Reputation Management Online

I asked a question on the FSB ( Federation of Small Businesses ) forum, of course generating business from such a question would have been great, but I truly wanted feedback from business owners and here is what I got.  I was surprised by the response:

My question was:

Reputation management is becoming a big issue for companies and negative results moving up the search results.  I’m interested in finding out what companies would companies call Reputation management or search for, e.g. Online PR, SEO, Damage limitation and so on?

Post 1

I’d say it is called PR.  SEO is nothing like the same thing really, it’s PR plain and simple.  To be honest if someone came to me offering ‘Reputation Management’ I’d wonder whether they were on the same planet as me.  Please don’t take that personally that’s just how I see it.

Post 2

I would quite simply call it an advert.

Post 3

I am minded to agree…but… if it were not from an FSB member I would have deleted it…right now it is getting “The benefit of the doubt”..but..the forst complaint and it is gone.

Have a complaint.!

And my post was promptly removed, I just thought it was incredible how quickly my question was removed because no one understood it.  The FSB is meant to be a resource for small businesses to get useful information, I have to say, seeing how they dealt with my question I’m not surprised that the forum does not attract much traffic.  That was my second visit and will be my last.

Having a reputation management strategy going forward for businesses is going to  be critical and just as important educating businesses  about it.  Communities like the FSB should be very proactive at educating businesses as more often than not their customers understand the net more than the business owner does and the consequences of not dealing with can be catastrophic.

To often I’ve heard companies when I’ve ask how long has the negative result been on the first page of Google respond by saying at least 2 or 3 years.  What have they done about it? Nothing!  Why? Because they don’t know or have the resources to deal with it.  The big question is how much have they lost in business because of it.  Some of my clients have mention loosing at least 6 figure sums because of negative search engine results, it’s incredible.

People will save money on gas and elec, insurance, spend money on advertising or SEO what’s the point if it’s  being wasted because your business is being totally trashed by annoyed customers or in some case the competition.

Groups like the FSB should be talking about the impact of reputation management especially in the social networking world.  Ignorance is not bliss but incredibly expensive