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Internet blogging has given individuals unprecedented access and free distribution of written content and opinion.  This is both a blessing and a curse depending on the content and target of the written piece.  The need for Internet Reputation Management has sky-rocketed in response to business owners who find themselves confronted with highly visible commentary of their business on  Google, Yahoo and MSN searches.   

Business owners often feel helpless in protecting their online reputation from valid blog posts and  negative posts planted by competitors.  On the flip side, businesses often fail to leverage positive commentary and testimonials posted on the Internet. Having a proactive strategy for disseminating positive commentary can often be the best defense against future negative attacks.

Internet Reputation Management services have a bright future. New web content is growing in direct relation to the explosive growth of social networking portals.   Each month new tools are being made available to allow a non-technical Internet user to create their own website, blog and social networking portal.  With the ease at which content can be created, organized and shared on the Internet, business owners need to be mindful of what is being written about their company.

Free Basic Reputation Tracking Tools

Protecting your reputation on the Internet can start with using a simple and effective tool called “Google Alerts”. Once you create a free Google account, you can enter specific search phrases into your own watch list.  Google will then send you an email with links to articles that include the phrases in your watch list.  You can request notifications as they happen or summarized daily, weekly or monthly. I would recommend that you start with the “as it happens” choice for a week, and then decide if you want to move it to “once a day”.

For our company, our watch list includes ‘Brian Pasch”, “Pasch Consulting”, “Pasch Consulting Group”, and “NJ SEO”. We also include in our watch list some of the buzz words in the niches we cover.  For our Automotive Marketing Division our watch list includes: “Automotive SEO”, “Automotive Digital Marketing”, “Car Dealer Websites” and “Automotive SEO Specialist”.  We use Google Alerts for both reputation management as well as tracking what other companies are posting in our competitive space.

Creating your Reputation Management Watch List

 A recommended strategy for a business watch list would include your business name, your product names and the names of your key executives.  Knowing what is being said, both positive and negative, is the first step in creating a sustained reputation management plan.

Your Internet Reputation Management strategy should have a clear escalation plan for positive and negative commentary.  Positive commentary should be evaluated and the very best should be included on your own company blog or website news page.  You may want to get permission from the individual to repurpose their commentary in your marketing materials.

Negative content should have an immediate response strategy which is best handled by a seasoned SEO and Reputation Management Consultant (RPC). Every post will have a different strategy depending on where the post was made and the policies of the website host.

Reputation Management for Professional Services

Recently, a New York City executive coaching and placement firm called the Pasch Consulting Group about a barrage of vicious attacks on the firm’s founder and on the services they offer for executives in transition.  The negative posts were well planned and well placed so that they appeared on Google Page One, when consumers issued a search on the company name.  The CEO said that these comments were directly hurting their business and needed immediate relief.

 The company’s lawyer had already pursued legal action against the individual who posted the verbal assaults under different names and aliases.  This disgruntled individual eventually signed a retraction letter and promised to stop this Internet reputation attack.  In reality, he never stopped posting.  So we were called in to help. Within 30 days we were able to have the most visible articles removed from the various websites. We also found additional negative posts on business portal sites that we were able to remove directly.

PCG created an offensive plan to get articles posted about the hundreds of satisfied clients the company had from its long history.  For this client, they never invested the time to post their client testimonials and case studies on the Internet.  Using various techniques, PCG was able to add significant content in Google page 1 and 2 for searches on their company name.

Reputation Management for Car Dealers

For Automotive Dealers, online reputation management must be part of your Internet Marketing Strategy to protect your PMA from neighboring car dealers.  If a car dealer’s visible Internet reputation is poor, consumers may very well shop at a neighboring dealership.  

I have seen posts on the Internet that were outlandish and shocking.  If I were in the market to buy a car, these negative posts would give me second thoughts about buying from certain dealers.  It only takes a few angry consumers to make any dealership look like the devil.  You can search Google yourself to find dealers being called racist, discriminatory and deceptive. 

Often, consumers have a choice between two dealers that are 15 miles apart. If one car dealer has glowing reputation scores and one has low scores, reputation can sway their final pick.  I recognize that other factors play a part in that final decision like price, convenience and availability.  However, if your Internet reputation can be improved, taking remedial action is mandatory to continue to grow your Internet sales leads.

Sites like DealerRater.com, Yahoo Local, Insider Pages, Google Maps and Yelp all have review engines that can appear on Google Page One when consumers search your business name.  General Managers need to implement a system to regularly request positive review from their customers.  This can include new car customers as well as service customers.

