There is something about a bad word that makes it very popular by default. A simple example in this regard will be the way in which rumors spread out faster than positive feedback. Reputation management teams all over the world know that when users feel satisfied with the product or service, they generally do not write about it online. On the other hand, if their purchase fails to live up to their expectations, they use the Internet to rant out their dissent. The task of the online reputation management is to tackle and respond to these posts. In a way, reputation management services have to be careful about many other aspects about the mechanics of online backlash.

A very curious point in the whole scheme of things is how online reputation management efforts are received by the users that post negative content online. When brand representatives respond or react to the content, the authors of the posts enjoy the attention. Even if the initial post was based on authentic information, the attention that reputation management services get them encourages the user. The attention may urge the user to go on to write content that does not have any resemblance to reality. They will expect the reputation management team to give their posts undue attention and they bask in the limelight of their work. What’s worse is that other users in the network may be tempted to replicate this dubious reputation! There will be a battery of online writers panning the brand on all available platforms because they want to the epicenter of the reputation management campaign! It will go on to become a logistical nightmare.

How can this be attacked without conceding territory? The online reputation management team has to make decisions based on judgment. The post will command what kind of response the online reputation management services will need to put forward. If the details are correct and authentic, reputation management services can coordinate with the customer care department and provide the solutions. On the other hand, if the author of the post is just posting some wrong gimmicks, you need not provide them the dignity of a response. It would be wiser to gather support in a different avenue. There are numerous channels of communication on the Internet. The reputation management team can generate steam in some other trajectory to cover up the negative posts being written about. A wise way to do that is to use the same keywords that these posts have.

Keywords are pointers to the kind of traffic that you want to receive through your SEO efforts. When the online reputation management team optimizes with keywords that the negative posts are using as well, they are getting into a direct conflict. Then it becomes a case of competition of better optimization. The two worlds are not mutually exclusive anymore. Teams doing reputation management services have to be careful about the search results that they want to target. That is the only way in which they can inject positive posts for the users to read.

On face value it may come across that negative comments about a brand does considerable damage to the reputation. It is the role of the online reputation management team to ensure that the negative comments don’t see the light of day. To make it less poetic, the reputation management team is entrusted with the task of keeping these negative comments and reviews away from the eyes of potential customers because these may deter them from making a purchase. The role of reputation management services gets defined by how much they are successful in burying the unwanted posts in an avalanche of positive reviews in favor of the brand. The flushing out of the negative reviews makes up the main job of reputation management service. However, on closer inspection you will find that the negative comments can come in handy if you can use them for brand building. Here’s how.

Negative comments are testimony that mistakes have been committed. But for that comment to be counted as authentic, the user has to provide proper documentation. Online users are not fooled by any comment arising out of nowhere. If the posts are substantiated by evidence, the online reputation management team can immediately take up the issue with the customer service team. The issue can be resolved to the satisfaction of the person who posted the comment. That will make the consumer happy. On the other hand, the reputation management team gets a chance to showcase how concerned they are about rising up to consumers’ problems. A rejoinder or a follow-up comment beneath the negative post completes the task for reputation management services. The negative comments remain for viewing but so does the message that says the issue was sorted out. People will overlook the mistake, they will remember the solution.

Constructive negative comments keep the brand grounded. When you are flying high, you tend to forget the basics of customer service. That may put off some customers. Their feedback posts tell the online reputation management team if they are going wrong somewhere. While working for a brand, it is difficult for you to realize where you are going haywire unless you get proper feedback. Are the new reputation management tricks working for the brand? Are the customers happier than they used to be? If the answers are negative, you will have more such posts awaiting you online. The key is not to remove these posts from public eyes. The challenge is to ensure that these posts don’t make their way to the Internet. To be able to do that you will have to keep your customers happy.

The negative comments on the Internet will also be helpful for your online reputation management team to take the discussion forward. The writers on the reputation management services team will be able to post replies to the comments and you will be able to take the opportunity to disseminate information. You can talk extensively about your products and services without seeming out of context. You will be able to reach out to varied networks in this way.

