At the start of 2006 it was deemed that it was going to be the year that Local and Mobile search would take off. Last year at this time it was stated that 2007 would be the year of the widget. Some bloggers have been asking for 2008 predictions for search, and I’m going to give my main prediction - that 2008 will be the year of Reputation Management - along with the reasons why I believe it’s going to happen.

The main reason is that it’s already started; more and more organizations realize that their online reputation is a very important part of their marketing effort and if there’s a visible negative aspect to that reputation, it’s an issue. In the past a group of disgruntled customers may have written letters to the organization, or written to their local paper (tomorrow’s fish & chip wrapper) and if the issue were not too severe, it would soon be forgotten. These days, anyone can put a post on their blog, write a comment on a forum, or create an activist group on a social network. These do not go away so easily, and when they start to rank for the organization’s brand name, or the executive’s name, they will be seen by searchers, who may then decide not to purchase / donate from that organization, or maybe not even visit their site.

There are a number of Reputation Management books already out, such as “The Future of Reputation: Gossip, Rumor, and Privacy on the Internet” by Daniel J. Solove, and in the next month or two, Andy Beal of Marketing Pilgrim’s new book “Radically Transparent: Monitoring and Managing Reputations Online“, for which our own CEO Nan Dawkins was interviewed, will be released, which can only serve to further increase the awareness of the issue, and the consequences of ignoring it. It’s also going to help to enable the organization to identify this as a potential future problem, and start a proactive plan to prepare (which can serve to make it much harder for negative items to hit your search shelf space, but still doesn’t mean that the negative item should be ignored, as it may still be in a place that your audience may see it / that other sources that may place it before your audience may find out about it).

Here at Serengeti Communications, we have seen in recent months an increase in the number of organizations contacting us to talk about their online Reputation problems, and to ask us how we can help them recover, and I anticipate that we’re only going to see that number grow. If you want to know more about this issue, you can Download my November Reputation Management presentation from SMX-London, if you’re going to be in London on February 21st, you can hear Nan talk about it at the Search Engine Strategies conference, or you can call us @ 703 556 3390 or email us @ info@serengeticom.com. We’d love to talk to you about the questions that you have, such as:

• Is the negative post on an important blog?
• Will the comment on that forum go viral?
• Will the search engines see it and rank it?
• Will the customer and potential customer base ever see it?
• How can you get rid of it?
• Was it something we did or didn’t do and should have?
• Should legal get involved?
• etc.

Filed under: Reputation Management on Monday, January 7th, 2008 by Simon Heseltine |
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