Reputation Management Tips from Around the Web
Glen Allsopp / 
16 Comments / 
May 27th, 2008 / 
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The collective thoughts of multiple people usually means you are going to get some more advanced and interesting information than that of talking about something yourself. Therefore, I thought it would be a good idea to ask some of the biggest names in internet marketing to share any reputation management tips they have.
Needless to say, I think we have came up with a nice amount of quality information here that anyone can benefit from.
Reputation Management Tips
The number one thing that has helped me manage my online reputation is by participating in relevant, search engine friendly online communities consistently under my own name. Establishing links through communities is probably the number one way to help push trust to a specific page for a specific name, especially in context with another modifier, such as a search for “joe blow seo” versus just “joe blow.” You can of course do this with more than one page/site, and it is possible to re-establish specific relevance if you move jobs, for example.
Online reputation management [in the search results] is not about burying negative stories, it’s about promoting positive stories. Trying to out-rank negative stories with profile pages is ok, but you don’t want a page full of spammy profile pages ranking. Instead generate positive stories which puts your side of the story across and promote those instead.
I’ve got a few that help keep your / your client’s / whoever’s reputation in line. There’s Google Alerts, which sometimes get a bit overwhelming if you’re mentioned a lot, but are really useful if your very interested in every mention of your brand across the web.
There’s also the obvious but little-used trick of keeping an eye on your misspellings. For example, I get referred to as Jane Copeland a fair bit. I bet people often spell your first name with too many “n”s and surname too few “p”s! It can be tougher to think of misspellings for others’ names and brands, but people will find a way to spell virtually everything incorrectly.
As for repairing reputations, I think that a combination of honesty and restraint come in handy. Sometimes, it’s best to apologise, but sometimes it’s best not to get involved in criticism as it can fan the fire. I’m often not popular for saying that, but I’ve found it works.
Predict future searches and put content online now so that you aren’t “Catching up” when you have a reputation management issue in the future.
Many companies have a PR team that has rules in place on how to handle a PR nightmare, so why shouldn’t the same be true of online reputation? Put into place those rules and set up content or resources online now so that you can prevent negative blog posts or news items by providing resources to disgruntled consumers. If you have a resource online that is so good that you have prevented someone from negatively speaking up, then you have succeeded at preventative reputation management.
Create a lot of social media profiles to try and dominate the SERPs with your brand and push down any negative results about your company.
The best way I know of to manage one’s online reputation is to be detached and not control anyone’s response. This means that if you write something that people find offensive, accept responsibility for that. If someone blasts you online, try to not come out with raised fists. In some situations, I ask myself, “Is it true, is it necessary, is it kind?” if I feel a need to respond. This helps to keep me in check, so I don’t go off and say or do something I’ll later regret.
Biggest tip - do your homework. Then you won’t have a reputation problem to deal with (for the most part).
Take advantage of universal search, unless you happen to have the same name as a celebrity, sports, or other historical figure chances are you’ll be able to rank for your own name with a YouTube video pretty easily.
Remember the early days of the web when everyone was petrified about domain squatting, while the law is now in your favour be sure to keep an eye open for people passing themselves off as your company on emerging social media platforms. Only last week I found the biggest Facebook page about Tesco was being run by a cunning affiliate trying to make some mullah every time someone did their food shopping. Subscribe to techcrunch or one of the other new media websites and when a new site takes off go and nab your name.
Use Summize Sentiment to see what the sentiment on twitter is about yourself, your client or your product. Alot of conversations are moving to twitter, so you can use this tool to gauge how the overall sentiment of the conversation is. In addition to using google web, image, news & blogs searches, perform searches at summize and tweetscan and sign up for an rss feed for those searches.
Search the web for different communities that caters to your industry, join and become active. By creating positive content around your brand you can further solidify it from people trying to tarnish your image.
I’ve been doing Online Reputation Management for more than 5 years…. I began monitoring it when my first eCommerce site went live. Of course, the way I do it has evolved, but the reason behind it has been the same…. to make sure that I stay on top of what is being discussed about my products online. And, If I notice something that could harm my brand I act fast.
We have so many amazing tools to monitor our products, our company, our name… there is no excuse not to do it. At the very least you should be using Google Alerts and Feeds to watch over your online reputation.
Ignoring Online Reputation Management is easy, but think about it this way…. if you heard someone speaking about you or your company in an untrue or unfair way would you ignore it? Of course not. Listen to the opinions of others and make sure to respond to them. There are millions in the online world that could make or break you. If you aren’t going to defend your brand…. who is?
In Summary
Who knows how long all of these tips will be applicable, but that can be said for any industry online. The factors that helps websites rank now is not going to be the same in 2-3 years from now but take action on what you do know.
Thanks to everyone who took part!
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Nice round-up, Glen. Good work.
Tom’s traveling at the moment, but I’ll make sure he sees his name in lights when he gets back.
Thanks
Will
How about “Do no Evil” and I do not mean just to say it like Google does, but care about your customers and your brand!
If you have a good product no need to manage your bad reputation!
Remember it is very easy to destroy a reputation!
All it takes is a dedicated person who has a grudge against a company for whatever reason.
If that person can get other people on board for their cause, a company does not stand a chance, no matter how small or big it is!
But if you made a mistake admit it and fix the problem. Hey nobody is perfect, we all make mistakes! If we want others to forgive us, we need to learn how to forgive as well.
Good Karma!
some people have held a good reputation because they havent been exposed for anything. so their smiles and words are seemingly enough to make them seem worthy of praise. too many people fall for that ‘golly gee’ thing. it’s certainly one of the most persuasive marketing tools, so it is used and abused.
if and when that changes, as more people are under a microscope, then as igorthetroll says, admit it, make ammends and repair the damages. if not, you are simply showing a different nature than what you have placed in ‘face’ up to that point, and it is your won fault when you are made to look like an *ss.
prevention and ethics are the best rep management tools. if you use ‘golly gee. im such a good person / businessman’, be the ‘face’ you show.
