Forums can serve a great purpose online: communities of link minded or even opposing persons can congregate and exchange ideas and share information. In reality however, this idealic scenario is not the way it goes down. Often times forum users rely on the general anonymity involved to put forth overly excessive venting and ranting against everything from coworkers to neighbors to businesses they’ve had experiences with.

It’s important for companies and individuals who have faced damaging press and incidents in the past, present, or those which have a high likelihood of being “slammed” in the future (e.g. politicians running for office, lawyers taking on a controversial case, etc.) to understand the steps to monitor, defend, and repair their reputation.

• A combination of automation and manual reviews makes widespread reputation monitoring feasible. Monitoring hundreds of thousands of blogs, forums, and news sites for your name in combination with critical information allows for fast-paced response
• By bolstering existing positive content and creating additional trustworthy references through the right channels we can effectively fortify your reputation so that future attacks have less or possibly no impact at all within search results for your name or company name.
• With an in-depth review and analysis as a starting point we are able to pinpoint web pages which contain negative, neutral or unrelated, or positive content. From that point we create a strategic plan for pushing negative results off the first pages by promoting desirable information to the top.

There are additional options, however, that are more specific to the offending forum posts or blog posts.

1. Respond directly to the message with a thoughtful and pleasant message addressing all the issues with care and concern. Show them that you are different than they believe you to be by being genuine – surprise them with eloquence and tact.
2. If you have clients/customers who are die-hard and would not be put off by seeing these comments ask them to leave a truthful testimonial on your behalf. Ask if they’ll send you the testimonial to review first.
3. Email or call the commenter if their contact information is available. Introduce yourself and let them know that you want to attempt to address the issue with them since you believe there is reason for a change in their opinion. It’s important to be extremely cautious with what you say or especially what you write though – you don’t want to arm an unswayable critic with information that can be taken out of context and used against you further.

The key is to carefully approach pushing the issue any further. You never want to wake a sleeping giant. A combination of wisely addressing the issue directly and promoting positive press to the top of forums or search engine results should enable your online image to become an asset to you and your business.

“Woah, what is this person talking about?!? Is this me they are referring to or someone with my same name? Uh-oh, they referred to my professional career – they must be talking about me but that’s not true!”

Sound familiar? While there are plenty of cases where the complaint or criticism is legitimate there are thousands of instances where the information given is completely erroneous.

Unscrupulous competitors or others with a personal vendetta are largely the source of these types of reputation attacks. Unfortunately for the victim, people who read these tirades are unlikely to make that connection and instead are more likely to believe them to be true!

39% of the top 100 results are consumer generated media such as blogs. Blogs and forum results are becoming a major issue for reputation management considering that 75% of searchers don’t go past the first page of results when searching. In general the key is to target Page one and two of search results or in some cases a few more depending on whether the searcher is likely to dig deep.

After interviewing more than 2,300 people, a study by search marketing agency iCrossing, and Harris Interactive found that 77 percent of adults who research online before making a purchase decision use search engines. Forty percent of those conducting online research go to search engines first.

The numbers and potential losing business or damaging relationships are certainly all the motivation that is needed for talking action.

A basic truism – “Perfection is the lowest standard” – applies to just about every business situation. While you want your company, service, or product to be outstanding and offer lots of value to clients and customers, pursuing perfection will not get you very far. In fact, pursuing perfection would guarantee that your company doors would never even open.

Of course, if your company is not perfect, negative results will sometimes occur. The delivery will be delayed, a customer will be billed incorrectly, or an employee will be less than pleasant with an important client. No matter how carefully you structure your business, sometimes your results will be imperfect.

In today’s world, though, one negative result can quickly be broadcast over the Internet. One disgruntled customer can share their negative experiences with hundreds, or even thousands, of potential customers via high-ranking forums, blogs, and social networking sites. The determined customer can even set up a site dedicated to highlighting poor experiences with your company. PayPal, for example, has a high-ranking critical website, PayPalSucks.com. When customers Google PayPal, they often see the detractor’s website as well as the official company website displayed on the same page.

The first step in dealing with irate customers is to realize that bad results do happen. Not every customer will be pleased with your company, and your business will not always be able to offer the best value. When it comes to minimizing the negative results that customer criticism can bring, start with an investigation. Are customers justified in being irate? Are there things your company can change to make customer experiences better? If so, go ahead and make the changes and then advertise those changes online. Customers will not generally hold onto a negative view of your business if you make real efforts to change your best practices.

In the same token, you might want to open discussion with online detractors. Address the poor customer service, apologize where necessary or ask for more information and then find out what can be done to make the customer feel mollified. In many cases, a replacement product, a formal apology, a refund, or a discount on future service is all it takes to make a customer feel better about a bad experience. Once the customer is appeased, they will have no reason to continue broadcasting their bad experience.

If you have several customers making different types of complaints, it may not be feasible to change one or two aspects of your business. For example, if some customers are publicly deriding your high prices while other customers are loudly calling for higher-end products, you may not be able to appease both customers. In cases where the criticism seems especially loud, you may need professionals to monitor and neutralize bad publicity so that you can focus on a bright business future.

