Posts Tagged ‘Online Reputation Management’

Trouble at Twinings as Employees Treated Like Mugs

There’s been trouble brewing for a while now at Twinings as the company announced last November that they were shifting 263 jobs to Poland from their UK-based North Shields plant by September 2011.

Twinings have been selling their wares to the world for over 300 years and pride themselves as being one of the first companies to introduce tea to the British public and being recognised globally as a quality brand. But with the cuts at North Shields and another 129 at their Andover facility, employees are making a lot of noise and causing their bosses a lot of public image concerns.

Twinings are in the spotlight again as they surprise staff by informing them that they’ll be tasked with training their Polish replacements prior to being laid off. Neutral observers will be wondering how these Polish counterparts will blend in, as there’s expected to be a lot of animosity towards them, even if unjustified, and is an entirely new kettle of fish.

The British Tea company sanctioned the move in a bid to optimise the company’s efficiency, but has served far more to damage the company’s reputation and serve as an overall hinderance as top bosses find themself in hot water over their latest decision. Cases like this used to be handled by traditional public relations companies, but with the long-term damage to Twinings‘ image being apparent on ever-present internet sites – the need for online reputation management speaks for itself.

With information being so readily available online from news reports to online bloggers looking to let off a bit of steam, stories like this don’t “go away” just because it’s no longer in the paper or on the TV.  I guess it all boils down to how important you feel your image is to your continued success, especially in today’s rocky economic climate.

Don’t let yourself get scolded by bad press.

Reputation management- A useful way to track the competition

Back in the day, if somebody wanted to bad-mouth your business, they had to risk their own reputation to do so. Nowadays they can do it with the aid of thousands of social networking and blog sites with complete animosity. If someone posts a false or a malicious comment or blog, they can go without being noticed – being one among the numerous sites online. So, it’s tempting and easy to be malicious.

Reputation management is more than a service simply for those people who have had negative content levelled against them online. ORM is predominantly for protecting your reputation and keeping it consistent for the entire duration. By paying attention to your customers, you can ensure that you are always offering them what they want, and can adapt your advertising as to attract other potential customers to your custom.

When you open the social media floodgates, you create a channel for people to come and ask help for their various issues. So they may either ask you questions about the various products or services, or it might be a disgruntled customer who is posting negative comments about you, because they are dissatisfied about your product or service.

It is important to monitor your business online:

  • If you need to take action against the negative comments you need to know exactly where and why they exist.
  • Find out what people are saying about others’ brands so that you can make sure your business is ahead in the competition.
  • Know the changing tastes of the people, so that you can adapt your advertising and products range accordingly.
  • It is essential to know of any many gaps in the market, so you can fill them before your competitors do.
  • Know what people type into search engines in order to find your products, so that you can adapt your website to include the right keywords.

If you cannot monitor your brand on your own, then you need to make use of the services of an online reputation management firm like Reputation Management For.com, who will do the trick of helping you build, regain and protect your brand name. We offer various services and packages and have great tools and systems in place to protect your name online; it will ultimately help you to have complete control of your business.

How important it is to reply to the reviews?

Replying to reviews on your website is an important part of your online process. It is time that business small and big should start thinking about this seriously. Reviews may be good or bad, responding to them adds to the credibility of the company. It is also a part of your online reputation management that sustains your online image. To remain aloof to reviews is an unprofessional approach which reflects on the reputation of the company.

But what needs to be dealt with care is how you respond to reviews, as part of your business goodwill you need to understand that you are addressing the issue brought up in the review. The review may criticize your way of doing business, and as a responsible business house you need to take it from there while clarifying your position. This move will induce confidence and respect and customers feel privileged that you responded to their likes. Review sites are great platforms to build a solid rapport with your business associates. Responding to reviews generates a feeling that you are taking seriously what is been said, and that you intend fixing the issue.

Reviews are a mirror to your business that shows where your business or brand stands. It clearly shows how people perceive your company. A chance to amend flaws or even mend what is lacking. Lately it has been seen that nearly every company in today’s era pay attention to what is been said online. The race is in keeping the company customer friendly and leaving no stones unturned to achieve that goal. Nevertheless doing so surely enhances the friendliness of the company and builds a positive image. One should be really objective when replying to the reviews, as it’s a part of official dialogue.

