How to Recover from a Negative Online Presence

Let’s face it – before doing business with a company, ordering something online, or hiring a candidate for a job – we all do it. We Google. We search the company, brand, or person and make a judgment based on what we find. If what we find is good, it confirms our actions of completing a purchase, or hiring that person. If what we find is negative however, it’s unsettling and has us rethinking our initial judgments towards that business or person. In fact, 45% of people have found something in a Google search that made them decide to not do business with someone.

If you haven’t done this recently, Google your organization and check the first-page results. If the results are negative, fixing the damage done should be a priority. You should never underestimate the cost of a poor reputation. Customers searching for your business will likely begin on a search engine and how they perceive you will be reflected in these first-page results.

In the event you find the negative comments to be damaging but accurate, it’s important to understand reputation management can only do so much. Your organization will need to look at the underlying cause in order to see a long term change in how your brand is viewed. Reputation management is a process; it doesn’t change overnight and the more negative your online persona, the harder it may be to turn things around. So what can you do if your online reputation has been damaged?

Get Social

Creating a social profile is vital in today’s digital world. Not only is it free, but these platforms hold valuable space in the search engine rankings. Social networking allows you to connect and engage with customers, and generally these platforms are a good way to gage the temperature of how your customers feel about you.

While social profiles should push any negative content further down in the search results, this doesn’t mean you should go and sign up for five or six different platforms. Selecting the right social network(s) for your business is important. Check out our overview of each social network here.

Blogging

The best way to overcome negative information is to create your own information. Creating valuable content in the form of a blog (or a video blog) will get your brand out there on the web. Blogging can not only keep your site updated and relevant, but it can also help identify your brand as a leader in your industry if done correctly.

Publishing about trends, experiences, and other topics associated with your company (as opposed to trying to promote yourself all the time) can attract more traffic and will help you with your online reputation by ranking higher in the search results and further pushing down negative content.

Video content ranks even higher than a traditional blog on Google, so if you have a product that is demonstrable and an online customer base that is willing to post videos, encouraging them to create content for you is a win-win.

Monitor Yourself

Getting in front of any unflattering conversations early and setting the record straight is one of the most important things you can do from a reputation management stand point. To do this, you must first set up listening tools on social media (such as Mention or Topsy) and Google to understand which conversations you’re being mentioned in.

By creating an alert with Google Alerts, the search engine will notify you every time it picks up content with your brands name. If this content mentions your brand in any unflattering or inaccurate way, address these promptly and appropriately.

TIP: Smart companies know to also follow their competitors with listening tools such as Google Alerts, so that if something big in your industry does happen, you can be proactive and get in front of it before it has the chance to catch you off guard.

Develop a Public Relations Strategy

We live in a digital world where anyone can publish anything they like. User generated content is increasingly taking up our news feeds and search results, so it shouldn’t be a surprise that any issue can blow up, even if a major news outlet doesn’t pick it up. So how do you stop this before it starts, and what do you do once it’s begun?

The first step is to get a public relations strategy in place. This will identify how to best use every online platform and how to engage appropriately in conversations where your brand could be at risk or is mentioned negatively.

But a PR strategy does more than that, it takes control of the conversation. It will assess the risk of various events and implement timely solutions so that your brand recovers, and if possible, comes out on top.

TIP: Having a public relations strategy in place is a best practice for all companies, regardless of your size or industry. Doing so once your company is in the middle of a sticky situation is often referred to as crisis management. By developing a strategic communications approach to begin with, in many cases, you can avoid a crisis.