Staying Ahead of the Curve in Reputation Management

You really never know when negative consumer generated media is going to be splashed across the web. A classic example of this phenomenon was the YouTube video titled, “United Breaks Guitars”. Generated by a disgruntled passenger that had a guitar damaged by United Airlines, the video received millions of views, spawned a cottage industry, and resulted in a sequel that was choreographed and professionally produced. Unfortunately for United, a late and weak response left them as the butt of a long running joke that still plays out on a daily basis. rnAs the United Airlines example shows, negative content can come out of the woodwork, go viral, and cause a lot of mayhem. This content can be posted on blogs, forums, and social media sites and reach large audiences in no time. If the content is optimized using keywords commonly used to search for a company, the odds are high that potential customers, employers, business partners, and/or investors will come across prominently placed negative content when they search using the same keywords. Due to the ease of posting negative content it has become imperative for companies of all sizes to protect their brands, products, and services using proactive online reputation management. These proactive measures include: Monitoring news and social media – The monitoring of blogs, the news, and social media can provide early intelligence to companies so that they can stay ahead of the curve. Monitoring allows for a fast response, interaction with customers, and can enable the company to guide ongoing conversations about the negative content toward a more constructive level. Proactive reputation management based SEO –. The aim of proactive reputation management based SEO is to establish as much positive content on the front of the results pages as possible. Taking up this space is great for marketing purposes and can make it much more difficult for negative content to make it on to the high visibility ranks of the front pages. Develop a contingency plan for initiating a reputation management plan – While you will need to add details depending on the nature of the negative items, having a framework in place to deal with it will speed your reaction time. Minimizing the impact of negative content is much more likely when proactive measures have been set up in advance. The Gervais Group specializes in setting up these advance measures to provide reputation protection. For a free initial consultation on protecting your company’s reputation, visit: http://www.reputationmanagementllc.com/