Being pro-active in answering to your reviews shows the users that you care about them and this enhances your goodwill. So companies need to take every chance to respond to reviews and critics as this is an integral part of your reputation management.

Reputation management, a solid formula is also essential for small corporations

Is reputation management more important a matter to small businesses than to large corporations? Yes, small companies have a lot more to lose from a storm of negative comments and it can actually destroy them when compared to a multi million dollar firm that has the deep pockets to afford such an awful attack. A small company may not be often able to wait or counteract in accordance with big corporations.

But there is always a solution for small firms to control their online reputation by taking a proactive approach by constantly using organic SEO to boost positive listings in SERPs, address negative publicity swiftly and professionally.

Reputation management has always been a success factor in ensuring a company’s success. Online reputation management involves maintaining your company’s positive image over the web and combating the negative publicity as soon as it arises.

With a plethora of sites through which consumers exchange their ideas, the anonymity that the Internet provides may encourage disgruntled customers to voice the bad experiences with a sole purpose of sabotaging the company in question. Unfortunately no matter how well a business is run, there will always be dissatisfied customers who will take to the Internet no matter how willingly you try to address the situation.

Transparency is always important in managing your online reputation. When faced with such scrutiny, it’s best to address these problems directly instead of hoping or assuming they’ll clear all on their own. Let your customers know what you are doing to improve your company’s brand image and when problems seem to arise, make them know your side of the story as well.

Of course, it’s far easier to have reputation management services from experts and work on building your business and products better.

What can reputation management do for you?

Reputation Management services has become a key aspect for almost all companies. This dynamic service is coming to be regarded as a major boon for all businesses, brands, individuals and products who were victims of this so called reputation crisis. Your company’s reputation might be immaculate at present, but one can’t predict when the situation turns around.

Reputation management services might be something new, but in such a short span of time it has proven its mettle and has got recognition globally. From politician, sports personalities, celebrities, companies to doctors have all embraced it as yet another aspect or PR. It can’t be denied that many companies and brands are benefited with the effective tools of reputation management. No matter its a small business or a Fortune 500 company, reputation management service is meant for all.

It is debated that, the results of these reputation management services comes gradually and not in a haste. Well, to bring your reputation up is a systematic process needs patience, as this is a sensitive area. To promote a brand or key phrase and to optimize it correctly asks for time, and to further push down the negative results and at the same time bringing up positive contents needs a concrete strategy and proper allocation. Meanwhile the use of a pro-active SEO campaign is a smart way to bring up your brand image and reputation in search engines.

Many companies argue that, its really pain staking to sit and watch all negatives about the business, even after resorting to these reputation management services, but they have to understand the sensitivity of the issue. Reputation management campaign works as a process and it slowly weaves a positive image for your brand, making sure the credibility of your brand or company is never lost.

How it works :

After analysing the position of the company online, with the help of the articles, web pages, blogs and  pictures, the reputation management plan is designed.  After judging your present status online and by knowing how people perceive you, the repair works of your online reputation starts off.

As we all know ‘Google’ does an index of new pages fast, so by publishing blogs, web pages and articles about your company we can bring the positive side of your business. As your page gets cached by Google, you can work more stringently to rank those pages on the top searches. It can take a minimum of six months to get the results, but at the end of the day you are satisfied with what Google is coming up with about your company or brand . You have more control of your reputation and that makes all the difference!

How we deal with the Ripoff Report menace

To begin with, let me say that it’s no menace at all. Ripoff Report is just one of the many obstacles that any dedicated reputation management team can overcome. There are clients who approach us all worried about this so-called menace, making inquiries as to how this can be legally handled. Our job begins with explaining to them as to what it’s all about. We tell them that Ripoff Report presents a platform for people to air their grievances and complaints, but obviously people, those with vested interests, make use of the platform to deliberately cause disrepute to a company against which they have a personal grudge or which is a rival on the professional level. Google, or for that matter any search engine, brings that to the fore of searches; simply because this is what search engines are purported to do- work with all focus on keyword optimization and such factors that can be manipulated and worked in favor or against.