What brand users think about your brand, matters in the long run. There will be discussions and sharing of ideas between users of the same products/services. It would be paranoid to think that the exchange will always portray a brand in a negative light. But online reputation management experts must not allow the matter to rest. They have to be vigilant and careful about what the people are saying. The idea for reputation management is simple: highlight the positive content and bury the negative in a deluge of articles and blog posts that speak well of your company. That brings us to the question of why you would want users to speak about your brand when you can hire writers to do the same. It’s true that you will have writers on your reputation management services team to crank out the required amount of content. However, the user generated content hold special importance.

Users like to read and accept what fellow brand users think and write about a particular product/service. The opinion of another user matters more to them than the eloquent articles that online reputation management experts are likely to offer. That is why it is necessary to bring all the positive reviews together and make up a strong case for the brand. The job of the reputation management experts is to blow up the articles and posts for the other users to read. In a way, all that the reputation management services do is act as a facilitator. Their task is to ensure that the user generated content find wide readership. The highlighted content will register better with other users. The content can also be shared on the social media networks. Members of different networking circles will find out about the content and leave comments and notes. These will take the discussion further ahead.

To mould public opinion about a brand, the online reputation management team has to disseminate information. That could be in the form of content written by the in-house writers of the reputation management team or user generated content. When the mud hits the fan, users turn to the brand for credible information. This is the ideal opportunity for the brand to explain their stand. If they realize that a mistake has been committed, owning up to that is often a better idea than stonewalling it away. The reputation management service team can gain public sympathy with an honest apology. However, when they try to cover up tracks and remain elusive, more people commit themselves to dig deeper. That has the danger of throwing up more dirt than there is on that instant.

Getting the public opinion to work in your favor is necessary because they are the ones who will buy your products/services. The success of the online reputation management team has a direct bearing on the revenue earned by the brand. If the reputation management service is able to make the consumer market believe in the brand, there will be more consumers buying. Otherwise, the brand has tough times ahead.

It would be wrong to assume that reputation management is a single-layered work. Other than fixing and maintaining damaged reputations, reputation management services can double up as many other functions as well. That is why having a team to work on your online reputation management is such a wise idea. Brands realize that this process of promoting and marketing has multiple purposes. Because the ways of search engine reputation management are very similar to hardcore SEO work that many firms do, it’s always advisable to placate the two different domains together. It brings about greater synergy between the two separate wings and also makes room for sharing of information and processes. There is a basic difference, of course. While conducting SEO operations, the brands would prefer to use a different set of keywords as opposed to online reputation management services. That will ensure that users with different interests and needs do not overlap on the search results.

What can reputation management achieve for your brand other than doing the obvious? First, it can be the perfect mouthpiece to announce new product launches or updates about the company. The channels of communication that online reputation management creates in the process can be tapped when there is a need to reach out information to select quarters. Do you want your existing brand users to know about a special offer before declaring it openly? You can use the platforms used by online reputation management to bring all your brand users together. You can decide to announce the offer on this platform. It could be in the form of an online content posted on a social media group or community. When you decide to go public, the same post can be used for an online press release. That way, reputation management services manage to make your existing customers feel special and foster brand loyalty.

Second, you be able to use reputation management for various drives and campaigns that boost the reputation of the company among the present and potential users. Brands have to be socially conscious and active to reach that consensus where users feel proud to be associated with it. Eco-drives and environment-friendly programs cut a lot of purchase among the users. What can be a better channel to make this known than through online reputation management? Users will willingly take up a favorable impression about the brand when they come across such news items. Once you mobilize your reputation management services, you will have a entirely fresh and effective tool for brand building and marketing.

Third, the reputation management resources can be used to communicate and interact with the users of your brand. It can act as a second line of customer service. You can deploy your online reputation management agents to speak with the customers and respond to their queries. It is a healthy brand building exercise to respond to feedback and take those into considerations. Feedback can be offered through various tools and platforms like Facebook and Twitter. Such measures will make your consumers more loyal to the brand.

There are different reasons why you need reputation management. The reasons could have something to do with the external or internal brand image of the company. It’s easier to understand the external scenario. To make sales, every brand has to be marketed accordingly. Unless the brand value is established, consumers are not willing to touch any product or service. In a similar vein, the internal reputation of the company is necessary to keep the employees interested in working for the company. They have to be aware of the importance of the job. That shoots up when the brand value escalates. In both these purposes, online reputation management can be a key ingredient. The concept of branding has always been there in the field of marketing. It has established itself as indispensible in the recent times.

