Online Reputation Management Blog

Do You Need a Social Media Policy?

September 14, 2011 by 1 Comment

A Pew Research Center social networking study  (August 2011), reported that 65% of U.S. adults use social networking sites like MySpace, Facebook or LinkedIn.  Many are using these sites at work.  Some are using these sites to talk about work.  And a few are getting fired for it.

As a business owner, you basically have two choices in managing social media risk.  You can keep your fingers crossed and hope your employees don’t do or write anything stupid involving your company.  Or you can create a social media policy, support it with training, inform it with feedback, and empower employees to protect their company and brand.

Surprisingly, most U.S. companies have not taken the necessary steps to mitigate online reputation risk from their own employees. According to a Manpower report about the impact of social media in the global workplace, only 29% of U.S. companies had a social media policy.

From my perspective, the most striking data from the Manpower report was that 8% of U.S. companies have had their reputation negatively affected by employee use of social networking sites.

I don’t know the extent of the financial harm for the 8% of U.S. companies who suffered reputational damage, but I’m willing to bet that as soon as the PR crisis was over, the CEO was on the phone with her HR department asking for a social media policy.

A social media policy is not a vaccine, but it is better to set expectations and to have an open and transparent process regarding social media use by employees in and out of the workplace. Unfortunately, good judgment is relative. As a business owner, I would rather be sitting through a deposition with a social media policy in my hand, instead of a blank sheet of paper and a pencil.

If your company doesn’t have a social media policy, it needs one.  If your company has a social media policy, management should take a second look – especially after the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) released a report about employee use of social media and employers’ social media policies.

Next week, I am going to take a closer look at the recent NLRB decisions and explain how you can use the lessons learned from these cases to create the best social media policy for your company.

Filed Under: Privacy Tagged With: , ,

How to Remove a Ripoff Report

September 7, 2011 by 1 Comment

Popular complaint sites like Ripoff Report have a tremendous influence on Google, Yahoo and Bing online search results.

 

It is a shady world where customers, competitors and crackpots can damage a company with the click of the mouse, business owners and professionals are looking for ways to remove or delete a Ripoff Report from search engine results.

 

Under the Communications Decency Act, websites like Ripoff Report are protected from most forms of civil liability arising from publishing the content of others.  The publisher is generally not responsible even if the information is false and there is no duty to investigate the accuracy of a complaint.

 

There are several ways to remove a Ripoff Report.

 

1.  VIP Arbitration Program

 

Victims of a false Ripoff Report are able to submit a written statement identifying the inaccurate statements and can include documentary evidence and/or sworn affidavits. There is a filing fee of $2,000 for the VIP Arbitration program. 

The arbitrator will render a written decision after reviewing the evidence.

 

In the event that the arbitrator determines that the Ripoff Report is accurate, there will be no updates or changes to the website. According to Ripoff Report, if the arbitrator finds that statements in the Ripoff Report are false, the title of the report will be updated, posting this phrase BEFORE the original title: "Notice of Arbitrator Decision: A neutral and independent arbitrator has determined that the following Report contained one or more false statements of fact. The false statements have been redacted."

 

The arbitrator's decision will be posted in its entirety before the Ripoff Report appears. Any statements of fact that the arbitrator determines to be false will be deleted from the original Report.

 

2.  Sue Ripoff Report 

 

The broad protections of the Communications Decency Act shield Ripoff Report and their officers and directors from civil liability.  Although it may be possible to use Ripoff Report — and many have tried — plaintiffs have been largely unsuccessful in getting Ripoff Report to remove user-generated content through litigation.

 

3.  Sue the Author of the Ripoff Report

 

While most postings on Ripoff Report are anonymous, it is possible to sue the author for defamation.  First, you will need to file a lawsuit against the unnamed author.  Then you must seek a subpoena to obtain the identity (e.g., name and IP address) of the author from Ripoff Report. Finally, you must obtain a court order that the post is false or defamatory. After you receive the court order, there is a form to Submit a Court Order to Google in order to get Google to remove the offending page from its search index.

 

If all this sounds like a lot of work (and money), it is.  So if you can't remove a Ripoff Report and would rather not spend the next several months talking to lawyers and visiting a courtroom, what else can you do?

 

4. Hire an Online Reputation Management Firm

 

Online reputation management can displace false, embarrassing or irrelevant content by using social media, blogs, news media, personal websites and other tools to diminish the ranking of negative online content. An online reputation management firm will be able to generate positive content, optimize the content to appear higher than Ripoff Report results and push negative results off the first few pages of Google. 

 

Filed Under: Online Reputation Management Tagged With: , , , , ,

Facial Recognition Technology and Online Privacy

August 9, 2011 by 3 Comments

 

Facial recognition technology refers to computer-based systems that are able to automatically detect and identify human faces.  These systems utilize a complex facial recognition algorithm. First, the facial recognition system is able to recognize a human face and isolate the face from the rest of the photograph.  The technology is able to distinguish features such as the distance between the eyes, the shape of cheek bones, nose, mouth or chin and compare these nodal points from a computerized database of pictures to find a match.  Image quality, lighting conditions and the distance and angle of the photograph will all affect the accuracy of the match, however technology is improving rapidly to compensate for these limiting factors. 

 

The Electronic Privacy Information Center filed a Federal Trade Commission complaint, joined by the Center for Digital Democracy, Consumer Watchdog and Privacy Rights Clearinghouse recommending an investigation of Facebook’s privacy practices, in particular prohibiting the collection of users’ biometric data without affirmative opt-in consent.  With more than 750 million active users, Facebook is the most popular social network in history.  Facebook has also amassed the largest collection of photographs in the history of the world – 60 billion photographs.

