Today it is common knowledge that before doing business with you, people first look you up on Google and other search engines. If they come across anything negative — be it true or false — they’ll go to your competitor. You have to make sure your clients only see the positive about your business by eliminating negative material from your top search results. Negative or adverse information could include:
- Misleading news articles
- Derogatory blog posts
- Over-critical reviews
- Adverse forum comments
- Forgotten legal issues
- Outright smear campaigns
It is your responsibility to protect and preserve your online reputation. It is to be observed that search engines like Google act a lot like tabloid news weeklies — they invariably rank pages in order of popularity.
Google your company name to know what’s being said on the internet about your business. Remember that anyone can post rumors and fake reviews online, any time — including your competitors and other disgruntled employees. Please also remember that the longer negative material is on the Internet, the more damage it can cause — a recent study found that one bad online review can cut about 8you’re your sales turnover.
Try to monitor your reviews from one dashboard. Use Google Alerts to know new mentions of your company. You must constantly track your online reputation as internet is a double-edged sword.
On the Internet, it’s what you don’t know that can hurt you. So you should be searching the entire Web for specific mentions of your business. You should learn the art of making your positive stuff go up and burying all bad stuff. There are web-based dashboard aggregates business’ online reviews for easy monitoring and management.
There is an entire ORM industry dedicated to making adverse information on the Internet quietly disappear and making positive information about a person or a company look totally legitimate, even when they’re just PR spin.
ORM business is highly paying – particularly so, given the nature of the internet and social media.
The secret of ORM is to trick the search engines, mainly Google, into suppressing adverse news low in the search results while leaving positive news up high.
You have to write positive articles, launch web sites to promote those articles, and suppress fake reviews, biased Wikipedia articles, nasty comments and unflattering links on blogs and other sites.
Reputation management is used by a wide range of people and companies, from brick & mortar shops major business houses to celebrities, politicians, lawyers, and even tech giants.