Not a big fan of those $10.95 / month “identity theft protection” services, I view reputation management with that same skeptic’s view. I do realize that large companies are extremely paranoid of their “brand image” and so they do invest in these solutions / processes for their online presence. I would agree with #1, #4 but the rest are really waste of time.

This comes
from Jody Nimitz via seo-space.
It’s part of a series to develop an online reputation management strategy
within the SERPs
(Search Engine Results Pages) and improve online reputation with actionable
business tools.

He reports
keeping an eye on your online reputation is especially critical because
increased competition creates reactive instead of proactive situations for PR
firms dealing with their client’s reputation.  

Jody provides
five critical steps to provide proactive actionable intelligence to manage an
online reputation. They’re summarized here.

1. Monitor Your Existing Online
   Presence – In
   order to manage your online reputation, you need to know what is being
   said about your brand online. An easy way to do this is through tools such
   as Google Alerts and Yahoo! Alerts (which
   you can feed into your reader). 

2. Analyze Your Online Presence
   within the SERPs –
   Consumer generated content is increasing and a blogpost or negative
   article can surface in the first page of organic search results, so a keen
   understanding of your search engine environment is necessary.

3. Control Your Online Destiny with
   Optimization –
   Optimize your site and online properties to dominate the search results.  

4. Control Your Online Destiny with
   Participation –
   Be active in industry forums, social networks, and review & opinion
   sites. Participation within these areas can help change negative
   perceptions. Blogs are extremely popular for consumers and are often the
   first place they go to find information.

5. Repeat Steps One Through Four – Being proactive and
   understanding the customer’s perception of your brand and your
   organization is one of the best ways to begin with your online reputation
   management strategy.  

Whether it’s
B2C, or B2B, it’s important to participate in online forums and social networks
to gather actionable intelligence about what is being said, both positive and
negative, about your enterprise and brand.

Jody provides a link to his
downloadable PDF report: Online
Reputation Management