Are you considering creating a new online brand? Before you spend thousands of dollars on a domain name, or marketing, save yourself some difficulty by doing a quick vanity search in Google. A vanity search is where you search the name in Google. What you are looking for are names that look similar, or if Google is offering a “Did you mean…” at the top of results which could then send traffic to a competitor. The latter is not a big issue, if your website will have hundreds of pages or many links (eventually) and take a way the “Did you mean” issue, as we have covered before. The next thing you want to do, if you have not yet bought a domain for the brand is to do a search at The Internet Archive. Even though a site might not exist now, it may have once before. With the Internet Archive you quickly check. It can also give you an idea what kind of traffic those out of date bookmarks might send your way. Once you have undertaken these tasks its time to grab your new brands user-name in all the important tools you will need. We recommend using Namechk or Knowem. Using those tools will let you know if the user-name at YouTube or Facebook are already taken. Actually, don’t be shy to lock up your brand at as many sites as you can. Your goal is to protect yourself as much as possible from brand identity hijack.

Now that you have a brand, you need to know some basics of ” online reputation management”. Google recently had a article about this exact subject and how to address possibly unflattering search results when your name or brand is searched. Some of their advice:

• If a customer writes a negative review of your business, you could ask some of your other customers who are happy with your company to give a fuller picture of your business.
• If a blogger is publishing unflattering photos of you, take some pictures you prefer and publish them in a blog post or two.
• If a newspaper wrote an article about a court case that put you in a negative light, but which was subsequently ruled in your favor, you can ask them to update the article or publish a follow-up article about your exoneration.

All of this is good advice. But how do you keep track of what is being said about you or your brand? Outside of doing a normal Google search everyday, there are many solutions, but the most essential in our view is Google “Special” search, Google Alerts and Twitter feeds.

Google “Special” search
Google now offers you the “option menu”. You should regularly do a search of blogs, forums and reviews. You also need to use what are called advanced operators. There are a couple that are essential for brand management, but the most important will be inurl and the use of the “–” sign. What you want to do is search Google as such: -inurl:www.mysite.com “brand name”. What does this do? It will search for all mentions of your brand, without picking up the pages in your domain. Get to know the advanced operators. It is a free and quick way to see what is in Google’s search index about your brand (or your competition)

Google Alerts
We have covered Google Alerts before, but we can’t stress it enough, especially when using advanced operators we mentioned above. Using Google Alerts will keep you up-to-date in real time about comments related to your brand. It is an essential tool for brand management.

Twitter Feeds
Twitter feeds, are simply a feed of a particular search term. Once you sign in with your Twitter account and do a a search, you have the opportunity to save the search and also subscribe to the “RSS feed for this query”. We recommend you do this for your brand (or competitors). Check it regularly to know what people are saying about you or your brand.

So what do you do with the information?  In our view, silence is not always golden, but you should proceed with caution. Be engaged with your clients and encourage them to share their positive experiences on social networks. The goal is too have positive comments out weigh the negative ones –should they arise. But they need to be genuine. Making fake accounts to post full of hyperbole can quickly smell of fraud (i.e. fake TripAdvisor reviews) if it goes against the “crowd wisdom”. Users are not stupid. Today’s Social Networks can be an important source of Word of Mouth, so it is important to use it carefully. In the end, as with most things, use common sense.