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Tripp Donnelly, CEO of RepEquity, and Huard Smith, President of RepEquity are candidates for a panel at next year’s SXSW Interactive Conference, which is being held March 9-18 in Austin, Texas. Voting is now open for the panel – we would appreciate your vote. You can read the full description below, thanks!

The Indestructible Brand: How to Bulletproof Your Brand Online

A brand, whether personal or corporate, is only as good as the reputation behind it. We’ve all seen the headlines: United Breaks Guitars. Netflix’s price increase. Sony’s PlayStation hacking scandal. A Congressman’s unsolicited yet salacious Tweets. Each of these brands suffered major damage in a very short time because of the amazing power of digital channels and social networks.

And yet while we all know about the immediacy with which the online world can damage a brand and reputation, we don’t recognize the power of using these same digital platforms to build and protect our brands before, during and after such inevitable events. Even if such events never happen, these digital platforms have become the best way to define and nurture a brand image and reputation.

This panel, with examples from client experiences, makes the case that a digitally well-built brand, properly harnessing search, social media and mobile-Web digital experiences, is the key to withstanding any reputational damage that may come its way. The speakers will show how to construct a corporate or personal brand that not only weathers any challenge, but actively engages audiences and customers with content you want them to see, wherever they may roam online.

This presentation will distill the challenges faced by brands in a world that is increasingly being defined by Google, Apple, and Facebook, identify the three major areas in which brands need to work to “bullet-proof” themselves (search, social media, and mobile-Web digital experiences), and provide practical takeaways in each area based on real-world results that the panel audience can use with their own personal or corporate brands.

There is no silver bullet to be found. No shortcuts. No one-time fix that will forever protect your brand and reputation online. The steps to take, while straightforward, are time-consuming and continuously required. Nothing worthwhile is easy! But doing them will not only strengthen your brand and reputation online, they will even shift your and your entire organization’s perspective on digital media, how to practically use it, and how it is helping people and companies succeed while others stumble.

Click Here to vote for this SXSW panel!

Earlier this year, All Facebook and a handful of other tech blogs posted statistics showing that the average Facebook user doesn’t know 20 percent of the people listed as friends on the site. In one study, conducted by GoodMobilePhones, 54 percent of people said they stayed friends with strangers out of politeness and 34 percent reported that they remained friends with strangers to appear more popular on the social networking site. According to Facebook, the average user has 130 friends, meaning that they’ve never personally met 26 of their online “friends.”

Personally, I don’t agree with these statistics. I haven’t actually scrolled through my list of friends to see who I do and do not actually know, but I would say that it’s much lower. I would guess that less than 5 percent of my Facebook friends are complete strangers. If the survey reported that the average user has only met 20 percent of their Facebook friends once, I can certainly agree with that. How many times have you attended a networking happy hour or football tailgate and found friend requests waiting the next time you logged on? These are people you’ve personally spoken to and spent some time with. Over the years, though, I’ve made a habit of only accepting friend requests from people I know personally. Sure, some people may have sneaked through, but that’s my general rule for approving friends.

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Last Wednesday I had the privilege of attending my first industry networking event here in DC. Months ago, when moving to the city was just a hope and a dream, I began following the Twitter account of the Social Media Club’s DC chapter. The group holds a variety of events, from panels on corporate blogging to happy hours – something for everyone! Wednesday’s event was the group’s Summer Social, hosted at the chic restaurant and chocolate shop Co Co. Sala. For this month’s event, SMCDC had partnered with ScoutMobDC, a new website sharing local deals through their mobile app. [The great thing about ScoutMob is that you don’t have to pay beforehand… and there’s nothing to print!] There were stick-on mustaches and watermelon juleps abound (and, of course, I got to talk to some pretty neat people).

I was honored to meet SMCDC President and UNC alumna Rachel King, who was so kind to stop and speak to fellow Tar Heels for a few moments. We talked a little about what we did and how we got to our current positions. Even though Rachel is several years older than me, it was nice to hear that we shared the same reaction to our jobs: “They’re paying me to do this?! But it’s so fun!” Continue Reading…

A lot of our work at RepEquity consists of jumping back and forth between clients and accounts all day. We are constantly working on a variety of both short-term and long-term projects and, frankly, it can be a lot to keep up with. Luckily, there are a vast number of websites and products available online today to help with multitasking. Below, I highlight my top 5.

Hootsuite – The Hootsuite platform is opened the minute I turn on my computer and stays up right until the minute I leave. As the employee responsible for RepEquity’s postings on Facebook and Twitter, I can’t imagine trying to manage our social media presence without Hootsuite. The dashboard goes far beyond scheduling posts and shortening links though (even though both of those features are immensely helpful). The most useful thing about Hootsuite in our case is the separation of different streams to help us filter the huge amount of content being shared by the 4,000+ accounts we follow. If you were to pull up our account on Hootsuite, you would see four streams: “influencers”, mentions, sent tweets and “team” (I’ll discuss “influencers” and “team” farther down). The ability to have multiple team members access the account is also very helpful, as are the analytics and reporting features. Continue Reading…

We’re thrilled to announce that RepEquity has acquired, and merged with, Virilion – an award-winning digital agency. The newly created company combines the strengths of both firms to provide our clients with a full suite of services; we’re now able to deliver the science of SEO and reputation management, alongside the art of social media and world-class creative.

We now cover the four fundamental building blocks of any online presence:

We’ve identified what is essentially a life cycle; reputation affects search, which drives engagement, which inspires action… which, in turn, feeds back into reputation. The addition of Virilion’s extraordinary creative and development services allow us to influence the ‘engagement’ and ‘action’ quadrants by offering our clients design options that are fully fleshed-out to include multimedia, games, and more.

Both companies are excited to begin a new era – and we’ll continue to work to define the frontier of search and social media optimization in 2011.