Presentation at Schulich Executive Education Centre on November 30, 2010.

1. Online Reputation Management:
Techniques and Tactics
November 30, 2010
Omar Ha-Redeye
AAS, BHA (Hons.), PGCert, J.D.
CNMT, RT(N)(ARRT)

2. Overview
• Part 1 - Introduction to Online Reputation
Management
• Part 2 - Control or Influencing Public
Opinion
• Part 3 - Evaluating Your Online Presence

3. Part 1 - What is Reputation
Management?
• Online reputation management (ORM):
research and analysis of reputation represented
by online media content
• Search Engine Reputation Management
(SERM): tactics to proactively shield brands or
reputations from damaging content through
search engine queries

4. Internet Users Around the World
Source: Wikipedia
(File:Internet Penetration.png)

5. The New Age of Public Relations

7. Data Privacy Day: Perceptions
study
•The impact of online reputation on professional life
•Nationality plays key role in determining whether online content
will harm reputations
•Companies have formal policies for checking online reputational
data, but male recruiters are more likely to check - except in France
•Recruiters typically conduct deeper searches than most
consumers are aware of, and feel justified in doing so
•Not all online content is true – but candidates may be rejected
nonetheless
•Recruiters say they tell candidates if online content factored into
their rejection, but consumers do not seem to be hearing it
•Good online reputations matter to recruiters

11. Reputation of the 50 Largest Canadian
Companies

18. Social in the Front Seat
Christopher Barger, Global Director of
Social Media, General Motors
• “The brands are now baking social into their
overall marketing budget. It’s incorporated into
all the programs.”
• “We can start thinking about a social strategy
that is more in line with the rest of the strategy
for marketing, rather than picking off
opportunities piecemeal and hoping that they fit.”

19. What About Small Businesses?

21. Part 2 - Control or Influencing
Public Opinion

23. Part 2 – Control and Influencing
Online Reputation
Data Privacy Day: Perceptions study
• What people do to manage their online
reputation
– Divide between personal and professional identities.
– Use measures to protect and manage their online
reputation.
– Apply both proactive and reactive methods of
reputation management.
– Divided about ability to manage their online reputation
and on ownership of issues.

26. Reputation Defender to the
Rescue...

27. …Or Not?

30. Omar’s 4 Steps to Reputation
Management
1. Dedicate
2. Collaborate
3. Mitigate
4. Litigate

31. 1. Dedicate
• Web presence is part of branding
– Reliability creates loyalty
• Time commitment
– Scheduling posts
– Long-term planning
• Can be as little as 15 min. a day
• Content is king
– Regular posts; predictability
– New, original content
– Or is it?

33. 2. Collaborate
• Collaboration is Key
– Links are still basis for traffic flow
– Be aware of rel=“nofollow”
• Link to other reputable sites
• Link internally to related content
• Build relationships
– With related material
– Other websites/writers
• Don’t “Flog”

34. Political Blogger Alliances
• Blogging Tories (www.bloggingtories.ca/)
– 300 blogs, avg. 3,000 readers/day
• Liblogs (www.liblogs.ca/)
• New Democrats Online
(http://www.newdemocratsonline.ca/)
– Formerly Blogging Dippers
• Progressive Bloggers (www.progressivebloggers.ca/)
• Blogging Canadians
– All parties and non-partisan

35. Collaboration Tools
• Track inbound links
– Reciprocate • Use short urls
– Acknowledge – Tiny.url (2002)
– Tr.im
• Microblogging • Link rot issue
– Twitter – Bit.ly
– Facebook Status

36. Internal Group Collaboration

37. 3. Mitigate
• Create web presence in advance
– <name>.com
• Own brand on social networks
– Verify social media accounts where possible
• Monitor regularly
• Google Alerts
• SocialMention
• BoardTracker
• Adapt to changes over time

38. Shel Israel
• Author in Silicon Valley
– “Naked Conversations, How Blogs
are Changing the Way Businesses
Talk with Customers” (2006)
– “Twitterville” (2009)
• Hosted an online talk show,
Global Neighbourhoods with
Shel Israel
• Lorne Feldman registered
ShelIsrael.com (2008)

39. Rep Mgt Enters the House
Mr. Jason Kenney (Calgary Southeast, CPC):
Mr. Speaker, the only additional element that the hon.
member has brought to the Chair’s attention relates to a
matter which is in no way, shape or form within the
purview of this House or your honour and it never has
been, and hopefully never will be, that is to say, the
registration of domain names on the World Wide Web.
I understand my hon. friend opposite is learned with
respect to parliamentary procedure but I must infer from
his remarks that he is stupefiedly (sic) ignorant about
the commercial practices on the Internet.

