Just as soon as you get comfortable in your corner office, with your laptop and view (does anybody still have a corner office these days?)Â the world of digital has a way of literally pulling the mat from underneath your feet. A couple of announcements over the last couple of months have once again changed the way search and social media will be affecting our lives going forward.
On the 21st October 2009Â during the Web 2.0 Summit, Bing officially confirmed partnerships with Twitter and Facebook to integrate public tweets and Facebook updates into its search results. A few hours later Google also announced a partnership with Twitter at the Web 2.0 Summit.
These two announcements have far reaching implications, the most important one is in relation to how this will affect Online Reputation Management. With the explosion of Social Media the power has gradually shifted from advertisers and brand custodians that control the message to consumers through advertising to the citizen journalist that are able to comment, talk to each other, post pictures, post videos about your brand or company that you have no control over. This has effected brands all around and created a new awareness of the importance of managing your reputation online. However the changes announced by Google and Bing have now added another layer onto this already complex area. Not only does a person have the power of changing and influencing perceptions about your brand but this will also now be available in real time on the search engines.
So think of it like this, you are on your way to a favourite restaurant and as you are about to leave you do a quick search on Google or Bing only to find that somebody posted two minutes ago about the bad service and food they have just experienced at this restaurant. Will this make you think twice about going?
The reality is as the world of digital keeps on changing so will peoples priorities on how they manage their brands. You can no longer consider reputation management as a nice to have for the future. With the real time changes in search you have to take action and be proactive otherwise it will affect your bottom-line.
