What’s amazing is how big companies still have no real understanding of reputation management on-line and how it effects them.  Here are some examples.

KFC

The Google search shows kentuckyfriedcruelty.com these kinds of search results can effect not only business reputation with customers but also shareholders.

Apple’s Iphones

This result is number 4 in Google could certainly put people off buying the Iphones.  The issue with negative results showing for your product is you never know how much it’s hurting and costing the comapny.

negative content results about iphones

Holiday Inn New York

Many hotels around the world suffer from sites like tripadvisor which normally have way more negative comments than positive ones.

Holiday Inn Hotel Reputation Online

So these are just a few quick examples of household brands who have not fully understood the need for managing the content on the first page results of search engines.  It’s no easy task and requires commitment from the company as well as the online reputation company.  Some industries naturally have a tougher job than others, take hotels for example, because of the nature of the industry they encourage 3 rd party websites to have content on them so they can make commission of bookings.  These 3rd party sites learnt very early on that customer feedback creates lots of fresh original content.  The problem created by this approach of course is more often than not people will write remarks when they have had a bad experience rather than a good one, so more often than not the content is normally negative rather than positive.

So how do you protect your brand and company reputation?

There is no quick solution to this, it’s really about creating good quality content  and keeping on top of the social network sites.  When we are creating content we put it into categories:

1. Top quality – this content is written for the main website and any press releases.
2. Middle quality – this content maybe out sourced and used for social net work sites and micro sites.
3. Lesser quality – this is used to fill the Internet with positive stories and helps push and support the top quality content.

Although we offer SEO services much of our work is creating positive content for clients and managing the whole online presence.  It is an ongoing battle making sure you keep on top of the online world, 1 or 2 articles a week just won’t do it if you have a global brand and you are going against 1000′s of people writing about you.