features

They should be simple and you can use free templates

These sites should receive a full SEO treatmentUser-readable URLs

Sitemaps

Dynamic meta tags

Use blogger, Wordpress.com, MySpace blogs, Friendster blogs, Wordpress & Drupal

Boing Boing Network

Everything is initially done via hand.

Drupal offers great built-in RSS aggregation tools.

Setting up your aggregation strategy before you start blogging by hand is essential.

Wordpress MU (multi-user) is easiest way to manage a large campaign of blogs.

Google does have human reviewers so make it personal

Boing Boing Network

We often use the content of our own blogs to populate the content of other ORM blogs experiment!

Explicitly Submit Every URL Everywhere

Many SEO experts tell me submission tools are foolish and fool-hardy

(Maybe I am superstitious)

I have been using submission tools since 2003

Defensive SEO is a SEO campaign promoting everyone else but you

Explicitly Submit Every URL Everywhere

I use Dynamic Submission 7.0

It allows me to import every URL I can collect (my Positive & Neutral list) and submit them en masse to 1000+ search engines automatically

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