Reputation Professor, LLC - Online Reputation Management

Is negative information showing for your Company search results?
Reputation Professor creates management free sales and lead generation systems employing Online Reputation Management techniques.

by Jak Smith

It has become common practice for people to surf the web for news and information about people, places and companies. Researching new products and services is commonplace. It is expected that a prospective employer will conduct a thorough online search of any serious candidates for employment. Google has become the online manifestation of Orwell’s imagined “Big Brother”. If the algorithm has dealt you a bad hand, it is best you learn how to confront it rather than hoping it will disappear by itself.

As a service to the companies and individuals for whom a search yields negative results, or may suffer from this precarious condition in the future, we offer insights into the world of online reputation management.

You are Not Alone

With the advent of bloggers, RSS feeds and web sites, anyone can define a person’s or company’s identity and challenge a website’s reputation and integrity. The rise and expansion of consumer generated media offers the public an opportunity to express their views. And this is being done at an unprecedented rate. People are expressing their views unabashedly, often with no regard for the consequences of what they are writing, and with little for concern for the veracity of their comments.

The more a product, brand or company is exposed to public attention and scrutiny, the greater the likelihood that someone will want to challenge its reputation. This can include dissatisfied clients, customers and competitors, who may have legitimate complaints or rumor mongers and vindictive web site wizards, whose sole purpose is to challenge another website’s integrity. For example, 29 of the Fortune 100 Companies have at least one negative postings when “Googled”. These postings range from bad business practices and discrimination, to accusations that companies are connected to paramilitary death squads.

Negative postings are not only surfacing on large or even medium corporate search results. Stories, rumors and press accounts that date back a decade or more are also traumatizing ordinary people. Seemingly innocent pranks and mischievous adventures that college students may have engaged in, have appeared in top positions of search engine listings seriously damaging their reputations, careers and lives.

You Can Take Charge

Combating the tribulations of a negative Google listing means taking charge of the search results that come up for your name, company, etc. If left to the vagaries of the search engine’s algorithm, you can easily fall victim to the whims of arbitrary conjecture, opinions and rumors. When you decide to take charge, you need to confront the search engines in a proactive and forthright manner, rather than adopting a passive or defensive posture.

Online reputation and search engine optimization professionals will tell you that it is no longer an issue of “if” you should be managing your online reputation, the question is “how” you should be managing it. And don’t assume that just because you are happy with the results of your own personal search today, that situation will continue indefinitely. Being on guard means:

1. knowing that the situation can turn against you and
2. having the ammunition to combat the rumor mongers when they strike.

Like the proverbial lawyer who, when deciding to represent himself, discovers has a fool for a client, most people, even those who are comfortable in the world of the internet, are not competent to deal with the major league players when it comes to online reputation management. When you are up against a challenger that has Google on its team, you don’t want your teammates to be from the minor league, even if they can boast a relatively high batting score.

Working With a Pro

Successful ORM, focuses on having sufficient links to blogs, articles, press stories and allied web sites so that when a search is run for your name, all of the material you have positioned appears. The problem starts when a stubbornly entrenched negative press story or blog, appears on your page, and it overpowers all of the listings you have put in place, how do you dislodge it?

Measuring Success

Regardless of who actually manages your ORM campaign, what is required is distribution of positive content and strategic participation in online discussions which results in the creation and posting of positive content on your site. A successful search engine reputation management program ensures that those looking for information about you or your company will see favorable content wherever your name or your company appears as search results.

Online Reputation Management involves both search engine marketing and search engine optimization. Unhappy consumers, political groups, competitors and disgruntled employees may have an interest in posting negative information about you and your company. We take control of search engine results employing optimization as well as marketing to manage and control damaged corporate identities and reputations on the internet.

Online Reputation Management involves both marketing and public relations along with search engine marketing. Visibility and high search engine indexing with good publicity which displaces negative publicity is the goal. This results in a increase in positive web presence, helping you own top spots in search engine rankings. Online Reputation Management enables you to protect and manage your reputation becoming actively involved in the outcome of search engine results.

Online reputation management has become the most important aspect of on-line marketing. You should incorporate this into your Internet marketing strategy today by doing the things that I will suggest in this article. If you are already doing these things, let this serve as a gentle reminder.

The fact is, anyone can go online and post anything about you or your company on any forum, blog, or user-generated website. They can even do this anonymously and you’ll never know who is trying to ruin your reputation. The statements these anonymous posters make about you or your small business do not even need to be true. A lot of times, one comment can do more damage than you could ever do yourself through lousy customer service.

Let these businesses serve as your example:

• A private physician gave advice that a patient didn’t like; the patient, a blogger, posted some negative things about the physician on her blog. Since the physician did not have a website or blog of her own, the only results for that doctor when a potential patient conducted an on-line search were the blogger’s negative comments.
• A construction contractor fired an employee and in retaliation the former employee posted some comments on a popular forum online. Even though the company had a website, they had not done a lot of Internet marketing and the negative comments outranked the construction company’s own website.
• A small business owner who also performs charity work through a separate organization was attacked through an anonymous blog on a free blog host by a former customer who began posting negative comments about the charitable organization as well as the business owner.

These types of attacks online are becoming more and more prevalent. The Internet gives the illusion that there are no consequences for comments that are not true. Off line, such comments would be considered slander, but online they can be made anonymously and influence potential customers to stay away from your small business based on nothing but hearsay. Once the damage is done, it is extremely hard to reverse.

The good news is you can manage your on-line reputation through an on-line marketing strategy that involves proven techniques that are not expensive or do not take up too much time. You can do it yourself or hire an Internet marketing consultant to do it for you. Either way, on-line reputation management is an absolute must for every small business owner, even if you do not have a website or do any business online. Here are the essential tools for your on-line reputation management strategy:

• A domain name with your personal and/or company name in it
• Your own small business website
• Article marketing
• A blog that you post to every day
• Social networking and social bookmarking on a regular basis
• Forum posting and blog comments on blogs related to your business
• On-line press releases
• Building in-bound links to your website from quality, highly respected websites within your industry

Online reputation management is all about marketing your business online in a positive way without tearing others down. You don’t have to make others look bad in order to make yourself look good. Online marketing strategies are an extension of, and should be approached as an addition to, traditional marketing approaches. The first step to your on-line reputation management strategy should be to sign up for Google Alerts using your personal name, your company name, and your website URL as keywords. That way you can see when people are talking about you online and head off any repercussions from erroneous or negative comments before they get too entrenched in the search engine databases.

The essence of all on-line reputation management is ensuring that more positive reflections of your business appear in as many places online as possible, as often as possible, and to keep fresh content alive about you and your business that creates a positive impression. By maintaining a consistent approach to online marketing, you can ensure that your reputation online is unmarred by negativity and reputation-killing talk. For more information about on-line reputation management, consult an Internet marketing consultant with a background in managing reputations today.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Entrepreneur and outdoor photography adventurer Caroline Melberg is President and CEO of Small Business Mavericks, a division of Melberg Marketing. She has over 20 years of experience creating marketing communications materials and writing copy for some of the largest and most successful companies in the world. Her small business columns are syndicated online, and she publishes the popular e-Zine “Maverick Internet Marketing Secrets.” Learn insider Maverick Marketing secrets you can use immediately to find new customers and increase your sales.