Cool compilation and thanks for including me, I think that came from the Less Everything blog. The post was sparked by a specific situation we had that claimed we were the “first blue widget” of our kind. This wasn’t the case and the web let us know it! Replacing those results quickly became a full time job and caused instant backlash from competitors getting coverage for their blue widgets.
After recovery mode I realized this problem is more common than anyone can imagine. So, my plea to the world has been… do your homework! Don’t claim to be the best, first, most efficient, etc unless you are and then it’s fair game.
=)
Hey Glen thanks for the use of my quote.
I just found this in the “Hot” section at Sphinn…kudos on a nice collection of advice!
I agree with the things that were mentioned here..having a good online reputation..you must know how to interact and participate on online communities..also I agree with Tom that being an authority on the certain doesn’t mean that you will show it off by voting negative stories..I think what’s more important is digging up positive stories.
Great round up Glen! I especially like Martin’s inclusion of Summize - what a great tool!
Nice mix of experts. Thanks
PS Some reality http://twitter.com/oilman/statuses/778941646 :)))
Using some help from your article, Glen, I just posted 150+ Resources and Tips To Help Manage Your Reputation Online. Thanks!
Nice compilation. Reputation management has indeed become a very serious topic for large organizations who are available on Web 2.0 platforms.
I remember Andy Beal saying, “Your reputation can be destroyed in hours by a blogger, upset with your company.”
Here’s another source of tips on reputation management from Michael Fertik, Bob Pearson and more: http://vizedu.com/2009/01/reputation-management/
We work hard to run an honest business and build a good brand, but there will be times when even the most sincere brands will face a disgrunted and unsatisfied customer.
In the olden days this customer would write angry letters to the CEO, and spread the bad word about your brand and services through his network of friends and peers. The damage they could do as an individual was relatively low.
Today, this customer can easily start a negative blog about your company (e.g. yourbrand.blogspot.com), or initiate a new topic on a public forum to trash your brand, and even use the services of online customer complaint websites like http://www.ripoffreport.com/, http://www.complaintsboard.com/ to hit you where it hurts most.
Now, not all negative publicity starts with the customer, your brand could easily be a victim of a brand-hijacking or spam attack orchestrated by your competitor to drag your goodwill down the drain.
Either way, your brand image and reputation online is at stake here.
How does this affect my brand?
Today online buyers of products, services or information, often search for your brand name to check for negative reports and previous complaints before deciding to do business with you. So when a potential customer is searching for your brand, other than finding your website, he will find the negative branding and complaints as well listed on the search results page.
Search engines give a lot of ranking prominence to complaints, and to sites like ripoffreport.com etc to protect their users from the many fraudulent brands and ill-managed companies online. Since these complaint sites have a high page rank and reputation, they are often misused and can cause damage to your brand reputation.
An easy way to check if your brand is under “attack” is to type your brand name, or brand name.com in the search box and see the results. You can also track your brand reputation by setting up a Google Alert for your brand name/s, so when there is any news about your brand, you get the information immediately, and can take corrective action.
What to do when facing negative publicity? Is preparation is better than cure
1. Assuming you are a sincere company, first always try to talk to the customer and see if you can sort out the problem, even if the customer has already been taking extra effort to spoil your brand reputation. Something it’s as simple as listening to your customer’s complaints and trying to resolve them can make the bad publicity go away like a bad dream. Plus you have a happy customer now, who will be more than eager to retract their negative comments from their personal blog, public forum or complaints sites.
2. If the customer is not responding to your requests to make peace, then try and reduce the affect of the negative comments by telling your side of the story, with a little peace offering (discount coupon, gift certificate etc) for the irritate customer. Other users will see this as a positive thing – that your brand is willing to take an extra step to resolve issues with unhappy customers.
3. Sometimes you can’t please everyone no matter how hard you try, and it’s time to take corrective measures immediately. “The best way to beat negative publicity is to increase the positive publicity”.
4. Get your happy customers to give you a testimonial, and display the testimonials on your website and blog. People always say good things and bad things about any brand; the idea is to get more of the good stuff visible for other potential customers to see.
5. Creating great content that can rank highly will surely push the negative stuff further down the search listings.
6. Participate by writing on prominent article submissions sites like ezinearticles, articlesbase, goarticles etc. Create an account with your company name, and give your company profile in the space for author, and a neat link back to your website.
7. Build your social reputation by promoting your content across social bookmarking sites like dig, delicious, propeller, reddit, folkd, furl it, blink list etc.
8. Release some good PR using prominent PR submissions sites like PrWeb, and get your brand name in the title of the press releases. In addition if a journalist picks up your press release for his publication, that’s a ton of positive publicity right there.
9. Create mini-brands for your brand by creating your company profiles on websites like hubpages, squidoo, aboutus, wiki, facebook, twitter etc and participating actively in these communities.
10. Start a corporate blog. Other than search engines loving you for your content, you can use the blog to spread the good word about your company, while offering other useful information. Ask you existing customers to take a satisfaction poll on the blog?
11. Create innovative videos of your promos, how to resources, training videos etc and submit to sites like YouTube. If you videos become popular, then your brand becomes popular.
12. Hire an Expert SEO, or a SEO company thats has the experience and understanding to manage your brand reputataion online.
13. Preparation is better than Cure. Even if your brand is safe right now from negative attacks, don’t wait till it happens. Use the ideas listed above to build a better brand and a stronger brand online. Start today!