Online Reputation Management (ORM) definition and process

Content marketing is online reputation management. Registering all your brand and personal domain names is online reputation management. Registering, populating, maintaining, and updating all your brand and personal social media and social network sites is online reputation management. Making sure all your websites and blogs are SEO-optimized, fast, mobile optimized, properly-architected, and accurately-categorized is online reputation management. And: publishing your own business and personal photos and videos with comprehensive tagging is online reputation management.

If SHTF SNAFU FUBAR Then ORM

Of course, when the shit hits the fan, hiring my agency or one like mine should really be the last resort; however, if you religiously, rigorously, and persistently do the five preventative things I listed above, you’ll at least be well-armored against the inevitable.

An Ounce of Prevention is Worth a Pound of Cure

If you add Online Reputation Management (ORM) services as a line item to your crisis management budget well before setting off any of the inevitable landmines that befall companies and their C-Suites: you will be prepared for will a social media crisis before disaster strikes. You will at least mitigate the damage that a current crisis could be causing. The goal of ORM is to push down negative content in search results while pushing up positive content; to this end, we also often create new positive content.

I’ll Show You Mine if You Show Me Yours First

Our methodology will vary depending on how deep in the shit you already are and how big, deep, and fresh that shitpile is. We identify welcome and unwelcome content appearing in the search results under consideration, incorporating any feedback or suggestions provided. We analyze the search results to identify the specific balance of factors that are contributing to the ranking of both welcome and unwelcome content.

We build a custom technological framework for the unique search profile discovered in the analysis stage. We promote welcome items and demote unwelcome items using our proprietary and patented technology and methods. In addition, we focus on creating new content to provide supplementary ranking strength to preexisting welcome materials.

We assess the effectiveness of the engagement and refine the technological framework as required, testing the level of support necessary to create the greatest likelihood of permanent positive change.

And then we build sufficient preventative strength in the search results to protect against new unwelcome content that might potentially be posted in the future.

Repairing Your Online Reputation is a Life Sentence

The one rule about antibiotics that has been drilled into our heads for generations is that you absolutely must take the full course—or else!

This is indeed true when it comes to that 12-month contract that you sign with your ORM provider. After that initial year of intense antibiotics–sometimes chemotherapy–then ORM is similar to organ transplant anti-rejection drugs: fixing, maintaining, repairing, and promoting your brand and personal reputation is a life sentence.

All Online Reputation Campaigns Take a Year at a Bare Minimum

Our typical engagement term is 12 months long, which is the minimum amount of time necessary to create lasting change in the search results. The following is a projected timeline based on the results of work on similar past engagements. This is an estimate only: given the nature of online reputation management activities, it is not possible to provide a precise timeline.

Months 1–2: Initial positive changes begin to appear

Months 3-5: Strong change in the search results. Some fluctuation as the results adapt to the changing profile. First initial clearing of Page 1

Months 5-7: Stabilization of search results, less variability

Months 8–12: Solidification of search results, gradual ramp down of intervention as results become self-sustaining.

Our goal is always to stop the propagation of misinformation and confusion by pushing it onto results pages where 10 percent or fewer of searchers will ever see it by creating content. This new content ensures that the negative content already present is outweighed by positive content. It also places greater emphasis on positive achievements and accomplishments. We help our clients create a long-term solution that will help to prevent any future unwelcome issues from surfacing.

Our Online Reputation Management (ORM) Process (Steal Me)

We identify welcome and unwelcome content appearing in the search results for our clients’ name and business, incorporating any feedback or suggestions provided
We collect information from our clients or other publicly available sources–open source intelligence–to be used by our publications team to develop web content
We create new content, to be approved by our clients or other designated representative
We strategically publish the new content to the Internet according to a personalized publication plan based on the amount, kind, and strength of unwanted content appearing online
We optimize and reinforce the network of content and websites we have created for maximum ranking and promotional power
We use our websites to push up any preexisting welcome content that our client and we have identified for promotion to promote
We build sufficient preventative link strength to protect against new unwelcome content that might potentially be posted in the future
We create and develop blogs on topics of our clients’ choosing, to be updated regularly
We create and develop social media accounts, as well as content for these accounts to be released strategically over time to the accounts
We build larger, multi-page sites designed for the maximum ranking ability for our clients and for any and all of the keywords they choose to add to their campaign contract

In Conclusion

I recommend that everyone takes an interest in how their ass looks in Google’s full-length mirror. I also recommend that everyone monitors this as best they can, with Google Alerts being an essential no-brainer. And, while the commitment-phobic among us might be reticent to initiate a strong online reputation defense to reclaim their good name on the first two pages of Google search using the online reputation management strategies and tactics I go over in the below-mentioned articles I have written over previous weeks, if you don’t like what’s being said about you online and in search, healing the symptoms on your reputation-reflection using ORM and also addressing why negative things are being said about you online and seeing what you may be able to do systematically about them is mandatory.

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Feel free to own the yacht but hire a crew if you’re not yet seaworthy. If you get my drift and want to adopt the yachting lifestyle yourself but either don’t have the mad sailing skills yourself, don’t yet possess a world-class crew, and don’t know yet where to go, then you should give me a call or reach out me by email — so I can help you pilot your vessel now, in the tranquil blue-green shallows of the Caribbean, as well as in the roughest seas and into — as well as out of — the storm.