 

For privacy advocates the problem is obvious. With 71% of US adults registered as Facebook users sharing more personal information in one place than at any time in history, an unparalleled repository of digital images, the technology to identify users (with or without their permission) and an estimated pre-IPO valuation of $100 billion, Facebook is the most powerful company in the world.

 

It was Facebook’s Tag Suggestion tool that got the Palo Alto company in some recent trouble.  The technology scans newly uploaded photos, searches images that have been previously uploaded to the site, then attempts to match faces and suggest name tags. When a match is made, Facebook alerts the person uploading the photos and invites them to "tag," or identify, the person in the photo.  It’s getting tougher to keep those embarrassing bachelor party pictures a secret from your wife.

 

A research team at Carnegie Mellon University recently published a study whereby they were able to identify individuals on a popular online dating site where members protect their privacy through pseudonyms. In a second experiment, they identified students walking on campus — based on their profile photos on Facebook. In a third experiment, the research team predicted personal interests and, in some cases, even the Social Security numbers of the students, beginning with only a photo of their faces.

 

As facial recognition technology collides with social media, it is going to take a lot of education and maybe even regulation to protect our online privacy in the 21st century.

Filed Under: Facebook, Privacy Tagged With: , , , ,

7 Ways Lawyers Can Improve Their Online Reputation

July 26, 2011 by 2 Comments

All I really needed to know about life – or online reputation management – I learned by watching The Simpsons. One of my favorite characters was the hapless, shyster lawyer played by the late, great Phil Hartman.

Lionel Hutz: Mrs. Simpson, you’re in luck. Your sexual harassment suit is exactly what I need to help rebuild my shattered practice. Care to join me in a belt of scotch?

Marge: It’s 9:30 in the morning.

Lionel Hutz: Yeah, but I haven’t slept in days.

Or this classic…

Lionel Hutz: Now don’t you worry, Mrs. Simpson, I… uh-oh. We’ve drawn Judge Snyder.

Marge: Is that bad?

Lionel Hutz: Well, he’s kind of had it in for me, since I accidently ran over his dog. Actually, replace ‘accidently’ with ‘repeatedly’, and replace ‘dog’ with ‘son’.

While you may not be able to control what others say about you online (or on Fox television), you can create positive online content to diminish the impact and visibility of damaging content. That is the power of online reputation management.

I recently wrote a blog article about Online Reputation Management for Lawyers and I wanted to followup on that post to share seven easy ways lawyers can improve their online reputation:

1. Buy your own domain name (e.g. yourname.com). Download WordPress or Blogger software for free and start a blog on your new site. No programming knowledge or skills needed at all.

2. Blog about topics relevant to your practice area. Now that you have a domain name, it is time to start using it. According to inbound marketing firm Hubspot, businesses that blog get 55% more web traffic. The more blog articles you post, the more pages search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing will index, and the more pages that you index the more links you get from other sites. These links will raise your rank on search engines like Google — driving traffic directly to your website.

3. Create an optimized profile. There is the business card you carry in your wallet and the business card you post online. Create a dynamic profile and complete every available field of information on Findlaw.com, Avvo.com, Justia.com, Lawyers.com, Nolo.com and Martindale.com. If you haven’t stepped up to LinkedIn, you are watching new business walk right past your door.

4. Google is king. Although Bing is gaining market share, you have to dominate Google. Luckily, they give you a few easy ways to help people who may be looking for you online. Use Google Places for Business to get your business found on local search results on both Google Search and Google Maps. Google Images also performs very well on search results so straighten that bowtie, smile for the camera and post your pics on your blog, Flickr and other photo sharing sites. And stay on top of new developments from the Googleplex, the new Google+ is looking like a social networking juggernaut, and you can bet your Google+ profile will get some serious online exposure.

5. Be your own expert witness. Comment on relevant legal news articles and blog posts that relate to your practice area, respond to requests for public comment from government agencies and regulatory organizations, join panel discussions and industry events that may receive online publicity. Demonstrate your competence by hosting continuing education classes and publicize these events across the web. It takes just a couple of hours a week. I know practice management is non-billable time, but you will be amazed at how quickly you can extend your web footprint.

6. Think twice before posting anything online. The best way to manage your online reputation is to not do or say anything stupid in the first place. We can’t control what others might say about us, but don’t give them any extra ammunition. Lawyers behaving badly might make for a funny email forward or Above the Law post, but for your clients it’s not a laughing matter. I don’t want to see a picture of my lawyer doing bong hits or drinking tequila shots off the chest of a Las Vegas stripper.

7. Hire the best online reputation management firm.  An online reputation management company will elevate positive content and minimize the impact of negative content. Beware of firms that guarantee they will remove a negative post. Like lawyers, no reputable reputation management firm will guarantee a particular result. Search engine algorithms are closely guarded secrets and change frequently. However, certain fundamental online and search marketing techniques have proven successful in helping lawyers overcome online defamation – that is what a “white hat” online reputation management firm will bring to the table.

Select a U.S.-based online reputation management firm and make sure your services agreement includes strict confidentiality provisions. If you are a good writer, you should insist upon reviewing any posts made on your behalf and drafting your own biography. Also, since legal ethics surrounding attorney marketing vary from state to state, you will want to make sure web postings include any required disclosures.

Feel free to share your personal stories of online reputation management success and failure in the comments below and any other tips and tricks for turbocharging your online image.

Filed Under: Online Reputation Management Tagged With: , , , ,
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