First, reputation management reinforces the brand value. If you are not working on the brand for a long while, there is some rust that accumulates. It is the job of the online reputation management to clear it out and also make it possible for the brand users to find information more accessible. A strong online presence is necessary for branding. Consumer surveys will tell you that increased numbers of users are looking up Google and other search engines for information. The job of reputation management services is to pack the SERPs with credible and informative content. The users want to know more about the brand from the website of the brand itself. As a reputation management services team, the primary job is to optimize the brand’s website according to SEO rules. The right kind of information will prevent users from relying on invalid and vested sources.

Second, brands have little left if there is no accountability. Brands have a certain amount of credibility that must never come under threat. If you want users to stay on as brand loyalists, you will have to answer their questions. In an ethical way, the brand is also answerable to the users. Reputation management experts need to realize this need. Users generally tend to overlook serious misgivings about brands and reputation when they are treated honestly. A simple apology for a mistake committed is better than stonewalling queries and avoiding to come clean. Online reputation management must steer clear of all covert operations and inform the users as the situation actually is. Owning up to a mistake does greater good for reputation management services than counter-measures to quell all talk about the crisis.

Third, reputation management campaigns must be directed towards some purpose. You must determine the goal of the online reputation management team before the project starts off. It could be that you want to content with some rumors doing the rounds. In such cases, you will have to use keywords and material specific to the crisis on hand. It is important for reputation management services to have a good base in SEO knowledge. That comes in handy when you want to combat the bad press that search engines throw up. SEO combined with reputation management service is a deadly effective combination.

There can be two ways of conducting online reputation management. One is the proactive way in which the representatives of brand building actively take part in measures to strengthen the reputation of the brand. That can be done through posting positive content about the brand. Another equally powerful way of handling reputation management is to be reactive. In this method, the reputation management services do not pour themselves into frenzied brand building drives. Rather they wait and watch. The measures are taken are mostly responsive. It could mean responding to the posts that are put up by various sources. These sources are generally not connected to the brand. In fact, they may be adversaries that want to put down the reputation that you have among your consumers. Let’s take a quick look at what you can do to be vigilant on the Internet.

First, online reputation management needs to equip itself with the tools provided by the Internet. There are several Web 2.0 tools that the reputation management services can make use of to maintain vigilance. A very useful method is to use Google Alerts. With the help of Google Alerts you will be informed about any mentions of the keywords that you register with. For example, if your brand name is Nokia and you register on the Alert system with ‘Nokia’, every post that is freshly put up with this keyword would be notified to you by email. Reputation management experts have to keep themselves updated with the help of these Alerts. You can also subscribe yourself to the RSS Feeds for information on anything new that crops up.

Second, the agents working on reputation management services have to find out external posts that highlight your brand in a positive light. Surely you will have plenty of satisfied customers and users who will be happy to share their thoughts on your brand. Online reputation management agents can assimilate these posts and highlight them on the Internet. Users like to read reviews written by fellow users. They hold these posts in a credible light as well. When the reputation management agents bookmark these posts on social bookmarking sites like Delicious or Technorati, it allows others in the same network to read the posts. Because you are not directly responsible for what’s written, people accept the posts as genuine.

Third, monitoring and responding to feedback is another aspect of online reputation management services. In this method, the reputation management experts reply to comments and ideas that are shared by the users and network members. The feedback could be in the form of solutions to problems or just additional information for the users to know. It is advisable not to respond to outlandish comments that don’t have any base. If these posts get the dignity of an official response, many readers would be tempted to believe that there is some truth in what it propagates. When you are responding to certain comments, you will have to be careful about your words and choose them judiciously.

When we talk about information for the users, we generally think of a website that has all the offers, services, features and salient aspects listed on their website. We also refer to the numerous blog posts and articles that the representative of the SEO team post online so that searches can throw up appropriate results. But when you are making use of the SEO tools to promote or market information about a brand for the sake of reputation management, there will be some changes in the procedure. The changes can be very basic like the use of a different set of keywords or the use of content to combat the negative comments and posts. It depends on the plan of the online reputation management and how they want to go about doing the job. Let’s take a closer look at what kind of importance information holds in the context of reputation management services.

