What Is Online Reputation Management?

Online reputation management is the process of ensuring that the right information appears when people look you (or the name of your brand) up in search engines like Google, Bing, or Yahoo!, or on social networks like Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn. The idea is to minimize negative content and to promote flattering content.

To achieve this goal, you must monitor search engines and social network and do what you can to mitigate negative comments. When you find negative content, you decrease its visibility by creating enough positive content so that the negative content appears to go away. Or sometimes you can get the relevant webmaster to remove offensive content.

But the best way to eliminate negative content is to make sure it never appears in the first place. In fact, in this book I present a system of online reputation management that focuses on building a positive and proactive fan base before a crisis ever happens.

Effective online reputation management means getting involved with social networks, monitoring those networks closely (rather than just depending on automated monitoring systems like Google Alerts), and responding as quickly as possible in the event of great breaking news or a crisis.

Being proactive

Once upon a time online, before social media networks became mainstream, brands could address negative comments by tracking links and performing damage control. Today, if a crisis isn’t handled correctly, a brand’s image can be brought down in a matter of hours, (yes, hours!) and take months, if not years to recover.

These days, people do most of their socializing (and talking about brands) on social networks like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, YouTube, and Tumblr, to name a few. Your best bet is to be positive and proactive. Start by:

Claiming your brand on these networks

Posting quality information and/or entertaining content periodically

Monitoring networks

Responding warmly to visitors

Social media strategy is this simple on a day-to-day basis. Having a crisis strategy and team in place makes dealing with any issue that may arise ten times easier.

In this book, I show you how to pay attention to what people are saying about you online so you can address why they’re saying it, rather than simply covering it up with positive information.

Maintaining a strong and healthy reputation online makes you more resilient to viral attacks (pun intended).

As new media evolves, the strongest brands will be those that listen closely to what people are saying and who respond quickly with messages that show they are listening and that they understand. Such a response can go a long way. Validating the commenter’s point of view can even build a lasting, durable relationship.

People expect to be heard and understood online more than ever. Smart brands recognize this growing trend and make room for it in their approaches to online reputation management.

Dealing with negativity

Ideally, anyone searching online for you will see warm, glowing comments about you and fascinating articles that demonstrate your expertise. Often, however, this is not the case. Occasionally problems can arise that cloud how your name looks online. Here are some real-life examples, in escalating order:

Remarks from disgruntled friends or business associates. It’s a fact. You can’t please everybody all the time and you’ll go crazy trying to. Some people just aren’t going to be happy no matter what anybody does to try and make it better. Some of them may voice out online.

Leaked personal information. I interviewed a schoolteacher who was fired when a picture of her holding up a wine glass appeared on the Internet. It didn’t matter that she only held the wine glass for a toast at a dignified, off-hours gathering of adults. Even though she wasn’t drinking at school or advocating that her little kiddies in the classroom partake, school officials fired her immediately.

Also, I interviewed a woman who got fired when the law firm she worked for discovered the photograph of her tattoo she’d posted on her “completely private” Facebook profile. It wasn’t even a racy tattoo, by the way!

Group dynamics gone sour. On message boards and social networks, groups can gang up on you. A close friend built a successful web forum but was kicked off when a jealous outsider succeeded in turning the group against her. The outsider hijacked the creator’s own forum and kicked her out.

Embarrassing viral videos. When someone gets the bright idea to upload an embarrassing video, it can make even his employer look bad. If such a video also divulges unflattering corporate secrets, it can inspire viral outrage.

Disaster strikes. During the BP oil spill crisis, online outrage gushed as hard as the leak did — and for much longer. You can bet BP has a solid online reputation management policy in place now, but things would have been much better if the company had been prepared for such a crisis ahead of time.