Many businesses spend considerable time and money optimizing their sites for search engine rankings and designing websites that will draw in visitors. Unfortunately, as a company, you do not have control over all search engine ranking pages (SERPs). Even if you spend considerable effort on your SEO strategy, the first page of search results for your company name can include detractor’s web sites as well as your own. In fact, if you Google any top company – from McDonald’s to Starbucks – you find not only the official website on the first page of results, but also a flame site or a site designed to “warn” customers away from these companies.

It can be frustrating to build a great website only to see that someone else has designed a website to disparage your company or has created a blog post or has written a forum comment meant to put your company in a bad light. In today’s web 2.0 world, where anyone can publish their thoughts quickly – not to mention anonymously – you simply cannot afford to ignore negative feedback about your business, especially when that feedback ranks high on Google.

Negative comments that rank high on search engine results are a problem because they are so visible. Someone looking for your company online will see not only your official site, but also negative comments about your company. This customer will have to take both into consideration before choosing whether to do business with your company. Unfortunately, online reputations tend to be taken for fact. Any disgruntled employee, customer, or even competitor can post anything about you online. They do not even have to post any evidence about their claims about your company. Despite this, many people will tend to believe negative comments online.

Marketing professionals have run numerous studies showing that potential customers react more strongly to fear than to promise. That is, they are more likely to act on the idea that they will be scammed than on the promise of good service. Statistically, if a customer is faced with two claims about a company – that the company is a scam or that the company provides great service – the customer is more likely to believe the scam claim, since the customer reacts most strongly to fear.

While this is bad news, bad press in search engine results does not have to devastate your company. Once you start to become aware of the negative comments showing up on search engine rankings, you can take action. You can send a cease and desist letter to the owners of flame sites targeting your company and to blogs that post negative and untrue comments about your business. However, this tends to create more bad press about you. A better solution might be to confront the blogs and websites head on, challenging any untrue comments or misinformation. You can also use your own SEO strategy and your own blog to respond to detractors and to ensure that a Google of your company name nets positive comments and real information.

When you Google your company name, what do you see? You may be spending a lot of money on Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for your site and you may be offering a great product, but if your detractors are also using SEO, you may find that criticisms of your business rank just below or even above your own site. What can you do when Google results start ruining your reputation? You have several options:

1. Use your own SEO strategy to keep your site and your feeder sites high on the search engine rankings. Your web design firm can help you get high search engine rankings, so that potential customers looking for your company online will find you – and not your critics – first. Keep in mind that this strategy, used alone, will backfire. Yes, you want good ranking pages that outrank the criticism. However, maintaining high ranking pages costs a lot of money and takes a lot of effort – all without addressing the root of the problem.
2. Stay aware of negative Google results. Set up Google Alerts (at google.com/alerts) and Yahoo Alerts (at alerts.yahoo.com). You will be notified whenever ranking pages using specific keywords are used. You should set up alerts for your brands, product names, company name, and executives’ names. Each time these names are mentioned online, you will hear about it. Be sure to also combine your names with words such as “sucks” and “scam” to specifically find criticisms about your company.
3. Participate in industry forums and online publications. Look especially for forums, ezines, and blogs that rank high in your industry. Make useful comments – not just marketing comments praising your company – and volunteer to be a guest blogger on the top blogs in your industry. All this will help establish you as a credible and trustworthy company, and that can go far towards negating some of that bad press.
4. Address negative comments that rank high on Google. If you do notice negative comments about your company through Google alerts, do not just get angry. Instead, research the allegations made against your company to find out if there is any merit to the claims. If there is not, provide proof and ask for corrections to be made. If the complaints are legitimate, open a discussion with the disgruntled employee or customer. Be honest about the situation and listen to the complaint. Ask specifically what can be done to resolve the situation. Google can be just as powerful an ally for you as for your detractors. Simply start using the major search engine to your advantage.

Social networking sites such as MySpace and YouTube are virtually unavoidable today, when it sometimes seems that everyone you know is on some networking site. Already there are many news stories out about companies running Google searches on potential applicants – and not hiring those applicants with unsavory MySpace pages.

Even if your company’s official Web 2.0 presence is perfectly respectable, though, there are many ways that social networking sites could be damaging your business reputation:

1. Employees and team members may have unsavory pages on social networking sites – and may be identifying themselves with your company.
2. Customers and even competitors may be posting criticism and harmful comments about your business online.

Of course, everyone has the right to express themselves as they like – our Founding Fathers fought hard for freedom of speech – but what happens when that expression is used to put down the business you have spent years building?

Social networking can be a bit of a nightmare, since any pages can be seen by thousands of people in minutes. For example, if your financial department has a MySpace page showing members of your company drinking beer (or worse) that page will be seen by every “friend” linked to that page – and by every friend of every friend. You don’t have to be a mathematical genius to see that those images – which can portray your workplace in a less-than-flattering light – can make their way halfway around the world and back again before you are even aware of their existence.