The importance of information rises from a need. When your brand users come to know about some rumors from the media or from miscellaneous sources, they don’t generally believe it right away. They would rather check up with your website and web pages first before drawing their conclusions. That is the chance that the reputation management experts have to taken on. They have to inform the users about the exact status of the conditions. If the brand has something to say about the crisis, the online reputation management experts will have to make it known through the website. It may be that they have to create a new set of content to cater to those needs. Since the purpose of the content is to inform the users about certain facts that are related to external events and incidents, the writing has to address these issues.

A post coming from the brand owners about a crisis that the brand is embroiled in is expected to have some credible information about the brand. The reputation management team has to ensure that the posts are written with an aim to inform the users. It will be a wise idea to pack the content with information that the users cannot gather from external sources. Online reputation management experts have the advantage of having access to the white papers that make up the documents of a brand. These facts could be used to let the users know about salient features that are not really available to external information banks.

The keywords used for reputation management are different from the ones that are usually used for optimization of the website. When you are conducting online reputation management, people are more interested in the rumors that are doing the rounds. So they are more likely to search with keywords related to the rumors. If the reputation management service team uses these keywords, the users come across the authentic posts on the search results. They will read the positive press and form their opinions. That will be beneficial for the brand as well.

In conducting reputation management services, there will be times when things begin to fall apart, despite your best efforts to control the damage. Every online reputation management campaign should be planned to the T, including a contingency plan should there be any mishaps. There are some basic reasons why a reputation management plan may crumble without making an impact. Let’s explore some of those reasons here:

• Lack of Resources: Depending on the extent of the damage, reputation management services would need resources. Like offline methods would need ad space in papers and bill boards, not to mention TVs and radio, online methods of reputation management also needs channels. You will need content to inform the users. For that to happen, you need quality writers. You will need SEO specialists to promote and market the brand online. Without the support of these resources, the online reputation management campaign does not click. Paucity of resources becomes a serious impediment in terms of manpower for the job. If the crisis goes viral, you will need more stringent measures to control the damage

• Lack of Contingency Plan: Jumping in without a parachute is probably the biggest mistake that online reputation management services can do. Before starting off with reputation management, the experts doing the job need to conduct a thorough investigation of the brand itself. They need to read up all available material so that they know the history and reputation of the brand. When the present crisis hits the fan, more often than not you would find historical records being dug up for events that happened way back. These float up on the surface to complicate things further. Reputation management services would do better to have a back-up plan before they start off work. This Plan B is really handy when your original plan crumbles

• Lack of Research: Online reputation management campaigns will not stand the test of time or the crisis on hand if the executives working on the project have not conducted their research work diligently. When the reputation of a brand begins to taint from allegations and negative rumors, you can trust everyone associated with the brand, not to mention the media, will dig deeper for stories on the brand. Their purpose is to stretch out the bad press and engulf the brand. The job of the reputation management expert is to prevent this and try to protect the brand. You cannot do that unless you know the answers to the questions that users are asking. Once you start rolling the campaign, you will have little time to go back and check your notes.

• Lack of Transparency: A brand that is hit with a crisis is generally looked upon with suspicion. Loyal users look at the brand with a good deal of skepticism. Reputation management experts have to maintain transparency in what they are thinking about the future of the brand. No matter how effective your measures are, you will need the support of your brand users to come out of any crisis. Without taking them into the fold is a big reputation management mistake.

The period of work that online reputation management experts dread is the time when the brand’s image is under threat. Sometimes external events shape the near future of a brand. It could be in a positive or negative way, depending on what happens. In either case, reputation management services have little control over what’s going to happen. More often than not, the external agent causes a dent in the image of the company or the brand. Reputation management teams have to ensure that the damage is limited to a minimum and there is no spread of the bad press in any way. Viral ripple effects of a negative event haunt a brand for years to come. Similarly, once damaged, it is rather difficult to put back the brand’s image as it was before the crisis hit home.

There are some steps that reputation management teams have to take to salvage the brand image and also put an end to the ripple effects of the bad press. First, you will have to assess the extent of the damage. Conduct a thorough research of the brand and how it fell upon the present crisis. Most times you will find the way out of the impasse if you have a good knowledge about the history of the brand. The answer to the solution is there when you think carefully and ponder over the material that you have. This also has a side-effect. The reputation management services department knows what approaches will be suitable for the brand when they look at the past records. They will also have a good idea about the users and what demographics they belong to.

