“Freedom” is a wonderful privilege given to any Internet users. However, in some sense, it is a heavy burden since it requires a great deal of responsibility – being accountable for everything you say or do in the virtual world. Practically, people use this privilege to create their online identity and eventually strengthen it to establish an online reputation.
We learned from our Data Mining class under Mr. Ramon Duremdes Jr. that ONLINE REPUTATION is the evaluation of people about you and your web activities. It is an essential factor in many fields such as education, business, online communities and most especially social status. Nowadays, the way that your personal name appears on search engine is your new résumé, business card and handshake rolled into one. Everyone can run a background check on you through online with just a few clicks of the mouse so it’s better to manage and control every activity you have in the Web as it might affect you in the future.
“Good news spreads fast, bad news even faster.”
Effortless as it may seem but it takes years to build your online reputation and an hour is enough to ruin it. It’s absolutely simple to destroy the good online image you have developed considering how easy and accessible it is for people to spread information online. Blogs, social networking sites and forums are open for comments – whether positive or negative ones. If negative statements are found using search engines then it is likely that you’ll lose your reputation. Of course, nobody wants to lose their own reputation – neither a business man nor a student. In order to avoid this, should be frequently monitored.
As discussed by our group, health insurance, monitoring what’s your business reputation status may help you increase potential customers, gain customer loyalty, assist decision-making and develop strategy planning. One way to keep track of how well you or your company has become in the Web is by utilizing search engine and monitoring tools. According to the book Radically Transparent by Andy Beal and Dr. Jaudy Strauss, there are 3 Do-it-yourself monitoring tools. These are the following:
RSS (Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary) Reader
It is a system for delivering regularly changing web content. Many news-related sites, weblogs and other online publishers syndicate their content as an RSS Feed to whoever wants it. It is easier to use since you don’t have to visit each site regarding the topic you wanted you view. Feeds related to the keywords you entered in the search engine will automatically shows up.
E-mail Updates
Basically, you have to sign up to the company’s email newsletter. Every time there are updates about the company you’ll automatically receive an email. The only advantage disadvantage is that you’ll receive lots of emails from time to time. Aside from subscribing to the company’s email updates, you can use Google alert.
Tracking Software
It is simply a tracking tool that follows the changes happening within the company. Here are the top 5 tools we think is the most reliable to use. Let us discover each uses and what can it offer to you and your business.
Google Alert is the leading search engine worldwide. It allows you to keep track of everythingincluding your name, your work and information about your brand. Aside from its reliability, Google alert is also easy to use. You just have to input the keywords and choose what type of topics you wish to monitor (news, blogs, etc.) You could also select when to get the result and in a moment, the topic you searched for is already available in your e-mail.
Serph is social search engine which is specifically designed as a buzz tracking tool. It works by searching various online social media sites to find the latest buzz on the web. Recent buzz updates are shown first since it is automatically being sorted out and organized.
Bloglines is a web-based news aggregator for reading syndicated feeds using the RSS and Atom formats. It offers an application programming interface that can be used to search its database of feed entries, ping the service and write software that can read feeds when a blog has been updated. Lately, it has introduced to the market the use of mobile bloglines wherein searches and updates can be done using your own mobile phone. This is a handy and convenient way of tracking your company’s reputation.
Another well-known tracking tool is Technorati. Just like the others, it’s 
an internet search engine wherein it looks at the tag that is placed on the blog. Recent results are shown first since these tags help categorize each result.
BoardTracker is the leading search engine for message boards and forums and provides innovative search, analysis and social networking technology to bring people closer to the boards. A single comment on a blog or a conversation in different sites is indeed difficult to track. But with this, you can monitor what people think about your company.
Among these tools, I think the most appropriate for Philhealth to use is Google alert. It is can be used in researches regarding current health problems, market share growth and others. Since it’s a government corporation, it definitely has a hectic schedule and Google alert can save their time in doing research. Well, it can also update them about their customers’ opinions concerning their service and performance and upon knowing what others view about them, they’ll be able to create appropriate actions whenever issues popped up.
In online environments, the chance for damaging your company - including its people, brand, products or services - is eternal. Once you posted something on the web you cannot take it back. Today, people are very mindful and what others say matters the most. Since that’s the case, you should be very careful with what you’ll say about your brand and even the competitor’s brand. If it happens that you were informed that something negative is written against you in the web, do not panic. You can use the web to counter-attack these problems. Besides, you can always manage and track your reputation using these monitoring tools.
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