Maximise your efforts in your Social Media bios

Regardless of the Social Media platform, I strongly recommend that you don't leave your bio blank, or created with little thought, time and effort.

In the exercise of setting up your new online presence in each Social Media channel, take some time to consider firstly your choice of username (does it include any useful keywords for your industry for example?)

When your Twitter account shows up in the SERPs, your description will also show up in the SERPs. This makes is quite helpful when trying to be found for a keyword and/or phrase in your industry vertical.

Many Social Media channels enable you to upload images, backgrounds and customise the design. Use this important screen realestate to reinforce your brand and business logo, keep consistency with your corporate colour scheme, and include useful information such as web address, email address, physical address, and other contact details.

Now take note, if you weren't already aware, Bing and Google confirmed in December that social media positioning, and commentary has a direct impact on rankings. So let's use the value from this to aid your online marketing efforts and get it all tied in together for your business.

Competitive Intelligence For Brand Protection

Protecting your brand online is an ongoing activity. It requires hard work and due diligence. One area of concern is when others bid on your brand, or use your brand name in their ads. The current understanding of Google's policy is that it's OK to bid on a competitive brand name, but it is not OK to use in your ad. Yahoo's policy appears to be a bit stricter, and does allow for the possibility of prohibiting the bidding on a trademarked term.

Finding out who is bidding on your brand may not be hard. You can go to the search engine, type your brand name in, and then see who shows up. This, of course, assumes that they are not geo-targeting their bid to only show up in certain areas (and perhaps not the area you are checking from). This is one of the areas where tools like Hitwise and comScore are useful, as they avoid these types of issues.

http://www.comscore.com/

It's also interesting to see just how important brand name bidding is to a competitor's business:

You can see from this table that Smart Fares receives 4.78% of it's traffic from the Orbitz brand name. A deeper look shows that brand name bidding is a fundamental part of their business model:

Acting on Infringement

Direct bidding on your brand is not really something you can prevent. However, if your competitor takes the next step and starts using your brand in their ad text, that's another matter. The search engines do provide a way to address that. You can use the following links to find the Google Trademark Complaint Policy and the Yahoo Trademark Complaint Policy. Google also provides an Trademark Complaint Form.

http://www.google.com/tm_complaint_adwords.html

http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com/legal/trademarks.php

https://services.google.com/inquiry/aw_tmcomplaint

Most of the information you need to provide in the Google complaint form is pretty basic. However, if your trademark is registered, you will need to have the application or registration number which they can use for verification. You can also apply even if all you are doing is claiming use rights. However, this is a bit more difficult to prove, so be prepared for a longer wait on resolution.

Trademarks can also be on a word, design, or both. These are equally protectable. The Google form accommodates up to 10 trademarks, but Google also provides a way to submit more than 10.

Yahoo does not provide a form, but does provide an email address or a mailing address for sending in your complaint. They request information on the search term for which the complaint is related, the trademark info (much the same as Google), registration information if your trademark is registered, any evidence of consumer confusion (hmm - that Hitwise data looks pretty good for providing that), and any information on communications you have had with the advertiser.

Perhaps this goes without saying, but don't go down this path unless you really have a legitimate trademark to protect. Also, this is not an overnight process. It can take several months for you to get resolution. Just be patient. It is well worth it.

Pre-emptive action for online brand management

35 percent of the biggest companies own the negative domains COMPANYNAMEsucks.com or IhateCOMPANYNAME.com, .net, .org or similar.
This is a pre-emptive strike action for online brand management damage prevention.
FairWinds analysis on 1,058 domain names for companies on the Global 500 and Fortune 500 lists showed that of the companies surveyed, 35% own the domain name for their brand followed by the word "sucks." They include Wal-Mart Stores, Coca-Cola, Toys"R"Us, Target and Whole Foods Market, according to FairWinds. Some 45% of these domains have yet to be registered by anyone.

Many companies that own these domain names publish no content on them, but simply park and hold them, others take a further procative approach and include support and customer help details or FAQs.

Some companies have been much more aggressive than others. Xerox, for example, has bought or registered about 20 unflattering domain names, including xeroxstinks.com, xeroxcorporationsucks.com and ihatexerox.net.

In an ideal world we would never have to consider these options, but unfortunately comments on the internet last forever, particular with search engines, so many people who know how to use search engines, research a company or individual  are bound to find negative sentiments in the SERPs.