Nearly all organizations try to develop brands that will stand the test of time. No one thinking correctly will hand over millions to buy a brand if it has been mismanaged. Do you own a brand that people absolutely hate? Examples of these would be the model Ford Pinto that was released in 1976. If people still remember just how bad this car model was.. and it’s already the year 2010.. you definitely have a problem.
Business or brand value normally has to do with revenue. If your company is being merged with someone else, chances are, they are trying to expand market share and acquire new customers. Your company reputation, popular brands, and profitable product/service lines are key things that they investigate.
Nowadays, just being on the net can give you as much money or even more compared to just being a traditional brick and mortar business. While it’s easy for a global audience to contact you, your reputation online could be under constant attack by all sorts of gossip, damaging rumors, and damaging reviews.
You may select to ignore these. Apart from the fact that they basically can vanish as swiftly as they cropped up, these are probably not from people that are not influential enough that it can, in fact, damage the brand. Keep in mind, however, that it short bite-sized content that is tantamount to slander and libel from a ton of people can put all the hard work you put in your brand in jeopardy.
Some people choose to manage this problem through the justice system. A threat to file a case against the people or person responsible for the offensive content might change their minds. But really contemplate when thinking about doing this, since it can harm you and your brand more than you can imagine. It’s possible you could win the battle but your brand may not win the war. In fact, you may even lose a lot of customers while it is ongoing.
That’s why companies with brand protection high in their priority maintain professionals who are tasked to manage online reputation with diligence and online vigilance to keep them abreast of what’s being said about their brand online. There are internet tools that do this tracking well. Once the slightest upsurge in negative content starts to appear, they start harnessing search engine reputation management to neutralize the threat.
Handling online reputation means nipping it in the bud before it gets out of control. Search engine optimization strategies can easily overwhelm offensive web content and bring them five or ten pages down search results. Douse offensive defamation slander content with cold water before it does significant damage to your reputation.
What does online reputation management mean? It is really all about safeguarding you and your brand. The earliest time that you can detect and do something about the negative online content about your brand floating around the web, the better. Hire search engine optimization experts who are experts at manage online reputation repair services, according to linkmanagement, for instance, to help you with reputation.
For businesses seeking to establish or maintain a presence on the internet, high rankings on search engines such as Google or Yahoo are an absolute necessity. The high rankings virtually guarantee that visitors will be able find that business for the purpose of gathering information prior to purchase, buying a product or service, or researching a subject. It is also at the search engine level that competitors may attempt to gain an edge by engaging in negative information campaigns to damage a company’s reputation, sow seeds of distrust in the eyes of visitors, or denigrate a company’s products and services.
The anonymity provided by the web allows these types of campaigns to take many forms and come from many different sources. Smear campaigns, false accusations, stories of product malfunctions, and outright lies can be spread around the internet by competing companies, unhappy ex-employees, or anyone else trying to benefit either financially, personally, or both from sullying the reputation of the targeted company. These negative campaigns also take time, effort, and money to be seen on search engines and, as such, are typically directed by other corporations.
Corporation driven attacks are usually conducted using complaint boards, blogs, forums, and many other venues where postings, regardless of how untruthful they may be, are published and then search engine optimized to appear with as high a ranking as possible. The negative content is utilized to cause doubt, create confusion or “un-sell” a product or service while steering the consumer to a site carrying their own messaging and products. To make matters worse, these attacks don’t just go away.
Conclusion
Online Reputation Management is critical to protecting you, your business, brand and your companies professional image and reputation online. In today’s search-centric society, it’s very likely that most of your potential customers will do their research online by conducting a search, prior to contacting you. If you think this doesn’t happen then think again! It’s very common and people are looking you up online before they engage your services.
What they will find on the first few pages of Google could have a large impact on whether they will perceive you to be a trusted professional or service. Most businesses want their customers to search for them, but if customers find negative reviews, or comments their search could do more damage to your reputation than good.
Similar to how our Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) service enables your content to achieve high-ranking search results, our Online Reputation Management service offers the reverse for negative online material or bad reviews
If you’ve received a poor review, or noticed nasty, malicious comments, it could be costing your company customers and a lot of money. Once identified, we are able to ‘bury’ these negative reviews and comments so deep that the majority of users won’t be able to find them. Basically, we get rid of it and this is the basis of online reputation management.
