To many organizations, social networking sites are their contact with the outside world. Facebook and Myspace do not represent ways to stay in touch with friends, but ways to stay in contact with clients, spread name recognition, and market products. However, businesses and organizations often make critical mistakes in the administering of these social networking sites.

These mistakes can lead to criticism in the blogosphere or to unsatisfied clients making negative posts about your company or organization elsewhere. For example: if a client complains about a product on the wall of your business’ facebook page and gets no response–he may decide that he does not like getting ignored and set up a blog all about how terrible your business is. This is a mistake that can result from under-use of a social networking site or from letting the intern do it. Social networking sites should be tools used in reputation management, not problematic sites which encourage the need for reputation management.

Many Internet users, and even those unusual few that never step foot online, have become aware of the term microblogging because of the Internet phenomenon that is Twitter. While it is certainly the most popular and renowned of all microblogging services it is surprisingly one of a few that can be used as a means to make your personal or professional voice heard over the dull roar of the masses. Microblogging can prove especially useful as part of a reputation management program because it is quick and simple.

The very essence of microblogging is that it should be simple and this is why the Twitter interface has long proven the most popular. Even now, when there are deeper options available, these are more hidden than obvious so the vast majority of people sign up with a new account by deciding on a username, adding their own name, and then starting to develop their network.

Another great benefit of Twitter is that thanks largely to its popularity it has become an extremely popular addition to other sites too. The Twitter API has been used by developers to enable users to post their own tweets and other people’s tweets onto sites like Facebook.

Extra content on social networking sites tends to mean greater credibility for the author and this means more effective reputation management online.

By now everyone and their mother has heard of the Deepwater Horizons oil spill off the coast of Louisiana. The entire thing is a mess, with everyone pointing fingers at each others. Everyone has an opinion on the issue, but we’re not going to talk about that here–my interest in bringing up the issue is to point out what British Petroleum has done to fight the negative publicity.

They have begun buying up AdWords like “oil spills” and “Gulf oil spill” in order to fight the avalanche of negative publicity that is coming their way. Apparently they have shelled out a fortune on the online reputation management campaign, too–according to this website the cost of their AdWords campaign is over $10,000 per day. This is a wise move by BP, which is being accused of things like “environmental terrorism” and the like.