40. JasonKenney.Org

42. Stay Above the Fold

43. 4. Litigate
• Litigation is only an option of last resort
– Extremely costly
– Not time effective
– Potential for backlash
• Know and assess adversary
– Seek non-confrontational resolution if possible
– Address through 3rd Parties
• Potentially public permanent legal record
– Google Scholar now indexing legal cases
• Do not engage in flame wars

44. Pre-Litigation Options
• Simple request
• Educate
– Discussion page on wikis
– Provide your POV on own site
• Notice-and-Takedown
– Enforce copyright, trademark
• Warning letter
• Ignore completely

45. When to Litigate
• Don’t litigate • Do litigate
– View expressed is: – History
• an opinion • Litigation
• true • irresponsible
– Metatags commentary
– Malice is not needed
• Keywords vs. ads
(Hill v. Church of Scientology)
– Fair use (copyright) – Anonymous bloggers
– Political (usually) • Reveal identity
through proceedings

46. Vigna v. Levant,
2010 ONSC 6308
• Judgment released November 18, 2010
• Plaintiff was a lawyer with Canadian Human
Rights Commission
• Sued Ezra Levant, lawyer and political activist, for
blog posts on his site
• Judge awarded $25,000 in damages, and
ordered defamatory posts removed

47. Anonymity is a Myth
• R. v. Cuttell, 2009 ONCJ 471
– 3rd Party custody of confidential information does not automatically
extinguish any reasonable expectation of privacy
– rights reserved by the third-party vis-a-vis
• York University v. Bell Canada Enterprises, 2009 CanLII 46447
(ON S.C.)
– Use of Norwich order
• Privacy interest v. interests of justice
• Limited for specific purposes, not absolute
– Privacy interests overridden by s. 7(3)(c) of PIPEDA
• Cohen v. Google, Inc., Index No. 100012/09 (N.Y. Cty. Aug. 17,
2009).
– Skanks in NYC (Blogspot)
– pre-action disclosure

48. Ratings and Ranking Sites
The Ratingz Network • RateMyProfessors.com
– CampRatingz.com
– ChildCareRatingz.com
– ClubRatingz.com
– DrugRatingz.com
• RateMyTeachers.com
– LawyerRatingz.com
– RadioRatingz.com
– RealEstateRatingz.com • RateMDs.com
– VetRatingz.com
– AccountantRatingz.com
– CollegeDormRatingz.com
– MechanicRatingz.com • Foda et al v. RateMDs,
– RestaurantRatingz.com Inc., California Northern
– SalonRatingz.com
– SkiRatingz.com District Court
– TVratingz.com

52. Case Study: The Obama Campaign

53. A Global Brand

54. My Barack and Neighbor to
Obama (MyBO) Neighbor (N2N)
•Focus on what matters;
use the online tools to
organize offline action.
•Incite the right actions; •Making users comfortable
Building incentives that •Creating small and frequent
reward the right type campaigns
•Leverage creativity;
engage with the campaign
on their own terms

55. Customized Email
The Mandate:
• Mobilization — Ensure a consistent messaging strategy that
encompassed both short - and long-term communication objectives.
• Messaging — Reinforce the campaign’s overall new media strategy to
encourage offline action.
• Motivation — Draft compelling content that would invite voters to
contribute financially to the campaign.
• Meaningful content — Provide supporters with meaningful and
relevant content that was applicable to their personal situation.

