With another sunny day promising the arrival of spring, hosts of the 2011 Greater Lansing Strategic Business Luncheon—former The Bachelor and The Bachelorette television reality stars Ed Swiderski and Jillian Harris, both recognized for their national television engagement on ABC’s wildly popular reality series—settled in to speak.

Although recognized for their fame on the two series, both Swiderksi and Harris are successful business owners and talked about Brand Reputation Management with Social Media and Technology Tools, sharing their insight and knowledge on how social media tools have grown their businesses.

As a graduate of Michigan State University and a Michigan native, Swiderski is a founding partner of the Chicago-based technology consulting firm GreenCanyon, which provides a host of services ranging from website platforms to social media management.  Harris, an interior design professional, runs her own design firm based in Vancouver, Canada where she creates custom-made 18th century dining and lounge pieces.  She has been widely successful with her talent, even lending her expertise to the popular Extreme Makeover:  Home Edition.

“Today we are both business owners,” Swiderski and Harris share, “and we are here to share our business experience with social media tools because they have played a vital role in our success.”

Polling the room level of familiarity with social media, the response was varied, with most attendees falling somewhere in the middle. Both acknowledged that their appearance on The Bachelor series gave them a crash course on social media, resulting in an effective marketing campaign for both that worked to provide essential media interaction to promote their ratings and to protect their image.

“Much like a business, we had followers who were both positive and critical,” the pair explains. “And with 30 million viewers and fans, it was essential to get in front of negative publicity and validate the positive. Having a media presence was essential; the same for a business because it is one of the most effective means of getting information out.”

Posing the question as to why brand reputation management is important, the answer is one of common sense and good business sense, because a superhighway of information allows a business to continuously monitor, enhance and meet customer needs through feedback, benchmarking tools and needs identification.

“One of the keys to a successful social media marketing plan is to figure out what works best for your company first,” Swiderski advises. “Not all social media tools are right for every business. The two most popular today are Facebook and LinkedIn, but your company may benefit more from having one or the other and a blog, or a Twitter page. It just depends on target markets, demographics and what you are trying to accomplish as far as disseminating information and/or tracking it.”

As far as determining a company’s goals with a social media plan, both Swiderski and Harris advise that it is imperative that any company be able to authenticate the product, service or consult no matter what. The big question is whether to have qualified employees to initiate and manage the social tools the company chooses to utilize, or to hire an outside contractor to implement and manage.

“The most important thing is to have someone or a team that fully understands your business and your product,” Swiderski shares. “Knowing the full spectrum of services, business philosophy and corporate culture is important because once you have your social media tools in place, you need to be able to answer to it effectively and efficiently in order to avoid any negative impacts.”

This is a great point and segues into the fact that a company policy should be in place regarding social media. “For most companies, this is a new area and one that constantly changes,” Harris says about social media and employees. “A company policy will help to provide acceptable actions as far as your employees are concerned, being sure to keep postings and information company-based, not personal. That is a potential problem that can be very damaging if the expectation is not clearly expressed and all employees are not educated.”

With these pointers and information in mind, these two share again in the same philosophy: Keep it simple in order for it to be effective and effectively managed.

And for the record, Swiderski and Harris although engaged on the reality series, did not get married for personal reasons. They remain great friends today, appearing together at select engagements.