The explosion of social media use has meant that online reputation management is becoming increasingly important for companies of all sizes; and in certain cases, even important for individual real estate professionals.

Wendy Forsythe wrote about the need to manage your personal brand on the Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate blog today that nicely sums up the reasons why.

It’s also a topic I’ve written about extensively on this blog too:

• How Do You Measure Your Reputation?
• Rise in Internet Use Reinforces the Need for a Cohesive Identity Strategy
• The Rise of the User Review
• The Search for Perfect Agent
• Local Search Will Affect Your Business

So, how do you deal with getting started managing your online reputation?

Why not just listen first?

Before you can react to any situation that may occur, you need to be aware of that situation. Here are 5 tools I’ve found to be very useful in tuning in to online conversations.

Google Alerts

The granddaddy of reputation management tools. If you don’t have a Google Alert set up for your name already, stop right here and go and set one up.

StepRep

StepRep emerged into Beta a few weeks ago and it’s like Google Alerts on steroids – it scans not only search results for your name but also many of the more popular social networks.

One nice feature Step Rep provides is it lets you build your reputation by embedding positive reviews or stories about yourself that you’ve found into your web site through a small widget. Promoting stories with good things to say about you or your brand is a good way to build credibility. It reinforces your reputation and reassures your customers.

Ever wonder why many small sites launch with links and logos from media companies smeared all over them? They’re looking to establish that credibility.

Trackur.com

Trackur is another full-featured social media monitoring solution that gives you a full dashboard-like environment that helps you keep track of your brand, key individuals and your competitors. Probably overkill for most individuals, it does provide a nice trend analysis for companies wanting to see how often (or not) their brand is mentioned.

BackType

BackType is a new service that scans all the comments on blog posts; a place that Google Alerts often neglects. Google may pick up on an original blog post that contains your name but may or may not index the comments on other posts where your name pops up. You can set up an RSS feed or email alert whenever you or your brand is mentioned.

Twitter Search

The use of Twitter is a communications case study unto itself (check out the fantastic Twitter for Business series from the Gahlord Dewald on how you can implement Twitter into your business).

But, if you’re not ready to dive in to Twitter just yet, an easy way to stay on top on what’s being said is to plug your name or brand into Twitter’s search tool and keep track of the results. Twitter provides an handy RSS feed for your query which you can pipe into your reader for daily monitoring.

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Seth Godin said the first thing you should do this year is Google yourself. Loudoun County Assessor Todd Kaufman is learning the hard way that managing your online identity can be often be an unsatisfactory experience.

Managing your online identity is, I suspect, going to be one of the themes we encounter more and more frequently in 2008. This is a theme I’ve touched on many times on this blog over the years (see Take Control of Your Digital Identity) and I believe it’s going to be increasingly critical task moving forward for any small business owner, including the real estate or mortgage professional.

One way this trend will manifest in this industry is, I believe that wary consumers are going to become more and more aggressive in searching out information on the parties they want to do business with.

Google is one way to find information on individuals (and still probably the best). But sites like Spock.com, are part of an emerging class of vertical search sites that focus on specific niches, in this case; People.

Spock’s goal is to allow web surfers the ability to finely tune their queries (a search for “Realtor” in Portland, OR for example) and get individual results on people that match those terms.

Spock also hopes to give those individuals returned in a search the tools they need to control the results that others find. Agents can go on the site, “claim” their identity and then link to the appropriate content they want people to see.

Interesting concept and the reality is that despite all the advances in Real Estate 2.0, finding a good agent these days is still tough.

Not because they aren’t any out there, it’s just there’s no easy way to find them. Sites like IncredibleAgents.com and HomeThinking have tried to make inroads into helping consumers find individual real estate professionals – though neither have gained much traction to date. But that’s not to say that the idea will go away, just look at what Avvo is doing to attorneys.

In the mean time, making sure you stay on top on your own search results should still be priority. Having a blog is a good way to ensure you stay top of the rankings for your name. So is maintaining a profile on SEO friendly social networks like LinkedIn.

The bottom line here is no matter how somebody comes across your name, whether it be from a friend, yard sign, postcard, business card or email, you need to realize that the first step many people are going to take is go home and Google you (maybe even Spock you).

My advice is make sure you’re giving them the information you want them to find.

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yellowed pages by wizmo

Is there any doubt any longer than print advertising is a dying medium? A recent study by TMP finds:

33% of all consumers still consider print yellow pages as their primary source of local business info…

What that really means is 67 percent of people are looking for services online these days. Greg Sterling at Screenwerk calls this survey “the tipping point everyone has been talking about.”

Local search is hitting its stride and businesses (including real estate professionals) will need to keep up. It’s now more crucial than even to start a local Internet advertising campaign.

Overwhelming? Perhaps. Scary? Maybe. But here’s three things you can do right now to help you get a handle on this.

Be found. Start a blog. Join ActiveRain. Both will give you decent visibility in search results if you stick with it. More than enough has been written about this elsewhere… Check out Real Estate Weblogging 101 for pointers.

Use a service like MerchantCircle (see MerchantCircle Launches Social Networking for Business) to manage your identity. I got a note from MerchantCircle yesterday saying they had just passed 200,000 small business owners signing up for their service. Services like MerchantCircle are going to be increasingly useful as local search becomes even more prevalent and having a local advertising presence online becomes more critical – largely because it helps you control and syndicate your online identity. Check out this example of an Associate Broker in Mount Pleasant, Michigan who has put their business online with MerchantCircle.

Start Listening. Monitor the Web. Setup a Google Blog Search for your name – and subscribe to the alerts via email.

Start Engaging. Don’t fear the User Review sites. Pat Kitano at Transparent RE gives a pretty good run down of which sites you need to be paying attention to in his piece, Online Reputation Management for Realtors.

Like many others, Yelp is one of my favorite new sites to find new restaurants and local service providers. So, if you’re not in their database – why not? Add yourself. Closed a deal? Encourage your clients to review you on Yelp and hopefully stimulate new business. Put a link to your Yelp profile on your business card. You get the picture.

This was me last year, in The Rise of the User Review

Marketing has been traditionally about broadcasting your message – what I like to call the ‘Spray-and-Pray’ model. But that’s changing in the face of these new social patterns. The future of marketing is about listening to the community, tailoring your message and narrowcasting to your audience.

Even more important as time goes by, but the best part is – most of this can be done at little to no cost. Now that’s a real win for everyone.

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