56. SMS and Mobile
• Always let users opt in — All aspects of the campaign’s
text messaging program depended on voluntarily offered
information
• Create a conversation — The Obama team was unique
in its use of SMS text messaging because the campaign
staff responded to inquiries and feedback.
• Portable engagement — The campaign’s innovative
iPhone application made supporting Obama easy
everywhere you went.

57. The Obama Blog
• Tell a story — The campaign regularly profiled grassroots organizers
and featured compelling guest blogs
• Use an old feature in a new way —standard comment section
transformed iinto an area of lively discussion and debate
• Provide a digital gateway —positioned the blog as a gateway for
supporters to discover other ways to participate with the Obama
movement (MyBO, emails, etc.)
• Lead by example —publish content and feedback provided by
supporters reinforced through example the philosophies that guided
the campaign

58. Social Networks – Obama Everywhere
• Be where your consumers are
• Make sure it fits
• Understand online social etiquette
• Transform social networks into distribution
platforms
• Embrace internal and external content

59. Video
• Build a history
• Speak directly to consumers
• Share your content
• Different types:
– Life streaming
– Campaign created
– User generated

60. Analytics and Ads
•Think like the end user
•The power of iteration

61. Twitter’s Largest, On Ice

65. Part 3 – Tools and Techniques

66. Establish your Brand
• Become a broadcaster…
• … and beyond…

68. Monitoring Page Rankings
• Technorati: an Internet search engine for
searching blogs
– Not updating properly recently
– 112.8 million blogs (2008)
• Alexa rankings
– # times users with toolbars visit site
– Can be inaccurate
– Subject to manipulation
• Google PageRank (U.S. Patent 6,285,999)
– Does not consider relationship of page to referring
resources
– depends on the number and quality of inbound links

70. SEO v. SEM
• Search engine optimization (SEO): increasing
the volume or quality of traffic to a web site from
search engines via "natural" or un-paid search
results
• Search engine marketing (SEM): a form of
Internet marketing that seeks to promote
websites by increasing visibility in search engine
result pages (SERPs) through the use of paid
placement, contextual advertising, and paid
inclusion

71. SEO Basics
• Google ranks web pages according to perceived
relevance and authority
– possible search terms by the user (keywords)
• SEO not an exact science, more of an art
– basic principles are well-established
– easily understood
– readily implemented by the non-technical.
• algorithm is a closely-guarded secret, constantly
changing
– intelligent guesswork
• relative importance of factors
– analysis and experience of what works

72. Blogging is Vulnerable

73. Types of Factors
• 2 sets of factors affect page ranks
• On-site and on-page factors
– inherent value of your pages
– design and structure of your website generally
– layout and content of individual pages
• Off-page factors
– how others value you
– number and value of links from other sites to your
pages
– work consistently at gaining and retaining these
“votes”

74. On-Page and Off-Page Factors
• On-site and on-page • Off-page factors
factors number of links to
website IP address website
server location PageRank of links to
domain name of website website
URL of page number of links to page
title of page PageRank of links to
meta description of page page
freshness of page content text in links to page
links on page to external (anchor text)
websites page click-through rate
page “theme” (CTR)
website “theme” “stickiness” of page
total number of pages on
website

75. Monitoring Tools
• Google Alerts • Twitter
• Site Analytics • Learn about staff
– LinkedIn
• eBay
• RSS Feeds

76. Google “Reputation Management
Lawyer”

78. SEO Tools

93. Handout
Group 1 Group 2
• http://www.urltrends.com/ • http://www.google.com/trends
• http://www.seotoolset.com/
• http://www.thumbshots.com/
• http://www.compete.com/
• http://www.alexa.com/
• http://tools.seobook.com/authority-
finder/ • http://www.touchgraph.com/na
• http://www.spyfu.com/ vigator.html
• http://adlab.msn.com/ • http://www.quantcast.com/
• http://www.charlesproxy.com/ • http://seodigger.com/
• http://www.webceo.com/download/ • http://www.seomoz.org/
• http://www.webuildpages.com/

94. Thank You
• http:// OmarHa-Redeye.com
• Omar.Haredeye@Gmail.com
• @OmarHaRedeye