Online Reputation Management

Jon Kaufman of Zog Media explains what companies and politicians can do to manage their reputations online.

Transcript:

Ted Simons:
Companies and politicians want you to find their websites but there's a lot of information on the internet they'd prefer never to be found. Here to talk about the management of online reputations is Jon Kaufman, senior vice president of Zog Media, a Scottsdale-based search engine optimization company. Good to see you here.

Jon Kaufman:
Thanks for having me.

Ted Simons:
Search engine optimization, what's what does that mean?

Jon Kaufman:
It's the ability to influence buyers, individuals, people that are brand enthusiasts for what you are trying to do when they are going to search for you online. And the ability to create power and influence for the influencers. Google is one of the biggest influencers online and we do, we influence the influencers.

Ted Simons:
But do you do that by, what, accenting some things? Maybe not accenting other things? How does that work?

Jon Kaufman:
Absolutely. We work to drive traffic up that is beneficial to the corporation, to the individual, to the politician perhaps. At the same time leveraging other means and other technologies based on our history and our experience to drive down maybe content that's not so positive for the person or the industry.

Ted Simons:
So if I am a politician --

Jon Kaufman:
Sure.

Ted Simons:
And I have got all sorts of things out there I wanted to you see because I want to you vote for me and there's a website, and I -- Ted Simons's website, you have got a way to make sure that website doesn't pop up on the first half dozen screens?


Jon Kaufman:
Absolutely. This team has pioneered search. We have been in business over 10 years. Our founder invented search marketing. We suppress that downward while promoting the ideas or agendas or brands of individuals, corporations, politicians who want to be found.

Ted Simons:
Without giving away company secrets here, how do you do that?

Jon Kaufman:
There's many different tools. Obviously, social media is the big thing right now. We can use social media but really it is proprietary technologies developed to listen to the internet, listen to people out there, see who's talking, and then interject a lot of different experiences and, you know, technical coding to raise the good stuff and lower the stuff that we don't want to be found.

Ted Simons:
We had a Congressional candidate here in this current election that had some issues with previous associations with a somewhat tawdry website. That has made the headlines. I this the kind of thing where you can and could have suppressed the tawdry stuff? Is that possible to do something like that?

Jon Kaufman:
That's a great question and yes, we can. We can suppress the things that that individual may not want to see while raising the profile of other individuals that may be in the race. Steve is a great example because Steve is actually tapped into digital marketing and digital media since that piece of information came out a couple weeks ago. And he's really leveraged into the natural search engine optimization and a combination of other efforts to really boost his, you know, awareness. And he's done great job. He's Arizona Capital Times says he's raising the top.

Ted Simons:
We should mention Ben Quayles is the guy I was talking about. The tawdry -- anyway. Politicians, corporations, individuals, is there a different dynamic there as far as how you do business?

Jon Kaufman:
You know, there is. Certainly there are different ways we go about interacting with these different segments. Corporations have a lot of, have a greater sphere of influence in terms of their brand and their products. You are talking about a bottom line. When you are talking about individuals, we may help certain individuals try and suppress things they don't want to find or help them with privacy. Politicians, there are certainly, their product is votes. So there's a different way to go about it and, you know, definitely it requires different tools, different technologies. But again we have been doing this since the beginning of search marketing and search marketing.

Ted Simons:
Back to the politician. I find this fascinating with the politicians because not only do you have politicians that want to see the "Ia great" website on the list and the "You stink" website way down there but can do you something with your opponents? If the opponent is running a bunch of stuff you don't want voters necessarily to see on that first couple of pages of a search, can you suppress that?

Jon Kaufman:
Absolutely. It's all about building content around issues, ideas, products, or the individual. It's shocking to me that a lot of the policy figures, a lot of elections going on right now don't have a very broad dynamic in search marketing. So I can actually tap into when someone searches for a candidate A, and drive them through content over to candidate B so through different mediums and different places on the net.

Ted Simons:
But is there a threat of just clogging everything? So much stuff out there, by way of moving from A to B you have clogged things so much people just say I am not even interested at all?

Jon Kaufman:
It has to be seamless. If I go out looking for candidate A but there's some information that has been provided about candidate A that I may not like, I sure better may sure my candidate, candidate B, has information around that through the search engines or social media to be found. That's kind of, I don't know if that answered your question.


Ted Simons:
I am trying to figure out whether or not the information super highway is going to get clogged with stuff trying to get people to go in different directions as 07 possessed to what they are really looking for.

Jon Kaufman:
That's the sphere of influence. It's influence control and power in search marketing and it's the ability to keep it so it's not clogged so seamless and directing one person, you know, very, without effort, from one place to another without them knowing they have gone there. Influencing the buyer.

Ted Simons:
I got you. How has social, the social websites, the Facebooks and all these sorts of things, have they changed the playing field as far as this is concerned?

Jon Kaufman:
Absolutely. We saw that with the last presidential election but that's only a piece of the puzzle. Utilizing Facebook which a lot of the candidates have done a great job with, Twitter, YouTube, Flikker, that's just a piece of what we call a digital program, a digital asset program. The leverages and the links between all of those different segments that really make a difference in the overall online picture of what you are trying to do and who you are trying to influence.

Ted Simons:
Last question, I can see folks hearing about this and saying, this sounds like misinformation. This sounds like a defendant use, slight of hand. How would you respond to that?

Jon Kaufman:
You know, we don't necessarily suppress information. We don't get rid of information necessarily. We create content that's positive around different images, different stories, different agendas, different brands, and that boosts a lots of positive content that happens to just push the bad stuff out of the way. We don't look at it as we are taking a lot of bad stuff and throwing it away and hiding information from the public. The information is still out there. We are just taking some good information, some true information, and we are putting that in the place where people can really find it and make a decision based on that.

Ted Simons:
All right. Very good. Thanks for joining us. We appreciate it.

Jon Kaufman:
Thanks very much.