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- Reputation Management Tip for 2012: Brands need to tap into social media search!
- Facebook Timeline and Reputation Management
- Apple Siri gender bias or glitch?
- Google+ vs Facebook – its not over yet!
- The Ethics of Self Promotion Through Charitable Causes (A Case Study)
- Google scraps sidewiki – will you miss it?
- Facebook, the trust factor
- BlackBerry Blackout- RIM’s Reputation Takes another Hit
Posts Tagged ‘Online Branding’
Why Reputation Management is not Reputation Laundering!
August 11, 2010 | 
Author Reading this guardian article – ‘PR firms make London world capital of reputation laundering’ is alarming but then I have a few thoughts about this. For one I agree, PR companies may unscrupulously try to airbrush problems of their clients in every way possible, this is true. But, the one glaring thing about this exposé is that no country known the world over for human rights violation is going to get a ‘squeaky clean’ reputation handed over on a platter. No way!
This why we say – ‘PR is out and Reputation Management is in!’ Reputation management is not about purposely going about altering the reputation, or to put it in a ‘newsy’ way, doing reputation laundering for clients. We attempt and succeed by being an on-going process and the efforts are put in to highlight the positive changes being made by the client.
Reputation management is about pushing negatives down the search engines and is never about erasing incriminating results. Any amount of re-branding is half-done without reputation management backing it all up regularly. We’re here to help tide over the bad rep, albeit in a slow and steady manner. And we believe everyone including individuals, companies or countries, for that matter, need another shot at rebuilding reputation.
I’m sure Germany agrees, though some tags are branded into a country’s skin in the collective psyche of the rest of the world. So, yes African regimes and autocratic governments or even China, Russia, India, Pakistan or even US or UK have the right to re-brand themselves through PR, but it will be reputation management that will finally succeed!
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Do the big companies understand online reputation
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:
- Top quality – this content is written for the main website and any press releases.
- Middle quality – this content maybe out sourced and used for social net work sites and micro sites.
- 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.
Online Reputation Management
The process of online branding the business, person, company or available service is called as the Online reputation management (ORM). ORM is typically considered as a coloration of marketing (including SEO, SEM) and public relationship. The online reputation management industry is becoming the hot one. Multiple companies are offering this service or starting the newly branded companies to focus on this. The reason for ORM industry fast growth is because of the huge need of protect the business and individuals online. The rapid pace of growth on the internet businesses well as the consumer introduction and the user generated media caused to increase the need of ORM. Mostly user generated media would be the things like blogs, forums, book marking sites, social networking sites etc. These kind of sites make more influence on decissions in online purchases. These kind of social media websites can be used to a company’s reputation growth or can be used to destroy a company’s reputation. That the main reason of Online Reputation Management industry growth.
Overall Consumer Generated Media (CGM) Tips
You have to investigate the fact before you plunge into action because you have to sure if this is not your competitor’s rumor to harm your business. Take a high note of the reality and be honest to counter them. Put down an explanation to justify your action and how you rectified it. Rally friends, clients, peers and utilize your allies. Don’t create new profile to support you position you are likely to be caught.
How to conduct outreach to CGM
Task someone in-house to participate in any applicable forums as user. This will help minimize the impact if there is a regular contributor from your organization. Try sponsoring most forums and build alliances/partnerships with most vocal members.
Forums, user groups and message boards
When trouble strikes, you can minimize the impact if someone from your organization is a regular contributor and can voice your company’s side of the story on the forum. Put yourself consider sponsoring most influential forums Less likely to see sustained criticism if you are a supporter/sponsor.
You build alliances/partnerships with most vocal members.
Blogs
Identify the author of the blog, and read their profile and try to see who they are and what they do and about their work. Just check their author’s previous work to get a feel for his work. Understand the threat level – How respected are they. What is their audience reach
If a blog post is factually incorrect:
Ask the author to remove the same providing him with enough supporting evidence. Put yourself on the forum to keep the blogger updated about future news. If it still does not works, the last thing you can do is send your side of the story and explain the situation. You can even add comments to the post and be open to acknowledge email questions.
Balancing Negative CGM
If the article is true, do not try to ignore or hide the issue. But instead be a part of the discussion. Add response to the website and post your statement like what you wish to do. Try to engage the expertise of CGM communication expert.
On the other hand if it’s not true, you can politely request for the removal of the blog owner remove or retract. You can even try for legal opinion and ask the blogger to suffice correct information and request them to put your information. Add statement to your website with a search engine optimization consultant to ensure all content has been optimized and will achieve top search rankings