We thought it was a good time to cover the ever important topic of “Online reputation management” for the next few posts. Linking this back to your employer brand is an important factor to bear in mind.
Lets start with an introduction to the topic courtesy of Wikipedia, and we will provide more in depth information in the next few posts.
“Online reputation management (ORM) is a relatively new industry but has been brought to the forefront of professionals’ consciousness due to the overwhelming and many times unpredictable nature of both professional journalistic content and amateur user-generated content (UGC), the latter of which there is far more, and not the least because of the wide number websites that offer such an opportunity to visitors, typically with very low barriers to entry–often just by creating a screen name, registering one’s birthday and a geographical location, and providing a valid email address to complete the account-creation process.
Thus, the type of online content monitored in ORM spans professional, journalism sponsored by traditional news and media giants as well as user-created and user-generated blogs, ratings, reviews, and comments, and all manner of specialized websites about any particular subject, be it a person, group, company, business, product, event, concept, or trend.
ORM partly formed from a need to manage consumer generated media (CGM)[1]
As CGM grew with the rise of social media and other similar user-based online content aggregators, it began to effect search results more and more, bringing with it increased attention to the matter of managing these results. [2]
EBay was one of the first web companies to harness the power of CGM feedback. By using user generated feedback ratings buyers and sellers were given reputations that helped other users make purchasing and selling decisions. ReputationDefender was one of the first companies that offered to proactively manage online reputations. ClaimID is another company that early on presented services designed to promote personal ORM.”