Businesses should create a list of all review pages in an email and send these links to satisfied customers.  The email should request that they post an honest review of your company.  Do not attempt to post customer reviews from your own business computers.  Many of these sites track IP addresses and you could be banned from the directory for review spamming.

Empowering Your Satisfied Customers

Reputation Management requires both an offensive and defensive strategy.  The longer your offensive strategy is in place, the harder it is for negative commentary to drastically affect your business.  If you have been lax at posting positive commentary, then ANY negative commentary will look out of proportion.

Business owners can no longer ignore public commentary and commercial review websites.  A restaurant owner that has a comment posted on the Internet about a food poisoning episode, without balanced commentary, will be affected for consumers looking to try a new restaurant using Internet based searches.   A hotel that has posts about dirty bed linens and mildew will see their online bookings drop.  Simply stated, any post with your company name needs to be reviewed.

The Pasch Consulting Group has effective methodologies and strategies to assist business owners in implementing  a solid reputation management action plan.  If you would like additional information, visit http://www.paschconsulting.com

Why does one page on RipOffReport.com or ComplaintsBoard.com come up on Google Page One?

First of all, the name of these websites, when they appear on a page of search results for your business name, is enough to unnerve you alone. When your business name and RipOffReport.com is in the title of a Google search result page, it immediately implies that you have done something wrong.  When these complaint posts are resolved to the satisfaction of the consumer, you will find that the post still stays up.  You might infer that the end game of these websites it to have something “bad” on every business name to drive traffic to their advertising campaigns.

Second, these websites make their living off of being sensational and controversial, so don’t expect any common courtesy or concern as to how a post is negatively affecting your business.  The owners of these websites get daily threats and letters from lawyers but most are ignored.  This can be incredibly frustrating especially when businesses could be losing hundreds or thousands of dollars each week the post remains visible. 

Is there any protection from your competitors who decide to make false reports?  Not really.  If someone wants to attack there are numerous ways to defame another company anonymously.  So what is a company to do when the Internet has created a virtual soapbox for anyone to instantly create a negative global message? 

Companies need to have a strategy that includes offensive and defense measures to control what consumers are writing about them on the Internet.  Companies that stand to be hurt by sites like:

• 1. www.ripoffreport.com
• 2. www.complaintsboard.com
• 3. www.pissedconsumer.com

should implement a proactive Internet Reputation Management strategy that includes positive reviews on the Internet to create a balanced view of their company and its products or services.

The defensive elements of an Internet Reputation Management strategy would start with ensuring that your business listing is correctly represented in all the top consumer review websites.  Once this task has been completed, an email needs to be drafted to your customers that would request and simplify the task of posting positive reviews on these sites. 

The customer participation email should have a few versions since there are so many places that you will eventually want to have reviews. You would not want to have only one version that shows links to 10 different review websites; it would overwhelm your customers.  I would recommend that you don’t put more than 3 choices in a customer email.

Since there are about a dozen websites that should be considered for your IRM platform, your first email could link to the highest value review sites like Google, Yahoo and Yelp.  Once these websites had ample reviews posted, you could send a second version of the email to target sites like InsiderPages, CitySearch and JudysBook.  The goal will be to have at least six positive reviews on the most popular public portals in your industry.

Do your research since every industry has specific high value web review properties.  For car dealers, that website is www.dealerrater.com.  For restaurants, they have a few high value sites like www.opentable.com and www.chowhound.com .  So, in addition to the big national review websites, don’t overlook industry specific websites.

Keep in mind that only REAL customers should be posting.  Often computer IP addresses are checked when a review is posted so 10 reviews from the same IP address would most likely raise a flag and the posts would be removed. 

Fake reviews are often easy to spot.  Encourage your customers to be specific in their reviews and write about whom they dealt with in your company and what was their specific interaction with your business. In your email, ask them to close the review with their full name and the State/City they live in.  By adding a name the post has an extra degree of credibility rather than a review being signed as “J. Smith”.

The offensive elements of an Internet Reputation Management (IRM) campaign will be proprietary to the firm that you hire to assist you with your specific problem.  However, in effect, an Internet Reputation Management consultant will often employ highly focused SEO strategies and content publishing platforms to push these negative reviews off of page one.

If you have not carefully reviewed what has been written about your business on the Internet, take the time to assign that task immediately.  Then formulate a company IRM policy that addresses any immediate needs and protects your business from future attacks. Ignorance in this area of Internet Marketing can be costly.

For more information on Internet Reputation Management, visit http://www.automotiveirm.com/