Ripoff Report makes it a point to say on their site, “Ripoff Report has been sued on many occasions based on the content which our users have created and posted. If you are considering suing Ripoff Report because of a report which you claim is defamatory, you should be aware that to date, Ripoff Report has never lost such a case (with one exception; explained below). This is because of a federal law called the Communications Decency Act or “CDA”, 47 U.S.C. § 230.”

As reputation managers we know how to deal with Ripoff Report threats that our clients face. We first convince our clients that it’s no menace at all and then set out to tackle it, meeting it face-to-face. We can do better keyword optimization and come up with loads and loads of premium and above-all real positive ones, which can work towards pushing the Ripoff thing down.

This may be a slightly longer process but it is the one thing that works always!

Fame comes with a price – Social conduct and celebrity reputation!

Do you ever think before you act? If not, then better develop a habit of doing so, especially when you are a celebrity or known personality. Your behaviour has an immediate impact on your reputation, it might sound clichéd, but practically it makes a huge difference to your image and reputation.

Usually in case of celebs such reputation disasters occurs when misconducts or anger tarnishes their social image. Being vulnerable, a single false move can bring down the reputation drastically.
Behaviour and social conduct has a lot meaning and value when it comes to celebrities. Always in the limelight, these so called stars are social figures and their acts are watched by millions. Any bad conduct from their end can be axing their own feet. In many instance it has seen that, how celebrity image has fallen down by their misconducts or offensive acts. Whether it’s by being rude to the media or by having a foul mouth, violent behaviour in public is simply disgraceful.

Some of the offensive acts by the celebrities:

  • Lindsay Lohan was recently charged with carrying “contraband” found in her wrecked car.
  • Paris Hilton was sentenced to 45 days in jail for driving on a suspended license.
  • Mel Gibson verbally abusing and slapping his girl friend.

Robert Thompson, a professor of popular culture at Syracuse University said “Celebrities behaving badly is certainly not an uncommon thing to find throughout history and it is certainly not going to fade away.”

To maintain and protect your reputation today is far difficult than the hardships you faced to gain that fame, as the adage goes, “With great power comes great responsibilities”. In the same way, it asks for great responsibility to sustain that fame and glory.

However, if you are looking to rectify your flaws, then we at Reputation Management For.com suggests, a concrete PR strategy and reputation management plan, which will help you to repair your lost image and resurrect from the damages. Reputation management even helps you to manage and enrich your reputation, and also helps to keep track of the status of your reputation. Celebrities and social figures are recommended to shield there reputation with a systematic reputation management plan, especially at a time when social networking has given people the space to air their views easily.

Can the Mel Gibson reputation ever recover?

Mel Gibson is once again in the news, well this time again not for his celebrity image, but the ‘Brave Heart’ actor seems to have lost it all. Gibson has been accused of slapping his ex-girl friend, Oksana Grigorieva twice on her face. If this was not enough, then the recorded racial slurs made by Gibson has put him in probably the worst backlash ever.

The list of charges don’t end here, a former mistress, Violet Kowal also came out with revelation to a magazine that, due to the threats made by Gibson she was forced to leave town and go into hiding for a month. With his super-celebrity status, Gibson has got many controversies to his name; he even made anti-Semitic statements during an arrest, where he hurled racist obscenities at police officers.
The Oscar winning actor is facing a hard time battling it out with all the allegations and charges which has already tarnished his reputation, with plenty of bad press and anger. Though these charges may be a few months old, its damage is still hitting the star’s reputation badly.

Top 21 google search results for Mel Gibson

A glance at the chart and its plain that there are more negative contents and news about the star, with nothing much positive to report on Gibson these days.

At Reputation Management For.com, we feel this could be the end of the road for Mel in reputation terms. While people associated with him are probably re-thinking their ideas about him, Gibson needs to judge the situation well, before doing any further damage to his reputation. His legal and PR team has to settle all the allegations, before it ruins the celebrity status of the actor. If by any chance he comes out clean from all the charges, then he needs to go in for a well-structured reputation management plan to repair the lost reputation and rebuild a positive image among the masses. As Robert Einstein said “Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value”.

