Online Social Optimization
April 21st, 2009

Online Reputation Management

Reputation Management is one of those terms that comes wrapped in association with Image Branding and Strategic Brand Management – a business to business buzzword lumped in with all the rest, hollow, and without substance for the individual.  However, the internet is, in many ways, a permanent public searchable record that takes in everyone, shadows each of us with a sort of echo – an immanent library.  Depending on your involvement, the internet will invariably have different layers of information attached to your name, some of which might reflect poorly on you in those first impressions when someone you meet searches you out online.  ‘Googling one’self’ is something of an ongoing joke in today’s culture, the insinuation being that it’s a narcissistic behavior, a kind of preening before a digital mirror–I say do it, look yourself up, and if you don’t like what you see, online reputation management techniques can help you revitalize your online presence.

This is a by-product of the changes in the overall functioning space that makes up the internet–if you engage online, you engage in the same vectors and modalities that the rest of the entities out there engage in–and there’s only several maps available to the bulk of the online community.  The more common one’s name, the more diffuse one’s presence online.  A vast number of people are totally disconnected from the internet, yet traces of their presence still exist in different ways.  Becoming aware of one’s online footprint, one’s digital shadow, is the first step in managing that shadow.

There is no way I can change the search engine to radically restructure the results it provides – I can only tweak bits here and there, and each case is different.  Why Most SEO’s Can’t Do Reputation Management breaks it down like so:

There are a number of very distinct differences between this and the skills needed for ORM Triage. Here are some of the most basic:

However, that said, a reputation online is usually not something under fire, experiencing a crisis event…  usually some people are googling themselves and discovering some spam-trap has siphoned off personal details from some social networking site they’d signed up for ten years ago, filled with irrelevant and irritating details they’d rather a prospective employer discover down the line.  A surprising number of college students awake from a drunken haze to wonder what dating site they signed up for over the weekend, years later to be faced with intimate details of their sex lives ranking above their .edu homepage.  To you, (and I know by my statpress reloaded plugin that you’re out there) I say Get a Blog. In a week or less, using just a simple wordpress set-up and your real name, you’ll do yourself plenty of good blanketing out old search engine results, bumping them down the page.

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April 20th, 2009

Social Media

Social Media is only one of the many ways online optimization can make communication more effective and less time-consuming. Finding good analysis of social media (by which I mean critical analysis, rather than simply jumping on the youtube/twitter bandwagon and hoping for the best) is crucial to staying afloat in the murky depths of the internet. Thankfully there are bloggers like TomL (microgeist) on Twitter:

Bio Providing social media resources, tips and commentary on the mood/spirit of microspace

Microgeist generates a significant footprint in the social media matrix already online, and there’s more than enough information there on social media than I can dare index.

To give some idea of the breadth and depth of social media’s impact, I’m doing a research dump of the articles I’ve been looking through around the net. Bear in mind that online social optimization as a strategy, while it includes social media optimization, also relies on reputation management and image branding – strategic brand management is a team task, and these following articles are all other people’s opinions.

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  • Using Social Media to Protect Public Safety – The thrust of this article is not Fugitive Safe Surrender in Washington, DC (www.dcsafesurrender.org) but an overview of the possibilities that social media affords the criminal justice community. By social media, I’m referring to radio …

  • Preservation Today – “One of the most powerful goals this partnership can achieve is to help organizations and individuals understand how social media tools work, and how those tools can be easily used to advance their preservation objectives.” …

  • Can marketing be conversational? – Not long after Cluetrain came out, Jakob Nielsen floored me by pointing out something that should have been obvious but proved easy to miss: that the authors “defected” from marketing and took sides with markets against it. …

  • The only real social networks are personal ones – Should Brands Join or Build Their Own Social Network? is the question Jeremiah Owyang raised yesterday on Twitter and in facebook. If you’re a facebook member, you can participate. I am a member, but I’d rather not. At least, not there. …

  • Adventures with Because Effects – Twitter is paying my rent, Marshall Kirkpatrick says. Specifically,. I don’t mean they’ve hired me as a consultant, though I would love that, I mean Twitter is great for news discovery. Read on for my thoughts on how you can use Twitter …

  • Too much face(book) time – Here’s the problem. I believe the Net is an open place. Same with the Web. I also believe private walled gardens on the Web are fine things. Nothing wrong with them. My problem is when the former starts looking and acting like the …

  • Still at Newspapers 1.x – I’m late weighing in on the New York Times’ reported decision to drop Times Select. But not on calling it a bad idea in the first place. Nor on offering alternative ways of looking at both problems and opportunities for newspapers in a …

  • Looking toward life beyond advertising – Terry Heaton, TV consultant extraordinaire, writes: I just moved into a house, and the nice fellow from Verizon came yesterday and installed FIOS, which is the new 800-pound gorilla in this whole TV/Internet thing. …

  • Facebook Inserting Users Into Ads – Dan Solove at Concurring Opinions has some quite sensible concerns about Facebook’s new advertising program — specifically, that it may violate privacy law. I think he’s right, and then some… In short, the new program allows …

  • Insurers Tune In to Fair Use Best Practices – One of the most frustrating obstacles to fair use of copyrighted content has been the failure of insurers to recognize the fair use doctrine. Typically, insurers have demanded that every scrap of copyrighted material be “cleared” — that …

