What you say on the web is forever and social media is the permanent marker on the white wall of the giant warehouse. By now you should know that Google permanently indexes everything said via social networking platforms. You can consider tweets, Facebook updates, LinkedIn messages and all other forms of social media updates to be an online tattoo. If not carefully planned and properly thought through these social media will be a tattoo on the forehead of your online presence… and that is not a pretty sight. Social media is a responsibility, not a job for the intern who knows about this “MyFace” stuff.

In its simplest explanation online reputation management or search engine reputation management (SERM) is knowing and managing what is being said about you or your business online. Many people think that keeping track of this is unimportant, but if you have ever seen an online video go viral then you will know how quickly news can spread.

When somebody publicly praises you, you more than likely want the world to know about it.

I presented this to everyone in the agency this morning, (always the toughest crowd around ). SERM is something that is definitely a specialist an advanced stream of SEO and IMHO is the intersection of SEO and PR. Its critical that more PR agencies are aware of the practise, its uses and limits.

Ive shared it on slideshare under LouisVenter or you can get to it via MediaVison. Will get to the sharecast next week with any luck.

In this presentation:

1. What is SERM?
2. Why is it Important? – Hitwise report on navigational search
3. Who Typically Needs SERM
4. Some Horror Stories
5. Is it only about companies that dont get SEO? :- An SEO agency with an SERM issue
6. What tactics are involved?
7. Some success stories

So here goes: