OK folks. Everyone knows that John McCain has choose theAlaska governor Sarah Palin. I am not posting today to discuss if this was a good choice or not. If she is or is not ready for the job. If she has to much baggage or not. I am here to simply point out that if you feel online reputation management is unnecessary, you simply need to look no further than her name as the query in Google:
OK so starting to scan through the results we don’t see to many initial issues. We see some images blended into search. A Wikipedia listing, the Alaska gov website, a fan blog, the palinforgovernor.com website and some Google news:
Now the trouble begins and I suspect it will only get worse as time progresses. Looking at page two of [Sarah Palin] we can see squidoo page (controlled by who knows who), very derogatory website called vpmilf.com (Vice President Moms I Like to F…), a negative gawker.com post and many more questionable news articles that if I was in the GOP camp (or marketing group) would like to not be anywhere near the top searches for her name.
The simply fact is that bad news carries quicker and can rank quicker (because of the back links) than good news. If you are not proactive to manage these issues online then you are not doing your job in managing the online reputation of your client.
OK so what should she do?
1. Well for one start to harness the power of social media profiles.The GOP camp should set up Twitter account(s) and even consider myspace and facebook profiles to help connect with the younger generations. Their are hundreds of social networks out there. Start getting them all set-up!
2. Get some AdWords going for gods sake. You have the budget start bidding on your own name and related derogatory queries and start controlling public perception some!
3. Start actively commenting on some of the major news paper articles/threads. Sure not Sarah herself but some people in the GOP camp for sure.
4. Work with other prominent political blogs on posts. These can be as simple as general over the phone interviews that the bloggers can post on their website.
5. Start getting YouTube working for you. With little back link effort theGOP YouTube channel should be easily ranking for the keyword with multiple videos of her acceptance speech.
Sure their are plenty more ideas I can think of, but Sarah there are a few to get kick started.
I have posted some good ideas on how to control such online reputation management issues in a post a few weeks back that you should check out:Online Reputation Management, The Easy Way
I also posted some brand management tips some time back: Brand Management, Top 10 Reputation Tips
Michael Gray has a great post on this topic as well:
Still Think You Can Ignore Social Media, Blogs, YouTube and Blended Search
