Paul Harrison recently spoke at Beament Leslie Thomas’ breakfast seminar about “Employer Reputation 2.0″. You can see key takeaways from this seminar here, as Paul discusses with BLT’s Don Leslie about how brands are being defined in the social space.

You can also view slides from the presentation here on Slideshare.

This is an enlightening presentation for anyone who is involved in social networking by Paul Adams, a UX researcher from Google.

Probably most relevant for someone who’s daily actions can be fairly consistently tracked on Facebook, Foursquare and Twitter and particularly those who want to keep their personal and professional lives separate online.

And while we are on the topic of social profiles, another great post you might like to check out is about knowing and maintaining your own social footprint effectively from Michelle Prak here.

Here’s my (collectors?!) jar of Vegemite’s iSnack2.0 which I couldn’t help buy when I saw it at Foodland (at a significant discount) yesterday.

And there’s no danger of this jar ever being opened given my family made their own decision on an appropriate name based on their taste test of the original Name Me jar:

But seriously, Kraft has had to respond to claims from right around the world that the Vegemite iSnack2.0 naming debacle was a publicity stunt and publicly deny it, yet the latest twist that the new, new name - Cheesybite - was registered by Pizza Hut in 2006 as outlined in this article from the Sydney Morning Herald makes it even harder to believe.

There are those who believe it was a genuine mistake like Tony Richardson on the Crikey blog and here’s an interesting summary from Sheldon Nesdale as to why he believes it could never have been planned.

I’m more interested what impact this has had on the Vegemite brand and how effectively they’ve managed their brand’s reputation as is Professor Kenneth Miller from University of Technology Sydney’s marketing school in this interview with ABC Online.

“There’s potential to do significant brand damage to Vegemite and Kraft because people are talking about it and they’re not talking about how wonderful Kraft is,” he said.

“They’re not talking about how wonderful the product is - the former iSnack 2.0 - they’re talking about things that will damage the brand.

I almost think this marks a watershed moment in our marketing history when 2.0 comes into the mainstream vernacular - many who’d never heard of Web2.0 certainly do now, but at what cost to our beloved Vegemite?

Here are my picks of the best reads last week about things you should consider if you are responsible for your brand’s reputation online.

Please note: A big hat tip to Gavin Heaton (or @servantofchaos) who provided the insipration for this post. His weekly “5 must read posts from last week” are great reading which is probably why, totally unwittingly when I posted this last night I managed to completely (almost) plagiarise his blog post title - funnily enough, that being the topic one of the must-read posts he links to on an earlier list.

1. How brands should manage their reputation online

Some of the biggest names in social media gathered together at Blogworld expo last week. This post covers highlights from one of the panel sessions including some level headed advice from Amber Nasland at monitoring specialists, Radian6 such as “social media didn’t invent criticism” and that organisations should have emergency plans in place (Vegemite’s iSnack 2.0 leaps to my mind here).

2. The Top 10 free tools for monitoring your brand’s reputation

One of the most important things to do if you are responsible for your brand’s reputation online is to know what people are saying about you and this article reviews some of the easily accessible, free tools to listen to online conversations.

We must remember that conversations are being held on the web with or without our consent. That means we can choose whether to be observers, participants or outcasts

3. Top 5 Twitter Trends to watch right now

Once you start monitoring conversations going on about you / your brand / your organisation you’ll realise quickly that many of these are taking place on Twitter.

Here’s a great article that includes insights about Twitter trends from blogger, author and entrepreneur Guy Kawasaki as well as PR2.0 guru Brian Solis.5.

4. Managing your reputation through search results

This post from the Google blog has some tips on what to do when you aren’t that happy with what you find when you type your company’s name into Google. These include thinking twice before you publishing anything online and if there’s something you don’t like - contact the source of the information (and there are some tips on how to do this) as well as proactively publishing positive information.

5. Damage Control: Social Media Reversals

Renowned web strategist Jeremiah Owyang identifies and analayses three case studies in this post looking at how organisations should respond to a social media crisis: “assert themselves and be proactive - even during a crises”.

Brian Solis on his PR2.0 blog has collated and published this amazing list of the top 100 ways you can use Twitter.

