“Reputation management” and “brand management” are becoming confused in the media and in the various search engine optimization blogs and forums. As more companies express an interest in managing their online images (which is also an entirely different thing), they seek out SEOs for advice. Most SEOs don’t really understand reputation and brand management and they are, in general ill-equipped for the task.

You measure your reputation by what people say about you.

You measure your brand by what you say about yourself, by how much other people know about you and by how much information is available about you.

A typical search engine optimizer doesn’t work in a world where reputation and brand are distinct. To the average SEO, search results are a road map to traffic, not a source of information. A highly skilled, very experienced search optimizer understands the value of the first impression that query page makes on the user, but even at such a high level most SEOs are thinking in terms of positioning one Web site, not in terms of measuring the impact of 10, 20, or 30 Web sites.

Several popular SEO blogs have been advising people on “cute” methods for managing their search reputations. These are link worthy blogs that spend a lot of time in social media sites, and the bloggers often speak at SEO conferences. In terms of professional community standing and recognition their credentials are impeccable. These are not the wannabe second-stringers who are still parroting what they read in SEO blogs and forums.

Nonetheless, the typical SEO advice on reputation management is for you to rush out and create profiles on all the social media sites. Now, maybe if you operate a world-renowned delicatessen that has been featured on Food Network and some mean-spirited, disgruntled former customer is bashing you on blogs — maybe setting up a profile at ZoomInfo and LinkedIn will help you. Maybe not.

But if you’re, say a Fortune 1000 company, ZoomInfo and LinkedIn won’t cut the mustard. Not to belittle the great delicatessen owners who appear on Food Network and the Travel Network, but their brands are much smaller, very different entities from large corporations. And the online reputation of a specialty restaurant owner is much more personal and emotionally tied to the personality of the owner than the online reputation of a publicly traded company.

Furthermore, the more visible your brand is the more content there is on the Web. High profile individuals may generate a great deal of content, some of it quite unfavorable. The odds are pretty good that as search references of your name increase some of those unfavorable references will appear on sites that outrank ZoomInfo and LinkedIn. What many SEOs who preach the value of Zoominfo and LinkedIn don’t appreciate, however, is that profile pages by themselves don’t necessarily rank well.

In Google’s search results, for example, your social media profiles may never appear for your name. I have several that don’t even begin to approach the top 10 results for my own name. I am a published author, I have contributed to several high profile and popular blogs and Web sites, and I create my own Web content under my own name. Social media profiles just don’t score as highly relevant for my name the way other, more traditional content does.

Many profile pages on social media sites don’t accumulate links from other pages (either on the same sites or externally). Without those links the social media profiles don’t build enough internal PageRank to be admitted to Google’s Main Web Index. Hence, those pages won’t be allowed to rank well. That is why when you look at some of the new reputation managing SEOs they are occasionally posting links to their social media profile pages from their blog posts to build up the value in those pages.

With all due respect, that is pretty blatant and obvious search engine results manipulation. Now, it’s second nature to many SEOs to drop links in blogs and forums. A lot of them do it to the extent that SEO forum moderators very strictly monitor link placements and Google launched the “rel=’nofollow’” initiative to persuade (and in some cases bully) Web site operators to help devalue links that were clearly being placed for manipulation.

You can shape your search results management any way you prefer, but ZoomInfo doesn’t really tell people much about you. It certainly doesn’t address your brands very well. In fact, your brand and your reputation may differ radically. You may have a reputation for being curmudgeonly, abrupt, and abrasive but you may have a brand that people respect and appreciate.

So how can a social media profile page help you manage both your reputation and brand?

There is no one secret special formula for success. In fact, there is no one correct way to manage a brand campaign and a reputation. Each type of campaign needs to be strategically shaped and carefully implemented. You have to know the audience you’re dealing with, and how many audiences you have to address. You have to know where the search engines are placing their trust. You have to know where people are looking for information.

Social media sites are productive resources in some brand and reputation management campaigns. If your intent is to engage people in direct communication, some social media sites may work very well for you. But engaging people in direct communication doesn’t necessarily manage your reputation or brand.

All it really takes is one dedicated hostile voice that repeatedly points fingers at you on every possible Web site, and your reputation (possibly your brand) will suffer. How you respond to the hostile entity is a topic for another day, but if you’re hoping that ZoomInfo will manage your brand in a storm of criticism, protest, or false allegations, you need to be more realistic.

When people search on your name, be that your own name or your company’s name, do you want them to see ZoomInfo or do you want them to see your Web site? That’s really where reputation management and brand management begins. Where it all goes and where it ends is up to you, not to the social media marketers.

Michael Martinez
Visible Technologies