How to Maintain Your Reputation in the Digital Age
This blog entry was posted on November 21, 2009.
Complaint sites like RipOffReport.com or ComplaintsBoard.com have very high rankings. This means complaints placed on these sites come up very high in Google searches for your company name, your brand or even the names of your key executives.
Upset customers have easy access to review sites or can set up a blog for free and then vent to the world. The big problem is that these complaints stay on the Internet forever. Sometime legal action can get these removed, but this is difficult. So what should you do?
Monitoring: Every business should set-up tracking systems that will report back to them anytime their name is used anywhere on the Internet. Google Alerts is a free tool that will send you an email any time they detect something new being said about you or any phrase you specify.
Responding: Start by taking a little time to watch and gauge the reaction. Criticism of your product should not bring a strong response or an argument. This is like trying to put out a fire with gasoline. Instead, be concerned, be helpful and try and resolve the issue. Try and turn the situation around, perhaps turning someone who is a foe into an advocate.
Repair: You may not be able to erase what has been said, but you can take steps to minimize the damage. The goal should is to push the damaging statements down in the organic search results and replace these with positive information. Don’t begin until after you done damage control and stopped new negative things from being said.
The key is to be focused on a specific phrase such as your company name. You will want to launch a series of articles, blogs, press releases, videos on YouTube and even possibly an article in Wikipedia. Use the exact phrase you want prominently in the title of each and in the body of the text, the search engines generally give these good rankings.
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