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Online Reputation Management Association

Posted by Michael Martinez on May 5, 2008 in Advanced SEO

When you read the headline “online reputation management association”, what do you think first? What do you expect this article to be about?

There is not yet a definitive meaning that the expression online reputation management association confers, but it would be simple enough to create more than one definitive meaning (note: to do so requires repeated usage in appropriate contexts).

There is a growing interest in online reputation management right now (which is not clearly defined). There are companies and individuals, for example, that provide “reputation management” services which are really just search reputation management services. Some companies may go further and act as an agent in attempting to have content removed from the Web.

Online reputation management is not about search and it’s not about Web content. It’s about association. When you associate types of content or sentiment with a particular brand you’re niching that brand in one of three ways: favorably, unfavorably, or neutrally. The brand management process requires that a message be conveyed to the consumer. The online reputation management process requires that the consumer be engaged.

In association with online reputation management, people strive to “clean up” their Web results but the truth is that you can never really make the bad stuff go away. It’s not enough that the client should “stop doing whatever they are doing” — they have to accept that whatever they’ve done is now part of the semi-permanent record of the Internet. Their hostile entities may go away but the comments those entities made in years past probably will not.

The online reputation management association of words with sentiment goes well beyond what today’s search is capable of. If you think links convey sentiment, you’re crazy. If you think words don’t convey sentiment, you’re spending too much time in the search results. Words and sentiment are the foundations of online reputation management. You need to manage the words and you need to manage the sentiment.

You can associate specific tasks and actions with online reputation management but the association may or may not be acceptable to all parties involved. For example, what if you associate creation of links and content with online reputation management? Is that really all there is to do? Some people may not be satisfied with that. Or what if you associate spam with online reputation management? Is it fair to suggest that people who manipulate search results on scale are engaged in deceptive or unfair practices?

The association of online reputation management with unacceptable practices by people who don’t even offer online reputation management services is an unacceptable paradigm in the lexicon of search management. The people who say the most about these topics are not necessarily the most knowledgable people in the industry; then again, in an industry where stealth is an asset and public visibility is not a necessity, why should you expect to know who is leading the way? The methods and means of true online reputation management services don’t have to be deceptive; they just have to be successful.

Ultimately, what it comes down to what you want to mean when you speak of online reputation management. Association of meanings with new expressions is a can of worms because the search engines can be presented with a cornucopia of uses, idiomatic variances, and institutional references. That is, the news media may not be capable of shaping the lexicon if there are too many conversations occurring at the same time.

You can look around for people blogging about reputation management, online association with reputation management, and reputation management association with online activities but in fact you’ll never really be able to round up all the associations that online reputation management engenders. It’s a sad fact of life and a happy fact of language that language evolves and people extend their use of language to create new thoughtways and lines of communication.

We can say that the online reputation management association of language with engagement is tantamount to proof that working together in close association with online reputation management services is a process just birthing itself and that we won’t know the full story (if ever) for many years.

So, having said all that, I have to ask again: what exactly did you think I meant by “online reputation management association”, and do you have a better idea now of what I just said?