• Crabtree + Company's Online Reputation Series Part One

Evergreen & Company's Online Reputation Management (ORM) Series

Part Two: Social Media and Public Relations

Welcome to the second edition of our series covering online reputation management. Today we'll focus on social media effectiveness and public relations (PR).

The numbers speak for themselves, and there's no denying that social media is a powerful tool which affects anyone with an email address, website address, or an account on any social media platform. So here's what you need to know:

1. Your company’s social media account is NOT your employees’ personal account — don’t let the lines get blurred.
Some companies allow their employees to associate themselves with the company when posting to their personal accounts but require them to clearly brand their posts as 100% their own. Sensitive company information should never be shared via employees’ personal accounts.

2. LinkedIn publishing tools are only available to individuals — not companies.
Companies who wish to publish content via LinkedIn have to rely on trusted employees to disseminate the appropriate information and keep their reputation intact.

3. Public relations = 3rd party endorsements.
Telling your clients how great you are isn’t nearly as effective as when others recognize your talents and give you a shout-out. Public relations is still one of the biggest influences on online reputation, and traffic from another source is great for search engine optimization (SEO).

4. You can monitor personal and business mentions online.
Go here to set up a Google Search Alert: https://www.google.com/alerts.

5. Consider a social media dashboard.
Social media dashboards can sync all your social media accounts so you can see them all at once. Hootsuite, one of the most popular social media tools, has a dashboard that is available in 13 languages.

6. Are you B2B (business-to-business) or B2C (business-to-consumer)?
Different audiences require different messages and strategies. Know your audience and post accordingly.

7. To accept or not accept.
When building a personal brand for professional development, you must be prepared to encounter requests from professional peers, and potentially people you’ve never even met who want to follow you on social media. LinkedIn recommends only accepting invitations from people who you know and want to be part of your network. On the other hand, there are some who are willing to accept many online connections to increase their chances of expanding their business. Find a balance that’s right for you.

If we’ve opened your eyes a bit to the best practices of social media and PR — Like Us On Facebook! And if you’d like to learn more, call us at 703.241.9001 or visit us online and we’ll do all we can to increase your likes and followers.

Up next, Part Three of Evergreen & Company’s ORM series: Emails and Eblasts.
If you missed Part One about Websites, you can read it here.

Subscribe to our monthly eblasts to be alerted when Part Three is published.