With the right amount of collaboration, PR firms and Online Reputation Management firms can work together seamlessly; relying on each other’s unique skills to produce the best outcome for the client.

The mutual goal is to fortify and present a natural, positive set of search results for the client’s branded searches. This type of online public relations campaign also functions to counteract any negative or questionable content ranking in the search results.

While a PR firm knows the client inside and out and can effectively produce content representing the client’s brand, Brand Titan understands how to optimize and package the content so that it has the strongest potential for a web presence. In other words, the PR firm knows the intricacies of the client’s brand messaging and can convey that in all the various materials Brand Titan will promote to the top of search engines. Without being as close as the firm is to the client and working with them for as long as the PR firm has, an online reputation management firm could not do as good of a job on the content development.

On the other hand, with over 8 years of search engine optimization experience and a team of trained link development personnel; Brand Titan can act as the online marketing arm for the PR firm. Brand Titan will effectively optimize and manage content related to the client’s brand; establishing a strong web presence.

Table A: The following chart shows the various stages of an online reputation management campaign and how each organization works seamlessly together to achieve optimal results.

In result, the partnership covers the breadth of client relationship management, content development that adheres to brand management criteria, search engine optimization and content distribution, and link building which is the crux of search engine rankings.

For example, issuing press releases alone will not suffice to dominate the top search results for the client’s brand. It’s variation in content placement, SEO technique, and solid, consistent link development that makes the difference.

In other words, an online reputation management firm like Brand Titan fills the gap and allows for the PR firms content to go the extra mile. And, the work that a PR firm is a vital part of the success and helps Brand Titan exceed goals and expectations for clients; achieving faster results and operating more efficiently as a whole.

As displayed in the chart, the relationship between and online reputation management firm and PR firm is symbiotic in that the PR firm is critical in content development and messaging while the online reputation management firm is able to optimize content and the page on which the content resides.

As a result of the collaboration of their PR firm and Online Reputation Management firm, the top 20 results for the client’s brand will consist of content controlled by the client.

Online reputation management might be the newest online marketing strategy on the block, but it’s certainly not a new idea. Before comparing online reputation management to the offline world, it’s best to define the exact goal of online reputation management. The idea is to fortify the search results for your brand name with positive web assets in order to leverage the organic search traffic. By positioning positive web assets in the top 20 results and taking control of these results, you will likely be able to bump down negative content. Recent trends are showing an influx of online consumer activism. Websites like The Rip-Off Report, Pissed Consumer, Consumer Affairs, Complaints Board and My3Cents are channels for consumers to use in order to turn a complaint into a thorn in the side of the targeted business. Thus, fortifying your search results becomes increasingly important to building business.

Sample of a bad / negative result for a major keyword or search term

With this new ability for consumers to speak out, there are those who take advantage of the system. Disgruntled employees and competitors can easily post a negative review about a business and before long, the negative post is ranking in the top 3 search results for the targeted brand. Or, a company who has served 249,999 happy customers but didn’t do so well with one customer, finds this customer venting frustrations online. We’ve seen losses reported as much as a 10% in revenue as a result of the negative content.

Now that the importance of positioning positive, meaningful, business producing web results in the top 20 search results for your brand is understood, how does it relate to the world as we’ve known it for the past 50 years; before the Internet?

• Before the Internet, angry customers picket in front of your business for days at a time warding off customers from entering. This practice still goes on. However, angry protestors go away once the dispute is settled. These days, an angry customer can post their frustrations in one of many online consumer forums. When it comes to negative posts on sites such as the Rip-Off Report, this content will linger for years and years.
• Before the Internet, negative press would show-up in the daily newspaper or nightly news and then go away. These days, in the unfortunate scenario of receiving negative press, the press sticks with the business forever by showing up in search results. It’s difficult to shake the negative story associated with your brand if there is relevance from the perspective of the search engine. (Read When Bad Reviews and Complaints Attack to learn more about this.)

Online results don’t go away until you take action and engage in an online marketing campaign with a company like Brand Titan.

The importance of online reputation management

Search traffic is happening now. People are searching for your brand. Doesn’t it make sense to position or fortify your search results with positive, business generating web results? Next time you search for a well-known brand, take a look at the top 10 search results and determine if they’ve made an effort to leverage or funnel in the natural search traffic for their brand. Most of the time, we do not see companies investing in what seems to be one of the most important marketing strategies there is. More often than not, the main website will show-up at the top with 9 random web results following. Even worse, one or more of those results might be a negative press hit, consumer complaint or even a competitive website.

