The need of reputation management in the online sphere has rapidly grown as it becomes the primary source of information for many people around the world and in your local area. Reputation can be tarnished easily and often unfairly and this can lead to damage to your brand and financially negative consequences completely out of proportion to the event.
The Problem
When damaging information is presented on the internet it can quickly snowball and impact your business. The best reputation management companies can put in place strategies and techniques that can respond to these events. This can be done by in a number of ways and will minimize or negate the impact of the damaging information that has been released.
How to Fix It
The most important part of providing the service is proactively tracking what is said about the target business on the internet. It is vital to be timely in responding to minimize damage and prevent it becoming a major issue. The two main areas that the best reputation management companies target are forcing the targeted comment, article or feedback to be ranked lower and less visible by placing positive information that is optimized to appear in search engines ahead of the items in question.
The second important area is giving the customer feedback about these negative events so that they can be acted upon through changes in business practice. This can positively impact the business and allow them to quickly become aware of problem areas and take action to rectify, explain or warn customers.
Ethics
The best reputation management companies do not resort to unethical behavior to help their clients. This is not only because it is wrong but also because it can lead to a larger problem. While some people may even view generating positive reviews and targeting keywords so negative information is harder to find it is a general and well understood practice that is entirely visible.
There are companies that will use ‘black hat’ solutions because they can be cheaper to implement allowing for higher profits in the short term. In the end the client can find their websites black listed and informal online groups targeting them because of these practices making the problem much worse.
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.
There are lots of reasons why your company might suddenly need a reputation management company. Rather than dwell on what might go wrong to cause a crisis, let’s look at how the best reputation management companies solve problems when they crop up.
Solution #1: Build
The first priority of any rep firm is going to be building your presence online before any major catastrophes before. The more solidly built your online presence, the more easily you’ll survive a few negative comments here and there. Reputation management firms, unlike SEO groups, don’t care as much about the number one spot in the rankings — they’re more concerned with how many of the rankings in the first few pages give your business a negative slant. As long as there are only a couple of negative comments in the first few pages, the likelihood that a surfer will come across something that drives them away from your company is slim.
Solution #2: Engage
Anywhere that people are talking about your business, the rep firms want at least one person there so that they can engage the chatter. Particularly if the tone turns negative, you want someone on the front lines who can turn criticism into advice for your company and simultaneously put your company’s side of the story out there, working it into the conversation, accepting accountability for actual problems and laying malicious suppositions to rest.
Solution #3 – Bury
The Internet is forever, and the last thing you need is an unscrupulous competitor or vengeful ex-employee saying untrue things about your company without anyone dealing with the problem. In a case where a ‘lone gunman’ is sniping at you, the most obvious way of minimizing his impact is to simply bury the story — create so many other high-SERP entries about your company that the negative links disappear under the pile of positive ones.
Of course, these are all clearly ‘easier said than done’ kind of tasks — but that’s why reputation management companies exist in the first place: because they provide a service that few of us could provide ourselves.
Social Websites Marketing | Kyle Johnson March 22, 2014 | 
Comments Off on Why You Should Only Use the Best Reputation Management Companies 