The first step to halting the problem is to become aware of it. Take a look online to see what search results come up when you Google your company name. Consider hiring a company that can unearth all the search results. Next, call in your team members to talk about social networking. Avoid a confrontational tone, but let employees know that things they may have wanted to keep private may be affecting how they are seen professionally. Encourage your employees to set their settings to “private” on personal social networking sites. This ensures that only invited friends can see these pages.

Encourage your team members to put together professional pages on sites such as LinkedIn. This can help your employees bolster their own professional prospects while helping your company name appear in a more flattering light. You may even wish to have your team members assemble a few social networking pages – on Facebook and MySpace, even – for the company as a whole. This can be a great way to project a professional but slightly more relaxed image of your company. It can also be a great place to counter some of the criticisms that may be lurking out there in cyberspace, aimed at your business. Belonging to social networking sites even allows you to contact those people who post unflattering comments about your company. You can use the opportunity to ask these unhappy customers how your business can make things right.

Blogs have become extremely popular over the past few years. Web logs, or blogs, as they are more popularly known, are online journals that allow bloggers or writers to write about anything and everything. Setting up a blog only takes a few seconds and is generally free via services such as WordPress and LiveJournal.

Blogs can actually be a great benefit to businesses. Many companies are finding that these online sites can be a great way to project a more relaxed and friendly image. Some businesses are setting up not only company blogs, but also blogs for every team member and employee. In short, blogs add personality to your company. With their images, video, and casual conversationalist tone, blogs are also a big hit with readers. Potential customers and clients may be interested in hearing what your employees and team members have to say. It doesn’t hurt that blogs add more links that direct traffic to your website.

The fact that everyone and anyone can have a blog can be a problem, though. The ease with which blogs can be established means that anyone can set up a blog exclusively devoted to criticizing your business. Worse, blogs can be anonymous and can rank devastatingly high on search engines. Since these blogs can be fun to read, they may also get many readers. Many blogs allow readers to leave comments as well, and comments on blogs supporting negative messages about your business can lend credence to the claims made against your company.

If you notice blogs that cast your business in a bad light, your first priority should be to determine where the criticism is coming from. Is the blogger a former customer with a legitimate complaint? Is the blogger a business rival? Read the blog carefully to determine the overall tone and the message being sent. Check to see how popular the blog is with viewers as well.

If the blogger has a legitimate complaint, look up the blogger’s email address on the blog and send the author a polite email asking what can be done to clear up the issue. Keep in mind that the blogger may choose to post your email on his or her blog, so choose your wording carefully. You don’t want to add fodder to the blogger’s rage. Your aim is to resolve the problem gracefully and completely so that the blogger feels good about changing his or her views about your company.

You can also use blogging in a positive way to bolster your online reputation – no matter who is making negative comments about you online. One way you can use blogs to your advantage is to make polite and helpful comments on other blogs in your industry. This helps establish your credibility and ensures that negative blog comments aren’t the only ones out there related to your business. You can also use your own blog to project a sincere and positive image about your business.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) was established to help protect investors by establishing fair markets. The SEC allows anyone to make a complaint about possible potential securities law violations. This means that if you are an investment manager or investment banker, someone could make a complaint about you to the SEC. If you are a publicly traded company and an employee’s job ends, that employee can also complain to the SEC if the job termination was the result of the employee knowing about and wanting to report potential shareholder fraud.

Unfortunately, anyone can make complaints to the SEC – including disgruntled employees and competitors. The SEC promises to investigate allegations carefully. However, if the SEC feels that there is merit in a claim it will place the name of the offending employer, investment manager, or investment banker on the SEC.gov website and in the financial archives. This information can be found through Google and other archives.

If you have a bad SEC listing, it is very difficult to change, even if the problem has been resolved or even if there has been a mistake in having your business listed on SEC at all. In some cases, SEC listings remain even after a company has undergone a complete overhaul and those responsible for shareholder fraud and securities law violations have long left. Worse, SEC listings tend to rank very high in search engines, even years later, making it very hard for a business to improve its image.

One of the first things you should do is to work with the SEC to ensure that they have all the information they need to ensure that they make the correct judgment. If there is no basis for the complaint, make sure that you send evidence to the SEC and ask that this information is included on the website. It may take some time to work everything out with the SEC, but you need to stay friendly and professional – as well as persistent. Do not allow a bad SEC listing to exist if the claims made against you are groundless. Use your blog, website, and other online means to share with your visitors the facts about the situation.

If the SEC listing is, unfortunately, accurate, then you will need to clean house first. Change your practices so that they are transparent and start distancing your company from whatever influence caused the problem in the first place. Share all the new changes with your customers and clients via your website and blog. Apologize and explain why this will never happen again. It will take longer to establish trust if your SEC listing was justified, but a good SEO strategy and a sincere and transparent approach to business practices will go a long way towards bolstering your reputation.