Archive for July, 2010

Companies and individuals with solid online reputations are not safe from attack by unscrupulous competitors or vengeful individuals. Elixir Interactive has published a case study documenting a systematic and malicious smear campaign waged against the company’s brands since early 2010. The goal of the study is to reveal the tactics that can be used to intentionally damage a brand as well as provide an example of how to defend against them.

“Brands Under Attack” documents months of investigation and analysis of the methods employed against Elixir as well as information about the current threats against brand reputations. Elixir CEO Fionn Downhill warns “No one’s reputation is safe online.” She also cautions that when a reputation management company with a solid brand can be persistently harassed, it is easy to extrapolate the damage that can be done to an unsuspecting company or individual.

The anonymity of complaint and social media sites makes creating false reports and fake accounts to support those reports practically effortless. The current state of digital law is so far behind the realities of the internet, that even outright slander is free from prosecution. Anyone with an axe to grind, or a competitive edge to gain, can easily attack individuals, companies, or even entire industries. In fact, the attack against Elixir was part of a larger campaign against multiple online reputation management companies.

Elixir, as an experienced ORM company, already had considerable defenses in place when the first complaints were filed. In the months since, the company has taken steps to reinforce those digital assets and create new ones in order to bolster their brand results and guard against the continuous filing of false complaints. The case study documents these steps, which can be utilized by any company or individual to safeguard against such an attack or to respond once an attack is underway.

Twitter baffles most people. It is often asked: why would anyone care about what you are doing? This goes even more so for companies. Most people who aren’t on twitter already think of it as being something that you add on there things like “I just finished another piece of paperwork for the new clients.” It isn’t like that for most companies though. When you have someone with enthusiasm tweeting about the company, it is contagious and other people will want to share your enthusiasm. This gets the company noticed, and more people move on to the website to learn more.

The goal for your company should be to build the company brand and let people know that you are out there and what you can help them with. Each of the short messages should convey this. This means that instead of answering the question, “What are you doing?” try answering the question “What did I find that is interesting?” Don’t be afraid to add links back to your own sites, don’t be afraid to add links to things that relate to your company, but aren’t competitors. Talk with your competitors and your loyal customers. Let Twitter be one big conversation, and it will take your company far.

There are a few things you will want to think about as you are setting up a Twitter account. Make sure there is more than one person tweeting at the company. They can all use the same account, but people leave or go on vacation, and it can be nice to have a little variety. Make each tweet useful to your followers. If you do post a link, add a question or a comment with it. Also remember that this is a good place to ask questions of the people who are interested in your company. Twitter is great for getting opinions.

Setting up your company’s LinkedIn profile is easy and doesn’t take a lot of time. For that reason it is also really easy to just keep putting off. The truth is that it would take less time to get through making the profile than it would to keep coming up with excuses. Here is all you will need to do.

Get onto Linked In and click on the link that allows you to add your company profile. Fill in the name of the Company, and work in some of your targeted keywords to get better search results. Make sure you have available an email address that is not currently associated with any other LinkedIn profile, but is still from your company. Something like administrator@yourcompany.com will be fine.

After that, all you need to do is continue to fill out information for the profile. Fill out as much as you can so that it will be easier for people to find you. Use keywords, but don’t drown the description or other fields in them. This will make it more likely that you will be picked up by search engines.