Comparing again with life before the internet, have you ever noticed how Macys or Nordstrom’s invests heavily for street side displays for the window shoppers. It’s the same idea. There is foot traffic walking by the building so why not capture that traffic and lure them in to the store by creating a beautiful fashion display. Natural search traffic can be captured in the same way.

The point is, whether a business has negative search results or not, leverage the search traffic for your brand by positioning positive, meaningful, business generating web pages in the top 10 – 20 search results for your brand. Take advantage of the window shopper. Leverage from the foot traffic. And, most of all, prepare for the next strike. Don’t let the protestors with picket signs run off your customers. If you already have online “protestors,” then it’s not too late to engage in an online reputation management campaign.

Contact Brand Titan to fortify the top 20 search results for your brand. It’s smart marketing protecting the most important asset you have, your brand.

A

Alerts - as in Google Alerts is a free service which can better one’s awareness of new content containing specific keywords. Examples of terms which can be tracked are names, company names, and product names. Data is monitored from Google web search, blog search, video, groups, and news search.

B

Blog - Also known as weblogs or web journals; often used by people to publish their personal writings. Blogs are now commonly used by corporations as well to communicate with consumers, fans, and critics alike. Because of today’s technology blogs have become fairly simple to setup and thus millions of people blog on a daily basis. Blogs have become a conduit for personal opinions; both good and bad.

C

CGM - Consumer Generated Media - (CGM) originated as a reference to discussions started by consumers within online venues such as online forums, blogs, wikis, discussion lists etc., on products that they have purchased or services they have used. Shoppers and consumers who are researching products and services often rely on other consumers’ opinions when making buying decisions.

The term has evolved to include video, audio and multimedia posts created by consumers in support (or negative parody/in-protest) of products, brands and corporate institutions.

Popular Consumer Generated Content Sites: · http://ripoffreport.com/ · http://www.epinions.com/ · http://www.rateitall.com/

Negative CGM - Criticism generated by consumers which appears on blogs or rating and review related websites.

Positive CGM - Positive reviews, ratings, and commentary posted by consumers.

D

E

F

Flickr (flickr.com) - a Yahoo! operated website which allows users to upload, tag, and store photographs in various resolutions. Flickr allows comments on photographs and thus should be monitored for brand related photographs coinciding with negative comments.

Forums - Online discussion boards exist for nearly every topic and niche. Users create accounts and are then able to post new discussion topics or reply to existing topics. Forums are hotbeds for brand and reputation bashing.

G

Google Pages - A free personal webspace hosting service by Google. Users can create profiles which tend to rank highly in search results due to their being attached to the “google.com” domain. See http://pages.google.com/ for more information.

Groups - Online groups range in size from 2 members to hundreds of thousands of members for broader topics. Internet giants such as Google, Yahoo, and MSN all have their own web-based group software.

Google Trends - Updated daily, this Google custom search engine focuses on keywords whose frequency of use has risen dramatically. Learn more at http://www.google.com/trends

H

I

J

K

L

LinkedIn.com - A network for building business and professional profiles with connections to peers, colleagues, co-workers, and others. LinkedIn allows users to determine how they are connected to any given person, if they are connected in any way (i.e. You are connected to John Smith by your colleague Jessica Johnson). Learn more at http://www.linkedin.com/

M

Moreover.com - Offers real-time tracking of more than 250,000 news articles per day. Learn more at http://www.moreover.com/

Myspace - The largest social networking website in the world. Acquired by News Corp, Inc in July of 2005, Myspace has grown immensely. Users create profiles, add friends, blog and add content to the network. Learn more at http://www.myspace.com/

N

O

Opinmind.com - A site tracking opinions of more than 5 million bloggers. http://opinmind.com/

ORM - An acronym for online reputation management. Commonly referred to as brand reputation management, or search engine reputation management in reference to controlling how a brand is perceived by Internet users. Full scale management can include everything from promoting positive content to the top of search engine results to creating and managing interactive profiles on major social networking websites.

P

Q

R

Rollyo.com - A service allowing users to create their own search engines with results restricted to sites they know and trust. For example a “news” search engine could be created which will only return results from the domains cnn.com, fox.com, msnbc.msn.com, etc. Create an engine at http://rollyo.com/.

S

T

U

URL - An acronym for uniform resource locator. URLs are generally used for web page addresses. A URL could be the location a profile page on Myspace, the homepage of Google, etc.

V

W

X

Y

Z

For our purposes we generally classify negative publicity into two categories:

1. Online negative publicity - Any negative publicity that appears on the internet 2. Offline negative publicity - Any negative publicity that happens outside of the internet. Examples include: within media such as newspapers, TV Ads, magazines etc. Often times this negative press is duplicated on the online version of the particular media (e.g. the newspaper’s website).

