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Even At Your Best, Reputation Management Companies Can Still Help Your Business

Lots of companies call reputation management groups because they had a disaster — an employee said something racist on the company Facebook account or your #ourcompanystories hashtag turned into a place for customers to tell horror stories about how one of their cousins found a bird’s foot in your boxed soup. But that’s kind of like looking for insurance just after you were diagnosed with cancer — a foolish use of a powerful tool.

The best time to seek out and hire the best reputation management company you can afford is when things are going well, not when they’re going south. What does a reputation management company do when you don’t have a disaster on your hands? Why, they prevent disasters, of course.

Sure, no one can keep your employees from stupidly misusing the Facebook account — but things like the #ourcompanystories debacle can be easily prevented by an alert reputation manager. Companies that look out for your reputation are experts at spotting not just active PR disasters, but potential PR disasters — the kind no amount of social media expertise can correct once they go public.

Reputation management companies come in a few different types. The lowest level types are the ones that specialize in knocking bad stories off of the news and making sure the SERPs don’t link to many pages disrespecting you or your company. These folks are nothing more than experts in ‘negative SEO’ — the art of tanking someone else’s rankings with black hat strategies. That’s not what you need; it’s reactive and it’s actively unethical.

What you want is a reputation company that will lead your company into the upcoming quarters and years by building a plan to cement your position in the marketplace and your public image. A company that will help you figure out who you appeal to and who you don’t, and work to improve your appeal to the second group. A company, in short, that will manage your reputation — not manage your reputation crises. Those are the best reputation management companies, and your company deserves one.