The Twitter Strategy Blog Series: #3 Corporate Reputation Management

Oct 30

The Twitter Strategy Blog Series: #3 Corporate Reputation Management

by Will Fleiss
Category: Digital Reputation, Search

Raise your hand if you’ve ever Googled your name. If you didn’t raise your hand your either ashamed to admit it, or it just never occurred to you. Well I can promise you its occurred to a lot of other people. But don’t take my word for it. Seth Godin’s got a concise little rant about it. If you are the CEO of a company your customers, partners, competition, and future employees are all Googling your name, and what they find directly impacts your companies corporate reputation.

Growing concerns about reputation management are evident from this Google Trends graph showing an increase in the number of people searching on the term “reputation management”, as well as the number mentions in online news sources.

Search engine optimization companies everywhere are shifting part of their focus to market their ability to provide search reputation management, and companies are popping up everywhere that focus solely on search reputation management.

Enter Twitter…

Twitter is so appealing to the Google search algorithm that they somehow coerced Twitter into adding a “nofollow” tag to the profile section of user’s tweets. Unless you are an SEO nerd like myself you have no idea what that means, but suffice it to say that Twitter could be used by spammers to game Google’s algorithm for providing relevant search results, if this measure was not taken (I’ll save the anti-nofollow post for another time).

Here’s a great example of the power of Twitter on Google. A search for “kevin rose” (no quotations), the founder of Digg, returns over 5.5 million results on Google, and his Twitter page is third behind his personal website.

So essentially the point I’m trying to make thus far is get on Twitter and use your full name as your Twitter handle.

With all that said, the fact that your Twitter account will likely appear in Google when people are searching for you doesn’t really answer how Twitter is such a powerful tool for managing your corporate reputation, but hopefully it at least convinced you to start using it.

Cutting through the clutter with its 140 character limit, Twitter is forcing people to be direct with their intentions, and as a result it has become arguably the most effective tool for communicating online. You can help to manage your companies reputation by communicating with Twitter. In keeping with this blog series format of follow, create, and engage, here’s what you should do once your on Twitter to manage your corporate reputation.

Follow - Follow people talking about your brand, your industry, and maybe even you. Listen and Learn. If you claim to use Twitter to listen to your customers, make sure you follow a substantial number of them.

Create - Share interesting information about your industry, and anything else for that matter. Just like a popular website or blog, if you continue to guide people to helpful, funny, or insightful stuff they will come back for more. Like with all other social media platforms the most important thing is to be authentic. Do not try to push an agenda without being transparent. Be yourself and update often. The more you update the more Google crawls your page.
Engage - Don’t be afraid to join the conversation. Nothing like the CEO of a major company mixing it up with the commoners to get people to like you and your brand (if you play your cards right brand ambassadors are ripe for the picking on Twitter, and influential ones at that).

CEOs are on Twitter right now managing their corporate reputation. If you don’t believe me check out BusinessWeeks Twitter Rolodex of company heads.

How are you using Twitter to manage your corporate reputation?

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 30th, 2008 at 5:40 pm and is filed under Digital Reputation, Search. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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16 Responses to “The Twitter Strategy Blog Series: #3 Corporate Reputation Management”

John Stauffer Says:
October 31st, 2008 at 8:03 am
I didn’t know about the BusinessWeek Twitter Rolodex, pretty interesting roundup of executives on twitter. Thanks for passing that along.
ethnicomm Says:
October 31st, 2008 at 9:07 am
Thanks for the pingback on my Twitter blog post.

I have another one that relates to Corporate Reputation Management called “Use Google Alerts to keep tabs on your brand, your competitors and Pamela Anderson.” http://snipurl.com/2o165 [ethnicomm_com]
52 Links on Twitter for Business, with Brief Descriptions « Web 2.0 For Small Biz Says:
January 21st, 2009 at 8:02 am
[...] 3. Corporate Reputation Management [...]
Ogilvy PR 360 Digital Influence Blog » Blog Archive » » Twitter Bootcamp for PR: A Recap Says:
January 21st, 2009 at 1:52 pm
[...] #3: Corporate Reputation Management [...]
Affärsutveckling Malmö - Affärsutveckling Malmö Says:
June 28th, 2009 at 7:01 am
Affärsutveckling Malmö - Affärsutveckling Malmö…

det är ju emellrtid utvecklande för affärerna att nyttja konsult och utbilda i kommunikation…
52 Links on Twitter for Business, with Brief Descriptions — Web 2.0 Marketing For Small Business Says:
July 3rd, 2009 at 10:39 am
[...] 3. Corporate Reputation Management [...]
Thick Black Theory Says:
October 21st, 2009 at 7:42 pm
Thick Black Theory…

An interesting post over at . . ….
Fairfax Locksmith Says:
August 27th, 2010 at 5:57 am
Interesting post. It seems like it would be pretty time consuming to use social media as a form of reputation management, especially if you’re a firm that doesn’t really deal with the sort of clients who would frequent Twitter/Facebook/etc.
Mark Tinger Says:
September 21st, 2010 at 12:02 pm
There are lots of reputation companies about. Only one sticks out with results and people behind them. I have used them twice and the results are just fine. Clydestan, http://www.clydestan.com No problems, would recommend anytime
SubmitYOURArticle.com Says:
September 23rd, 2010 at 9:51 pm
I absolutely agree with you there, twitter is really such a powerful tool to build and manage your online reputation. It is also great for communicating with people related in your business industry and even clients too! I personally use twitter to find out what people think about some ideas I have in mind, helpful to me to avoid possible issues associated with these ideas.
Mark Tinger Says:
September 26th, 2010 at 1:44 pm
There are lots of good online reputation companies about. The key is value for money. I found ClydeStan http://www.clydestan.com most helpful in their approach and costing structure. They specialize mainly in celebrity reputation but I am sure they take on other clients, too. It seems they have connections behind the scenes where actual links and posts are being deleted and not only pushed down in search engines. I have used them twice now and the results are just fine. No problems, would recommend anytime.
Master Franchise Says:
December 16th, 2010 at 5:45 am
A company’s reputation is very important, for once it has been tarnished things will never be the same again. It is indeed true that the internet and social media are great when it comes to promoting and keeping your company’s reputation intact. A good reputation will help your company get more clients or customers because they trust you more, this is something that we have learned as a master franchise.
localizer method Says:
December 28th, 2010 at 8:09 pm
Thanks for sharing this useful information about Twitter Strategy Blog Series. I really like your article.

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mops Says:
July 7th, 2011 at 1:50 am
oh
Arthur - Reputation Management Says:
August 22nd, 2011 at 12:55 am
Hi I’m working on a reputation management e-book I’d like to ask permission to use your article of course with credits to the source and a backlink to this post.
Locksmith Greensboro Nc Says:
January 18th, 2012 at 12:34 am
Thanks for great information I was searching for this information for my mission