Business Learning Center

Your company’s reputation means everything.

As founding father Ben Franklin once said “It takes many good deeds to build a good reputation, and only one bad one to lose it.”

Anyone doing business with you or even thinking about doing business with you will go to Google or another major search engine and research you and your company. What they find in the search results will determine whether you have a new client/customer or whether someone has been driven away by negative comments and an overall negative perception of you, your company and your executives.

Where companies only used to have to worry about bad coverage in the press or on television, the Internet has opened up thousands of platforms where your company’s name can be attacked.

Tiger Woods could certainly use some brand management.

Virtually anybody can become a “publisher,” by using a personal website, a blog or any one of a dozen major social media sites to broadcast their opinions to the world. Companies can be hit hard by competitors, former employees, rejected job applicants and disgruntled current employees.

Anyone can claim they got food poisoning at a restaurant, were ripped off by an appliance store, or received terrible legal advice from a lawyer. Content on websites, blogs, social media venues is picked up by search engines no matter how dubious the source.

Key Steps You Need to Take to Enhance Your Online Reputation

So, how does a company go about protecting its online reputation?

Over the years, we at Blue Fountain Media have found that clients’ reputations are best served when they are able to drown out negative statements online with positive ones. To do this, you need to build a strong, positive online presence.

The key is creating multiple channels for getting the most positive word out about your company:

1.Your Company Website

If your company doesn’t already have an online presence, then immediately build yourself a website. Your company’s website is almost invariably the first place your potential clients will go to check you out.

This doesn’t have to be an expensive proposition. So long as you do not plan on doing online business (ecommerce), then your company’s website is essentially an online brochure.

Be sure to include examples of your best work. The more positive testimonials you can post, the better.

2.Micro sites

Along with your main website, create satellite websites that are specific to the work your company does. This gives more sites featuring your company’s name and more places for search engines to find you. Companies can create micro site for charitable work, for special events or for promotion of a new product or service offering.

3.Your Company Blog

A blog gives you the opportunity to tell your story in the most positive way. It gives you an opportunity to put a “face” on your company. It gives you a terrific forum to:

• Talk about new products
• Tout success stories
• Announce special deals
• Talk about recent company developments

More importantly, the blog will often show up as a secondary result below your main website on search engine result pages.

4.Social Media Accounts

There is a misconception out there that social media sites like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube (videos) and Flickr (photographs) are just for teenagers and college students. Social media site are great platforms for providing information to current customers, branding, attracting new customers and for seeing what the competition is up to.

If your executives have personal social media accounts, then you should have policies about what is posted on them. Photographs of key executives drunk or if there are offensive statements made my executives on the site, it will present a very negative image to the outside world.

Your accounts on each of these social media venues are not only searchable, but tend to come up very high on search engine results. Encourage your clients and customers to come to these accounts to keep up on what you are doing. This is another great avenue for pushing out positive news about your company.

5.Establish Yourself as an Expert

Social media gives you the opportunity to get your expertise out to the world. By contributing comments to news stories and blogs and answers to questions online about issues where you can display your expertise gives you another forum for a positive online presence. When your name or your company’s name is attached to these posts, the positive content is picked up by search engines.

Even better, if you can establish yourself as an expert columnist on a major industry site, you only will this add to your online presence, it gives you a great marketing tool.

6.Press Releases

Whenever there is positive news about your company, get it out into the world. Success stories, new product lines, charity efforts… they are all worth promoting. Unlike traditional press releases that just went to major news outlets, online press releases go out to the internet universe and are picked up both by search engines and by online news aggregators.

7.Dealing with Criticism Head-On

When Your Company is at Fault

If there is a legitimate complaint against your company or any of your employees, the best advice is to deal with the problem head-on.

Everyone makes mistakes. How you deal with the mistakes you’ve made can make all the difference in the world. If you know the identity of the person making the complaint or criticism, then try to personally engage them. Get to the root of the problem; be candid, open and apologetic.

If you are at fault, then fix the problem. People really do appreciate it when a brand is responsive.

If there has been a major problem with an entire product line (i.e. a re-call), then keep people informed about the steps being taken to fix the problem and how people affected by the problem will be compensated.

When the Negative Statements are Lies

If, on the other hand, the complaint or criticism of your company is not legitimate, then you have several choices to make.

First, you must decide whether the individual or group you are dealing with can be engaged. Can you get the person to change their mind about the attitude toward your company? Can you get a formal retraction? Sometimes, complaints are the results of simple misunderstandings.

If these false accusations are showing up in search results, besides using SEO to fight it off, you can use paid search placements to push content that will prove your innocence. In most cases, the cost-per-click for keywords related to your company name can be quite low.

In Conclusion

When it comes to your online reputation, it pays to be both vigilant and pro-active. Even if your company has never been attacked online, it makes sense to create a vast network of positive messages about your company. By flooding the Internet with these positive messages, any negative messages can be lost or at least well hidden.

Gabriel Shaoolian is the CEO and Founder of Blue Fountain Media, a results-driven website design and online marketing company based in Union Square, New York City.