70% of online consumers have said they use the Internet to research everyday grocery products. (Prospectiv, January 2008)

41% of Europeans claim to have changed their mind about what brand to buy as a result of researching choices online, according to EIAA’s latest Mediascope survey. (Mediascope Europe, November 2008)

Brands with the highest “social media activity” (includes reviews) increased revenues by as much as 18%. (Media Post News, July 2009)

Over half (51%) of consumers are using the Internet before making a purchase in a shop. They educate themselves on the best deals available. (Verdict Research, May 2009)

Do you still think online reputation is something you may ignore?

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Softline Solutions launched a risky project today. Effectively posting a single negative post across multiple complaint sites and waiting for them to propagate.  The keywords we targeted were ambitious:

• Softline Solutions
• Rony Mirzaians

We posted the complaint on a single site under an alias conveniently disguised as (yronny). The amazing thing is that this negative listing has appeared across all the major review sites in a matter of days!

So what is our mission with this? We are going to use to test our Reputation Management System and show its effectiveness to prospective clients.

Keep Watching for Updates to this post!

CNN has an interesting article written by Rachel Zupek from Careerbuilder.com talking about Social Media and its effects on getting a job in todays search centric society.

So can social media really hurt your prospects of landing a job? I think it can and have personally worked with clients who have been in sticky situations where things they thought where no longer on the web came back to haunt them.

This is a great read so check out more after the break

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I recently signed on as the Sales Director for a start-up SEO Firm. My expertise is reputation management and I wanted to share my experiences about building our services from the ground up. Amazingly even in L.A. word of mouth marketing has worked very well for us. Just attending a few chamber of commerce events in the surrounding cities has been quite successful. And I have noticed a growing trend. Initially the calls coming in were the standard repair and management for small to mid-size companies such as night clubs, restaurants, law firms, accounting agencies and the like. However now I find myself inundated with preparing preliminary reputation audits for c-level executives, plastic surgeons, attorneys and accountants. I know this is nothing new but I didn’t expect the majority of our new reputation management business to be so heavily targeted from individuals. I really thought this would come later but word seems to get around town quickly. Even older executives are very interested in discussing RM. At first they don’t fully accept the idea but when I present them with an audit the look on their face let’s you know they now “get it.”

One particular instance was with an attorney who just so happened to have the exact same name as a convicted sex offender! Needless to say when I started the audit I had no where I was headed but this pales in comparison to his reaction once I presented my findings. He had absolutely no idea this guy existed but wanted to put as much distance between himself and the convict as possible. This of course got me to thinking, “What if you less than reputable family members that share your last name?” Obviously this could affect you. Even misspelled names that almost match up to yours or (more recently) one CPA in L.A. with an absolutely horrible online presence and another CPA with the exact same name whose firm is less than 20 miles from the other! The world’s a small place, much smaller now with social marketing; if you don’t take care of your good name no one will.

*Note to my potential reputation management clients.

Ethics

I will only take you on as a client if you are in fact committed to bettering your online and offline business practices. If you’ve made mistakes and offended your clients I understand. We all drop the ball. But I will not put out the fires, engage your clients, post your press release, optimize your site or participate in your blogs if you intend on continuing shady business practices. Even the best and the brightest have their bad days but risking my reputation by lying about yours is something I will never do.

Christian C

I recently attended a dinner and encountered a situation in which I realized just how important reputation management for teenagers and young adults might be.  The hosts of the party are long time family friends and both are local politicians. The husband is state Congressman and the wife a local Supreme Court judge. However it is their daughter, who was recently accepted to Vassar that is the point of mention here. I was talking with her and of course we went through the standard, “Have you decided on a major?” and she explained that she’s always loved history and political science and she intends on following in her parent’s political footsteps. And that’s when it hit me. I said,” Of course you know that’s really going to put you in the public eye.” She replied, “Oh yes, but I’ve had experience with that all my life and actually really enjoy it.” I told her, “What I mean is, is there anything out ‘there’ that you wouldn’t want associated with your character?” She looked at me as if I was trying to provoke her but I retreated and explained what it is I do for a living. I simply followed up with, “Do you have a MySpace page?” She gleamed and said, “Of course!” and proceeded to tell me the wild times she and her girlfriends had at the beach recently. Shortly thereafter you could tell that she finally caught on to what I was getting at…

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