Online Reputation Management & KnowEm.com

April 22, 2009
 

Social media and its link building power take center stage on today’s show. Susan, Scott and Virginia open the show by discussing a video in which Matt Cutts of the Google Web Spam team explains the relative value of social media links. In the video titled “Has Google changed the relevancy it awards to social media?” Matt says, “We tend not to think about, like, oh, just links from social media sites. […] We tend to think about links, whether they’re useful, whether they’re not useful, and so we use that as our litmus test. We try to give more credit or more trust to the links that we think are really valuable.”

Virginia talks to Michael Streko about a new tool he has helped launch called KnowEm.com. KnowEm? searches 120 social sites to see if your preferred username has been registered. If not, they offer a service to register the names for you. Monthly subscribers will have their username registered across new sites as they launch. As username squatting becomes more prevalent across the social media space, a tool like KnowEm? is very helpful for online brand and reputation management.

Michael Streko

Scott, Susan and Virginia then consider when to avoid social media. In a recent article in BtoB Magazine, the author lists five scenarios where social media should not be used. The reasons are: if you’re a high-ticket business; if you fight with your employees; if management does not support it; if a strategy is absent; and if there are privacy or regulatory concerns. Scott, Susan and Virginia disagree with nearly every reason above, arguing that there are reasons to be cautious and strategic in your social media campaigns, however avoidance and lack of understanding is unwise.