  • Health care or Health snare? – Putting patients in control of their own health care data is a Good Thing. Each of us should have the means to accumulate and store personal health care data as we move through various care systems, from routine interactions with …

  • Fair Use as a Complement to Open Licensing – Introduction The open educational resources movement has long concentrated on the use of licenses to turn material that is copyrighted and permanently transform it into material that is free for anyone to use, copy, and modify. …

  • Social Media Resources Tapped to Deliver Consumers Information on … – The power of social media is being tapped by the Department of Health and Human Services, its Food and Drug Administration, and its Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to spread important information about the recall of certain …

  • House Committees Take the Lead on Using Social Media to Ensure … – WASHINGTON, DC – House Committees on Education and Labor, Science and Technology, Transportation and Infrastructure, and the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming are the first four Congressional Committees to join …

  • 22 DoFollow Social Media Sites Offering Profile Links – Are links your nemisis rather than a powerful tool? Chain Link Fence. In last week’s post I talk about 4 alternative uses of social media. Point #2 I mentioned in that piece talked about “generating direct backlinks”, though I wasn’t …

  • Students Using Social Media Shown to Do Poorly on Exams – 68% of students who use Facebook have a “significantly” lower grade. Fresh research has confirmed what many parents and teachers already feared: social networking sites are damaging students’ academic performance. (more…)

  • Social Media is Creeping Further and Further – As a social media fan examples like this are so much fun to see, but imagine if you’d never ventured into Facebook or LinkedIn? How would you feel about seeing it creep in everywhere? Would you feel anxiety that you’re missing the boat …

  • What Does Social Media Have to do with Search? Plenty – Back in the “dark ages” of search engine optimization, way back a few years ago, actually, we created content on our websites. We then paid attention to on-page optimization, like optimizing our title tags, our body copy, …

  • You Do Know That Social Marketing Isn’t A Fad, Right? – It’s funny to me that people are still asking whether social media is viable for business. Obviously, the advertising industry picked up on blogs and social media pretty early on and revenue streams based on advertising has matured …

  • Using Social Media To Help Manage Online Reputation – In today’s socially connected online world, reputation management is becoming more and more a concern for any business. Sure, most companies are able to secure the number one spot in the organic search results for their brand via their …

  • The Economy Sucks but Social Media’s Thriving | Mark Evans – Since launching my own digital consultancy in January, I’ve been kept pretty busy doing social media projects for clients looking to take advantage of untapped.

  • KickApps- Social Media Applications – KickApps is not new to the web but it’s new to me so I thought I would share it with you. KickApps is community building platform that is incredibly easy to use. I am getting ready to create a community for one of my sites and I think I …

  • Social Media Success Tips Come Straight To Your Office | Social … – Social Media Explorer explores social media, public relations and marketing through commentary and analysis.

  • Social Media and Public Relations Consulting PR Squared – PR-Squared, written by Todd Defren a principal of PR Agency SHIFT Communications, is a popular blog focusing on the intersections of Social Media, Marketing and Public Relations.

  • Social Media Takes Center Stage: Popular Stories This Week – This week has seen social media take center stage across the world. Whether you’ve been following the TwitterTwitter reviews race between Ashton and CNN or.

  • HOW TO: Use Social Media for Sharing Music – Over the last few years, social media sites for sharing music have blossomed. With great companies such as Last.fmLast.fm reviews, PandoraPandora reviews, and.

  • The Essential Guide to Social Media – social media marketing public advertising promotion publicity 2.0 relations pr … http://www.scribd.com/doc/3283966/the-essential-guide-to-social-media …

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by unruh | Posted in Further Reading, Social Optimization | Comments Off | Tags:
April 18th, 2009

Social Optimization

Social Optimization is something I have been thinking about and working toward for a number of years.

It’s an approach to online interaction with the intention of removing the interface – where the individual is more than just a little brother sending back chaotic remnants into some fractalopticon hivebrain collating and evaluating the media – although that does appear to be where the internet is at now.

Social optimization is social action, social activism, engaged and remaindered out through the body politic. The revolution is that the media is a cybernetic extension of self into society now–it could never be televised because the television screen went one way, as retina of the mind’s eye (to quote Oblivion at 7:23 into this youtube clip)–instead, the revolution is because it is always revolution, there is no end to symbolic action or social strain, and any and all networks where social interaction can occur will always and already host revolutionary activism within its structure. Co-option of the activist and co-option of the network are always already occurring. (The smoke signal recessional anticipates history.)

Bearing this in mind, Public Individual is about to evolve.  I’ve mentioned before that the internet’s landscape radically and eternally alters every four months or so, and these last four months have been no exception.  Given the nature of blogging, as well as the nature of the economy, staying on top of search engine marketing requires a significant investment of time, energy, and testing.  No one out there is going to ever master the internet, they will only be able to ride it, surf it, and dance with it for a period of time.  ScotlandSEOBlog.co.uk has an excellent article illustrating this very point, highlighting the frustration blogs are causing traditional SEO tactics.

Social optimization, however, is an approach which is rooted primarily in interactions, relationships, and semes.  These valuational spaces can be precisely identified in a number of different ways, as the new and evolving framework is one based around opt-in self-identifying practices.

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