Brand reputation is all about SEO and the first who gets there. Your brand reputation starts with your name and regardless if you own a company or not you should be proactive in protecting your name.  Here are a few online brand reputation management tips to start you off:

• Start with getting your name as a domain name – It is no secret that the major search engines give high relevancy to keywords within the domain name.  In this case the keywords you are trying to rank high for is your name.  Get a basic hosting package, add a wordpress blog on it, and have some fun.  Total investment $100/year. You are talking nine bucks a month people, well worth it if you ask me.
• Social media profiles – These profiles help your online brand management greatly as social media sites in general such as Twitter, MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, and others have such high authority that the profiles they have keep reap the benefits.  Sign up for as many as you can and do not forget the secondary ones such as; Geni.com, Hi5, Ning, Orkut, Skyrock, Qzone, Vkontakte, RenRen, Kaixin, ASmallWorld, studivz, Xing, RunAlong.se, Bebo, BigTent, Elgg, Hyves, and Flirtomatic.
• Write an article and post it on Go Articles, ArticleBase, and Ezinearticles – you have to be an expert in something right? Share it with the Internet world and help  protect yourself at the same time.
• Search for family and friends on Google – I found great little sites and communities to be a part of.
• Open a flickr account and post some pictures – flickr is a great authority site and it is a great place to share you pictures with friends and family.
• One up a profile on Spoke – Another great site that does a good job of promoting their profiles.
• Create Google Profile – Most people have heard of Google Profiles but they exist.  It won’t rank in the top 10 but it is displayed on the bottom of the first page of the results with links to your major social media profiles.
• Open a profile on SlideShare – SlideShare is a great place to put your presentations online for people to see.  If your a business person you must something you can put up as a presentation. If not, put up something.
• Sign up for a Blogspot blog – use your name as the subdomain as this will give it the little extra boost.
• Use your name on places where you post comments.

Your online brand reputation management has gotten much harder due to Google adjusting its U.S. trademark policy (and bringing its existing policy more in line with the industry standard) to allow some ads to use trademarks in the ad text. What that means to you, your company, or your clients online asset reputation can be devastating.
Under the old policy, a site that sold several trademark brands or product lines may not have been able to highlight the actual brands they sell in ad text. Under the new policy, advertisers can create specific ads for each of the brand assets that they sell.

online brand management, product line management, online brand asset reputation

Under certain criteria, advertisers can use trademark terms in ad text in the U.S. even if they don’t own that trademark or have explicit approval from the trademark owner to use it. This change will help to create more narrowly targeted ad text that highlights a merchant’s inventory.

Google is aiming to help advertisers navigate the often treacherous trademark waters by adding new functionality to its Search Based Keyword Tool (google.com/sktool/). Just enter your website if your site contains those brands, you may see a list of brands on the left side of the page. When you click on any of those brands you’ll notice a column titled, “Extracted from webpage.” Those landing pages may be opportunities for you to show re-sale or informational ads.

Your Online Reputation Management Could Be At Risk

Have you heard of a MLM program called Carbon Copy Pro? Do a search on Google for it and you will see tons of paid search ads and natural ranked pages killing this brand. The natural pages are targeting the term Carbon Copy Pro and Carbon Copy Pro Scam. The paid ads have has not been able to use the brand in their ads but they come close like CC Pro, Carb Copy Pro, or Carbon C Pro. All of these are targeting consumers to “don’t buy until you read this”. Should you read it you will realized that the majority of these web pages are actually promoting the company and have great things to say but if you scan Google you might think differently of the brand.

So how does Google’s change in their copyright policy make any difference for this specific companies’ online brand management? Much harder because paid ads may now have the ability to use the exact brand name of your company! Let say you buy leads from a lead agrator and they offer multiple vendors in your industry. Guess what? They now have the ability to use your brand name in their paid ads.

So make sure you are doing online press releases, social media profiles, adding additional content to your website, and maybe so paid advertising now so that you beat others to the punch.