Protecting Your Online Identity

Posted on September 6th, 2008 by Melissa Ward

Over the past few months there have been several cases of mistaken or deliberate concealment of identity and corporate brands. Not all misrepresentations have been malicious.  “Janet” pretended to be a representative of Exxon Mobile Corp, answering questions about the company’s position on things, the direction the company is heading etc.  (see http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2008/08/01/how-janet-fooled-the-twittersphere-shes-the-voice-of-exxon-mobil/).  More recently, there have been a flurry of Sarah Palin related nick names. (http://twitter.com/tw/search/users?q=Sarah+Palin).  My personal favorite is http://twitter.com/FakeSarahPalin, as the person behind the id is at least admitting he/she is a fake. 

I understand individuals want the freedom to express their opinions, even if it is in a sarcastic way.  What I do not understand is why, if the opinion is valid, anyone would hide their true identity?  It also raises the bar on how diligent corporations (and famous people) need to be in monitoring their brand.

There are several tools you can use to monitor what is being said about you, your products, services and business:

Google News Alerts:   Set up a google news alert http://news.google.com/news for your name, your business name and any trademarked product or services you have.
Yahoo Alerts: http://alerts.yahoo.com/
Monitter:  A real time twitter monitoring tool.  You can enter in 3 keywords and watch the stream, http://monitter.com/
Other great twitter tools: Tweetdeck:  http://www.tweetdeck.com, Twittscoop: http://www.twitscoop.com/,
To monitor Blogs, set up a custom RSS at http://technorati.com, http://feedster.com, & http://www.google.com/reader.

You have spent a great deal of time and effort creating your brand and your identity - don’t let it get damaged or diluted by not paying attention.

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Filed under: Internet Marketing, Marketing, Social Media Markeing | No Comments »

Web 2.0 is about connecting people

Posted on September 4th, 2008 by Melissa Ward

Nothing says it better then this video

 

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Filed under: Social Media Markeing, Web Trends | No Comments »

How to Enter a Forum…

Posted on August 31st, 2008 by Melissa Ward

That sounds silly doesn’t it? Why would I have to learn how to enter a forum? I just sign up and post right?

It would seem on the surface to be that easy, but I see a lot of people have a real hard time…

Over time forums create a very tight community. Everyone learns the rules and looks out for each other…

That’s the first thing… Read the rules. Different forums approach how you display links differently or even what you can talk about…

The other thing is don’t come in gang busters!! Don’t try to prove yourself and get to excited about showing everyone your knowledge etc….

Get to know the community first. Hang out for a while. Introduce yourself politely… Usually there is a separate area set aside for intros… And then start browsing.

Get to know the other posters… Remember a lot of these people have known each other for a while. They may even be doing business behind the scenes…

Once you have a feel for it, start helping out.

Helping out… If you have any knowledge to contribute, provide it… Help people with things you know about.

Learn… Read… Learn… Read some more… Ask questions…

Then let it rip if you want to.

The bottom line is very few people can go crazy right off the bat… There is an exception here or there, but usually the community wants to see you contribute for a while before you get bold. They need to get to know you.

Definitely don’t provide a sales pitch in your first post… You will getting flaming posts and anger the community. Everyone will see it as spam.

It’s just like building any relationship. Easy at first until you get to know each other.

Forums are powerful things. Don’t abuse that power. And don’t ruin your reputation…