How Reputation Management For.com works?

We have written a lot on online reputation management, but this time the topic is going to be  Reputation Management For.com and the business we are doing at  Reputation Management For.com. This because reputation management is now an organised industry, with big business being done.
So what’s special about  Reputation Management For.com?

  • We have been ranked No.2 by topseos.com: topseos.com, an independent authority on search vendors,  has ranked us No.2 among the Best Top 10 Reputation Management Firms in the US for the month of June 2010.
  • We don’t cut corners: We don’t like taking short-cuts or going the easy way. We work hard to win.
  • We move with the times: We move with the times and take in all changes, technology-wise and otherwise too.
  • We work 24×7: Spread across continents and with our team-members working from different countries, we manage to keep it all going 24×7, 365 days a year.

How does it work?

Online Reputation Management is not that simple, but with our expertise and experience, we get to make it all simple. So here’s a list of what all we do, for our clients:

  1. Writing blogs, posting articles etc for you, to make sure you get a real big online presence.
  2. Writing professional online press releases for you, keeping track of all updates concerning you and your company.
  3. Branding. Branding is our forte. We take you for a brand and set out to promote you using all resources available.
  4. Providing quality content, coming from genuine writers who have a passion for writing and who know how SEO works.
  5. Providing full assistance from a team of writers, SEO professionals, designers, programmers et al, spread over different parts of the world.
  6. Making sure your presence is felt in a big way on the social networking zone, focussing on social networking sites and doing social bookmarking too.
  7. Giving top priority to promptness and professionalism.
  8. Using advance technology, tools and gadgets that help track and mend online reputation management.
  9. Interacting frequently and freely with clients, making sure we deliver what they expect from us and also to impart to them the feedback that we get.
  10. Studying things in detail and bettering ourselves so that your trust in Reputation Management For.com remains intact…always.

What makes us different

Well, all this is what every reputation management company does. So, what’s it that makes us different? Let’s take a look

  1. We maintain and mend the online reputation of a client who’s in real big reputation crisis. We have done that many a time and know ways to handle it. We salvage your reputation in the hours of the most severe of crises.
  2. We have been the first to recognise that the age of conventional PR is over and it’s now the age of Reputation Management. We do understand that in modern times, Reputation Management encompasses Public Relations and hence we are masters in Reputation Management as well as PR.
  3. We do day-to-day monitoring of our clients’ online reputation, maintain graphs, charts et al to support this monitoring.
  4. When it comes to using new ideas, new tools etc and making the most of research and analyses, Reputation Management For.com scores high marks.

Reputation Management and HR

Does HR (Human Resource) play an effective role to strengthen your reputation? This has been a long debated topic! Well, being the most essential and valued part of any business HR to a large extent plays an active role in shaping the reputation of your firm. HR represents the company’s reputation internally which is most valued and includes answers to what the employees feels for the company, or do they seek a role in the firm, etc. It may seem a passive factor, but it’s a most vulnerable area, where most companies falter.

Building up a good PR and reputation internally in the company reduces more than half the chances for a firm to risk its reputation.

Monitoring the internal reputation is something which most of the companies overlook; HR needs to analyze the feedback from the employees. To act unaware increases the probability for the company to earn a bad name from its own employees, this further spreads like a virus, damaging the bonhomie. To have an effective HR department reduces the risk of such internal unrest and keeps the company’s reputation protected from any employee criticisms in social networks.

Social media too develops a strong link among employees and the company, bringing in a blog or message board helps to know what the employees are looking for or facing or lacking, and gives the company the space to restructure its plans accordingly. Employees’ interest account most for any firm to stand strong, and if the employees lose trust from the firm then nothing can be done. With over 1 billion blogs and other social networking sites it’s really easy to get a bad name, and when such negative stuff comes out from your own employees’ mouth then the damage is even worse.

Reduce the risk of a bad image for your business and keep your reputation high with happy employees and their positive image of the company with effective Human Resource Management.