A website can act as a portal to your business, especially if you are an online company and rarely get customers coming into your offices. It is imperative to ensure that the impression they receive of your organisation is solid, credible and likable. An ‘about us` page is one that allows others entering your site to learn about your business and its story. This page could be the difference between a potential client deciding to use your services or bouncing off to the next site that they were considering.

PR has changed its arena and has progressed into an online format, following an exciting approach to the future of online PR. WebPR enhances brand awareness, exposure, as well as SEO efforts. The channels that are used to achieve this are online article directories, press release sites, industry related sites, online newsrooms, blogs, forums and Social Media sites (like Digg). These are the basic WebPR tools to get you started.

Online reputation management (ORM) is tracking other people’s responses to your brand, whether they be negative or positive. Whereas Web PR is making a racket, ORM is listening to the noise.

Some companies employ affiliate programs that punt their brands in opposition to their competitors, for example, through reviews on comparison shopping sites. Affiliates have no basis for preference other than that you’re paying their salary, and your competitors are not.

If you hold a prominent position in your web community, be it high up on the Google rankings or a very successful blog, it’s likely that at some point you’ll slip up. The nature of the web necessitates that scandal and mistakes can throw unprecedented attention - in the form of heavy traffic - to your (currently compromised) brand.

Andy Beal from Marketing Pilgrim cites Search Engine Land’s article that was published concerning Wired’s wiki - pointing out a loophole from which people can easily link to Wired. Danny Sullivan, who approved the post, responded to the ensuing media storm with sincerity and humility, explaining in a very transparent way exactly how the flak hit the fan.