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What is Reputation Management?

A good reputation is something which takes a long-time to create but can be lost very quickly; something which RyanAir must be learning to its cost. If you are in business, your good reputation is the result of being competitive and supplying the needs of your customers or clients effectively and your online presence is an extension of your good reputation.

Why is it important?

Without a good reputation, you lose trust and without trust there is no business. While most transactions run smoothly, occasionally things can go wrong, be it faulty product, misunderstanding or even just an awkward customer. The power of internet makes it possible for a dogged person to do a disproportionate amount of harm to your reputation. That is why it is important.

How can you Reduce the Impact of Negative Publicity?

In most case reputation management consists of simply putting things right before they get out of control. Therefore, effective customer service is important first line of defence to keep things in check before they can escalate. Keep an ear to the ground and identify what your customers are saying about your brand on the web. Identifying potential problems can be a simple as performing a search for your company’s name in Google, Yahoo and Live search engines and looking at the results. Are there any results which show your products in a negative light?

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Sir Pumpkin Longshanks
Programmer, Research and Development

When writing a blog it is possible to get to a point where you find it difficult to think of what to write about. This can happen even if you know the subject very well. By planning things out you can define ahead of time what you are going to write about and also think about what connects to your subject. The easiest way I have found of doing this is with a mindmap.

A mindmap starts off with single node in the middle of the page, this branches out into things that are related to the center node. The mindmap should branch so that everything down a branch is to do with a related subject.

As an example I thought I would quickly put together a simple mindmap about skepticism. This is by no means complete, but it is the sort of thing I would use to write about skepticism if I was planning on writing a blog on that subject.

I started in the middle with the main subject, and then branched out to science, pseudoscience, logical fallacies, origins and skepticism in the media. Each of these branched out into more branches. Although I created this map in about 10 minutes I now have at least 20 blog titles that I can expand upon.

In case anyone is interested, I’m not planning on writing a blog on skepticism. Partly because I can’t spare the time to devote to another blog, but mainly because there are many good skeptical blogs available on the subject.

Software
You could just use a pen and paper to create a mindmap, but there are some software versions available. Here are a couple of free products that I had a go at:

To create the example above I used a program called Freemind. Freemind is written in Java and is therefore available on multiple platforms. The only complain that I have about Freemind is that it is quite difficult to use and there are a thousand features that I don’t think I will ever need. However, once you get the hang of creating simple maps it isn’t too difficult.

Another free mindmapping software that I had a quick look at is XMind. This software not only covers mindmaps, but also has the capability of creating time lines, gnatt charts and even sharing it with other users. It is written in Java and is therefore available on many different platforms. XMind was named "Best Commercial Eclipse Rich Client Platform (RCP) Application" at EclipseCon 2008 so it is worth a look.

Benoit Gilloz
Programmer, Research and Development

Much of the really cool stuff I would like talk about is top-secret or ongoing research. With this subject matter out of bounds, writing an original blog is not an easy thing to do. The thought of having to craft a good piece of writing and put it out on the web for everyone to see can be daunting process. It is not surprising that even the best of us get occasional bouts blogger’s block.

An Authroratitive Image

1. Sometimes you might have the grain of an idea but don’t know how to proceed. Write out your  idea and try to grow it from the central idea outwards. Every blog post can have an introduction and a  conclusion.  If you can get a few ideas on paper then you can start to pad them out to make a blog post.
2. Images can be used illustrate and pad out a short blog post. This is not just a cop-out. A well chosen image can illustrate an make the  shorter blog post more authoritative.
3. Write about anything. This is called free writing. You don’t have to post it. The act of writing itself may free your writing block and give you an idea for your real post of the day.
4. Use your experience. Write about a specific experience that happened to you and relate it to another story.
5. Look on the web to find a question that you can answer. I find that reading the comments on other people’s blogs can often generate an idea for a blog post.
6. Do something else – by doing something other than sitting at the computer hoping for inspiration, going off to do something different can stimulate the galvanic spark of inspiration.
7. If you are writing on a regular basis you will know that there are good times to write and bad times to write. Obviously you should write in the good times and not in the bad.
8. Impose a deadline on your blog post that will make just make you write something rather than worry about whether it is worthy of a SEMMY.
9. If you have gone through this list of tips and are still unable to find your creative muse you could always write a post about about overcoming blogger’s block.

Sir Pumpkin Longshanks
Programmer, Research and Development