When a company comes to us after the negative content or bad press has reached the top of the search engines then normally the costs incurred increase dramatically.   There are 2 main reasons:

1. By the time negative content has reached the first page of Google already, customers, suppliers and partners will have seen or been alerted to the bad press or content.
2. Like calling out a plumber in the middle of the night, when a reputation management company has to deal with a crisis then it often means a lot more work is needed and again costs more to remove the negative content.

The best way to tackle your online reputation is to take pre-emptive measures, taking a pro active approach and adding content all the time keeping your social network sites up to date and monitoring possible negative stories and threats.  It’s critical to understand what’s involved to maintain a positive business reputation online.

Companies often focus their brand efforts on customers and potential customers, ignoring other potential stakeholders who can be equally vociferous in their criticisms.

Brand promises need to apply equally: consumers, employees, suppliers and business partners. In fact depending on your industry there could be many stakeholders to consider. If you are an oil company or mineral producer, local enviromental communities can have a major impact upon your reputation. Witness the recent connection between Shell and their operations in Nigeria.

If you have a product recall, consumers will complain, but a sacked employee or unpaid supplier can be even more vehement attacking your reputation.

The problem all companies face is that stakeholder access to channels for complaint is proliferating fast – blogs, forums, social networks, twitter, and personal web projects. In the past stakeholders had to engage with journalists and persuade news organisations to cover their story. Today, they publish and you are damned.

What can you do?

• Monitor
• Work on your management processes: if you always pay your suppliers late then you are simply inviting criticism. If you sack employees unfairly, they have every right to complain.
• Investigate complaints so you can demonstrate that you are serious about being a good organisation.

I hear more and more of unscrupulous companies attacking their competitors by posting false negative content from supposedly unhappy customers.  In today’s world where more and more people using engines like google to research and find companies online it’s critical to make sure you are on top of your online reputation.
Competitors will try and beat you where ever they can and protecting your online reputation could mean your survival.  Having another company attack their competitors is not new, but how they can do it today on the internet is.  It’s very easy to get negative content about a company to the top of Google and way harder to get rid of it once it’s there.  So taking pre emptive measures is the best way to protect your business reputation online.

Unfortunately like newspapers when people read about a company they take it as fact so make sure they are reading what you want them to.