Increasing the scope of one’s web presence

Scope is a very simple word. But it carries a whole lot of importance to online reputation management. It’s both the biggest strength of the modern advertising model and one of the biggest challenges. It’s certainly possible to work with online reputation management while staying with a single type of social networking service. But the reality these days is that one needs to be very agile with the general target demographic. Things change often enough that one should consider keeping up with social networking trends as simply another part of the job. No matter what one’s actual job is. Services come and go. And they tend to have rapid rises and falls in popularity. But even if a particular service is waning in popularity, that doesn’t make it an unfeasable model for name recognition.

This goes along with an overall theme in modern reputation management. It’s interactive, and about talking with rather than to people. One shouldn’t consider it a matter of talking to a faceless crowd. Instead it’s important to remember that the people being addressed are often the trendsetters of any social group in the real world. A particular social networking service might have a limited number of specific users. But if some of those users are very active in one’s local area than it suddenly becomes a very important market to concentrate on. The limited amount of competition from other people there will also ensure that one will have a far more powerful message. This leads to another important point. Reputation management is often about quality over quantity.

It’s important to view social interaction online in a similar way to social interaction in the real world. Nobody wants to feel like they’re only being given surface attention, or worse being used in some way. When people interact online a little true friendliness and interest will go a long way. One hour of actual earnest interaction with the public can mean more than a month of traditional advertising. The point might feel redundant, but it always bears repeating. The modern internet user wants to be spoken with, not to. It’s not something that should be done when one has two minutes before the office shuts down for the night.

Often times it’s something that one would do better putting off until time permits. Being able to really devote attention to public interaction is very important to one’s image. It’s also important to keep in mind that this interaction isn’t a private email exchange. It might be a post-google world. But people will still be able to easily view any of it at any time in the future. As such, one should be careful about the image being portrayed. It should always feel real, and always feel consistent. People don’t like being given cursory attention. But another aspect of interaction in the real world carries over as well. People don’t like feeling as if they’re being pandered to or spoken to in a disingenuous way. There should be a continuity in the approach that one takes to interacting with the public.