Twitter Client Market Share

1. Web,40.945%
2. API,11.6418% (custom applications, scripts or bots)
3. TweetDeck,6.635%
4. UberTwitter,4.288%
5. twitterfeed,3.9538%
6. txt,3.9254%
7. mobile web,3.567%
8. TwitterFon,2.4622%
9. Tweetie,2.1434%
10. TwitterFox,1.3588%
11. Echofon,1.3356%
12. Twitterrific,1.2322%
13. twidroid,0.886%
14. twhirl,0.8756%
15. movatwitter,0.8398%
16. TwitterBerry,0.835%
17. TwitPic,0.7806%
18. Seesmic,0.5524%
19. Tween,0.5414%
20. HootSuite,0.5258%
21. Power Twitter,0.3556%
22. Twit,0.3358%
23. gmedtwitpost,0.3188%
24. Snaptu,0.3018%
25. Twittelator,0.3%
26. POLLpigeon,0.2868%
27. FriendFeed,0.275%
28. P3:PeraPeraPrv,0.229%
29. DestroyTwitter,0.2188%
30. Perl Net::Twitter,0.2154%
31. Ping.fm,0.2128%
32. LOL quiz,0.1792%
33. TwitterGadget,0.1758%
34. Facebook,0.1722%
35. Twitter Tools,0.1558%
36. Tumblr,0.144%
37. RSS2Twitter,0.1412%
38. Sidekick,0.1386%
39. twitRobot,0.1338%
40. Google,0.1326%
41. dabr,0.1304%
42. CoTweet,0.129%
43. Blip.fm,0.1276%
44. Fun140,0.1274%
45. Gravity,0.1264%
46. SocialScope,0.1116%
47. Tweed,0.1074%
48. YoruFukurou,0.1064%
49. Mobile Tweete,0.106%
50. BlogTalkRadio,0.106%
51. WP to Twitter,0.1058%
52. bit.ly,0.0962%
53. iTweet,0.0914%
54. PockeTwit,0.091%
55. Tweetbots,0.0902%
56. PhotoShare,0.0862%
57. TwitterRide,0.0854%
58. NatsuLiphone,0.0794%
59. Mobster World,0.0784%
60. SimplyTweet,0.0672%
61. TinyTwitter,0.0664%
62. Digsby,0.0642%
63. Twitter4J,0.0614%
64. Reuters.com,0.0608%
65. Ustream,0.0606%
66. Tweets60,0.0584%
67. Movatter,0.0572%
68. MySpace,0.0568%
69. twibble,0.0562%
70. TwitZap,0.0526%
71. Twitter4R,0.0518%
72. Twaitter,0.0484%
73. Twitterizer,0.048%
74. Nambu,0.0464%
75. TwitterBar,0.0426%
76. Twikini,0.0412%
77. Epic Pet Wars,0.0386%
78. Twitme for WordPress,0.0368%
79. Photomemo,0.0356%
80. Mixero,0.0356%
81. yoono,0.0332%
82. Netvibes,0.0328%
83. TwitBin,0.0326%
84. Flock,0.0316%
85. Twidget,0.0312%
86. Spaz,0.031%
87. WordTwit,0.0308%
88. Twitterena,0.0304%
89. Post to Twitter,0.0298%
90. 140 Mafia,0.0298%
91. TweetSG,0.0292%
92. Fantasy Sports,0.0292%
93. Gwibber,0.0276%
94. TwiXtreme,0.0276%
95. Posterous,0.0274%
96. m.slandr.net,0.0272%
97. TwitKit,0.0264%
98. Twitter Opera widget,0.0264%
99. Tweet-U-Later,0.0264%
100. Twibbon,0.026%
101. Splitweet,0.026%
102. schuelerVZ,0.026%
103. ShareThis.com,0.0258%
104. TwitterMail,0.0256%
105. twittai,0.0252%
106. Identica,0.0236%
107. Adium,0.0228%
108. Brightkite,0.0224%
109. モバツイッター,0.0224%
110. Stickam,0.0218%
111. HTC Peep,0.0218%
112. BeTwittered,0.021%
113. TweetLeads,0.021%
114. Adjix,0.0208%
115. Twitstat Mobile,0.02%
116. TwitterIrcGateway,0.0198%
117. Viigo,0.0188%
118. EventBox,0.0186%
119. TweetGenius,0.0184%
120. twitthat,0.0184%
121. blu,0.017%
122. TwInbox,0.0168%
123. Matt,0.0166%
124. TweetPhoto,0.0166%
125. buzztap,0.0166%
126. TweetGrid,0.016%
127. Bird Feeder,0.0158%
128. JTwitter,0.0158%
129. LiveTweeter,0.0156%
130. TwitThis,0.0152%
131. TypePad,0.0152%
132. Spymaster,0.0152%
133. Flickr,0.0152%

Mind boggling really isn’t it? (More on that later…)

And what is the best one? Is it simply the one used by the most people? Obviously it depends on for what purpose you are using it for, those just keeping in touch with friends will have far different requirements than those actively monitoring their brand’s reputation.

However, I’d be interested to know if you have a favourite Twitter application you use all the time?

My personal experience is that I swap and change all the time between a few different applications, but having said that I’m not surprised really…. as a total aside (read: stop reading here if you are just interested in the Twitter story), someone asked me the other day which arm I put first into the armhole when putting on a jacket - apparently it has something to do with which side of your brain is dominant and makes a huge difference if you ever have a stroke - and, I realised I use both…but I’m still not sure what that means if I do have a stroke? Best not to think about that…

But it does reminds me of a really interesting little test we posted ages ago which determines which side of your brain you think with: Creative or Practical - here’s the link to the old post - have a go it is pretty cool. And yes, in case you were wondering she turns a different way everytime I look at her…now my mind is truly boggled.