For example, your online reputation management campaigns will not be successful if you are opting for a text-heavy content approach for a brand that mainly caters to senior citizens. In that case, the approach has to lean heavily on images, graphics and animations. Such considerations will help the reputation management team into tapping the right consumers. Dissemination of information is the second big tip for damage control. When users read or find out some adverse comments about your brand, their primal instinct would be to check up your website before drawing definite conclusions. You will have to be ready with the information. Build up micro-sites that contain information specific to the crisis on hand. Optimize these sites with keywords that are tailor-made for users who are looking for information in the same domain.

Third, use tools like social media to build up a positive buzz about your company. The reputation management team has to realize that just like there are detractors on their list, they also have ardent followers. It would be the wisest if the online reputation management experts hand over the megaphone to these brand loyalists. You can be assured that when these brand users speak well about your brand, they will make more credible voices than your best representatives. Users always share ideas before they end up with an opinion. Brand loyalists can influence that.

Incoming search terms for the article:

• reputation damage control

Sorry for the self-citation, (although after all that’s what the blog, for promotion), but I’ll play a column that I sent a couple of months the Journal of Advertising talking about Online Reputation Management.

Lately, many terms are appearing tucked under the umbrella of Web 2.0, but one of the emerging terms that will be very important from the standpoint of advertising online is the reputation and management, which is known as ORM (Online Reputation Management) and Online Reputation Management.The difference between brand and reputation, is that the brand can be built through advertising and such construction is controlled by the company, while the reputation is something that depends not only our company but to anyone who comments on it.

A few years ago, the mechanisms to express a complaint was very little publicly. You could call the radio or write a letter to the editor of a newspaper, but had a very rare chance to hear your voice. Today, people are connected. Internet is open twenty-four hours a day and is increasingly available from different types of devices.With the proliferation social tools (forums, blogs, wikis, social networks, etc), anyone can talk about your brand online, and surely this reference appears when searching for our brand in a search engine. In fact, most world’s most visited web sites are “social”.

So today’s organizations must be aware of what is said about them online.

The weapons you have are a constant monitoring of what is said on the internet and plan optimization (SEO), not only to improve the appearance of our website in the search, but to prevent others from speaking ill of our brand is positioned above our own web. If there is a crisis of reputation, SEO work is essential to relegate the negative results to less visible positions, especially considering that 90% of Internet users see only the first three pages of search results…

The Online Reputation Management goes through different phases:

The first step is to know everything that is said on the internet about a company, product or person … giving more importance to the most relevant or influential. As in the offline world, it is equally important to speak ill of a company with a national television network that a local chain.

The second phase is to analyze the data collected, making a qualitative analysis of what is said and prioritizing the negative messages as the most important for monitoring.

The third phase is to work on negative messages and learn to counter these criticisms if they are constructive.This is a multidisciplinary work is a blend of marketing, public relations and search engine positioning.

When we called the situation as “true online reputation crisis, “it is important to act quickly to avoid the snowball effect: correct the defects as possible and avoid the bad reviews copen the results of search engines.
But is it ethical to try to highlight our strengths over the criticisms that others are pouring?
For some it is an ethical dilemma to highlight good things to cover the poor, but the reality is that people are more likely to post negative things on the internet only, so it is more common criticism, founded or not, but praise. The views are a very powerful business development when they are positive, but disastrous when they are negative.

If you have a 99% satisfied customers, who might never visit a web page to make good comments about you, and only 1% of dissatisfied customers or even your own former employees, and they start a smear campaign against you Internet, it is fair and logical to stay alert and try to correct the consequences. As in a conversation try our best to stop or an elevator pitch trying to sell our project focusing on the good things, it is entirely logical to try to highlight our strengths in Internet.

Finding a negative opinion about a company in the first three pages of Google can do much damage to your reputation online and offline …. The search engines have not only become information seekers, but, increasingly, are seekers of reputation. Brand reputation, business or person.

Who has not written his name in a search engine to see if it appears on any website? You may think that this only applies to big brands, but all brands are subject to an online reputation crisis.
The question should not be if I am exposed to an online reputation crisis but … when I happen?

In fact, as you read this column, potential customers are searching the Internet you … Do you know what happens when you search for your brand in any search?
These are questions that are increasingly responsible marketing and advertising are being made.