PR and reputation management

While in the process of completing an assignment, I came across a recent article by washingtonpost.com highlighting how Google is being used to manage our online reputation. Because of the simple fact that Google indexes millions of pages a day, information previously only accessible via hardcopy records are now freely available over the internet. If there is an online identity, there is online reputation vis a vis social networks, blogs and community oriented sites like YouTube.

The article mentioned a new company called Reputation Defender. I visited their website and found that, unsurprisingly, most of the founders and management team are actually non-communications professionals with prior expertise in areas like technology, law, software application and business development. The magic behind online reputation management is actually search-engine optimization (SEO) techniques. Theoretically, anyone who knows their way around the internet and who are tech-savvy can employ SEO techniques in the same way Reputation Defender does.

I feel that the problem with such “reputation specialists”, is that without the benefit of  formal training in public relations, how would they see the bigger picture because the truth is you cannot separate online reputation from the ‘offline’ reputation because one affects the other. These should be managed synergistically. Reputation management therefore is best left to PR professionals. In the same vein, PR and communication agencies must learn to harness this technology because reputation management, whether online or offline, will be an important element in the communication mix of the wired generation. As PR continues to evolve, online reputation management will become an important aspect in the overall communication strategy.

Paid blogging (and how it may affect the PR pitch)

Recently I got to know of a friend who worked at a company that had just launched a new service. The company engaged the service of the controversial pay-to-blog company PayPerPost (PPP). How it works: You pay a pre-determined amount of money for XX number of blog posts. Bloggers in the PPP network blog about your product or service and received a percentage cut of the fee.

Because bloggers were not required to disclose the real nature of the sponsored post, it raised a storm of controversy and ethical concerns because article integrity were being compromised. For all you know, the next door teen queen/soccer mom/tech geek who raved about a certain product on their blog did so because they were paid to do so. PPP subsequently relented and later required bloggers to state upfront that they are paid to blog about a particular product or service. Still, it doesn’t take away the fact that it IS a paid review. You don’t have to be a marketing guru to know that most of the time, the review is skewed in favour of the product/service.

My friend had reservations about associating with such a controversial company but the boss adamantly pressed on with it. That aside, another problem is Google. One of the factors that affect a website’s Google page rank is the number of links to it. If there are alot of websites/blogs linking to your website/blog, you can be sure your website’s page rank will improve. The paid blog posts usually link to the website of the product/service reviewed. Google has a major issue with that, because it screws up the “real” ranking or organic search result of websites. Google is constantly fine-tuning their search algorithms to sniff out paid links; and sites that utilises paid links may end up getting *horrors* blacklisted on Google.

You are now probably asking “How does this affect pitching to bloggers?”. For one, if bloggers can be motivated by monetary incentive to blog about something (or anything), why in the world would they want to listen to your pitch? And companies, without the proper understanding of public relations and media impact, would have no problems bypassing the PR folks and going straight to PPP or the bloggers themselves.

Personally, I think it’s a bad idea. It just beats me why any self-respecting company or blogger would want to associate themselves with a controversial outfit like PPP.