Resistance to New Ideas, Products or Services

Innovative people and companies often face harsh criticism when they release new ideas or products. The negative press and discussions that occur at this time can often linger on even after the idea, product or service was found to be a success.

So whether it’s competitors who attempted to downplay the new information or actual consumers who simply thought it wouldn’t be a hit… you are likely to find some forms of dissent lingering on blogs, forums, industry hangouts and similar websites.

Negative Reviews and Ratings by Clients or Consumers

Unfortunately people are much more likely to spare a moment to leave a damaging review or rating on a consumer opinions site than they are to leave a positive reference for a job well done. Most people who tend to see a negative rating which appears sincere would be startled to learn that there are countless individuals who simply leave nothing but negative comments. We’ve seen this type of “trolling” first hand – apparently NOTHING works well, provides good service, or has value in the eyes of some.

Rumors and Gossip Online

Certain professions or personal lifestyles may lead to speculation about you becoming a sport for others. Rumors and gossip are most prevalent on blogs and forums where discussions are started and visitors can chime in with their comments. Keep tabs on what blogs or forums your peers/colleagues/critics frequent or even possibly publish themselves.

Outdated Information

A troubled reputation from yesteryear (or a decade ago for that matter) can resurface out of nowhere with today’s digitization of prior print media. Old newspaper archives are constantly being scanned and published online for example. What you or your company did long ago may still have damaging effects even if you feel you have redeemed yourself or your company’s name after all this time.

Private Life Becomes Public

That college photograph of you doing a kegstand? A hazy memory. Photos of a risqué Halloween outfit? Scary! Excerpts from a loveletter posted by a vengeful ex? Tearjerking. All of these private things are just a few examples of the types of private content that somehow manage to materialize on the web every day unbeknownst to the subjects – generally until a really important time such as a new job interview, a new relationship being formed, an investor doing due diligence; the list goes on.

So what can You Do to Defend your Reputation?

Brand Titan offers a reputation protection product which is aimed to fortify the good press, the positive recommendations, or your own accurate webpage in order for that content to command and maintain the topmost positions on the search engines. With the doorway to most negative content largely being search engines this proactive approach vastly improves the chance that a past indiscretion or even old inaccurate information does not find the prying eyes of those researching you or your company’s name.

Online reputation management should be done with professional help and a well thought out plan of action. Reputation management gone wrong has the potential to create a worse scenario than the original reason the campaign was initiated.

Let’s take an example of a company which offers to “DESTROY” negative content for less than $30.00 per month. Even by off-shore pricing standards, at best that would buy 3 hours of time by an educated and technically savvy employee. Doesn’t leave much room for supervision or a personalized approach that won’t offend those who published this critical information does it?

Here’s the fine print:

You authorize us to take such action on your behalf, and to identify ourselves as acting on your behalf…The Customer also acknowledges and accepts the risk that [company name withheld] may not succeed in effecting the removal and/or alteration of any Internet content about the Customer…You recognize that such contact may have unpredictable side-effects, including but not limited to negative responses from others.

Great, so for $30.00 we’ll end up getting flamed by bloggers after we actually think they’ll say “sure, I strongly dislike this person/company for what they did, but since you asked nicely I’ll remove my comments.”. Somehow it’s conceivable they often refer clients to that paragraph in the fine print.

Now in terms of a ORM company using a statement similar to the one above it’s common practice and only makes sense since the wrong person discovering the campaign could genuinely incite a PR nightmare or at the least may just augment the negative comment with more damaging content. That being said, the difference in our approach lies in the fact that we do not open channels of communication with bloggers or critics which clearly have no interest in resolving the issue. Our indirect strategy results in a de-emphasis of the visibility of negative press without the high-risk associated with “stirring the pot”.

And just what exactly can “stirring the pot” do? Well, perhaps a better phrase might be “poking the hive”. Take this example which was featured in the press as an example of reputation defense backfiring: The google search for “Ronnie Segev” or copy/paste this URL: http://www.google.com/search?q=Ronnie+Segev

One such result is entitled “Evil: Ronnie Segev & [**company name**] Can Eat A D***” a clear blow to both the client and the company representing his quest to clean up his online reputation. Additionally reports of his Wikipedia entry being “cleaned up” are repetitiously displayed throughout the next few pages of search engine results.

So what are the Safest Ways to Get Rid of Bad Press?

First, work with a company that understands the sensitive nature of the problem. Understand that considerable resources and expertise need to be devoted to your project if success is to be achieved and disaster averted. In life and in business there is little more valuable than your reputation and being prepared to pay a premium to confidently move towards protecting or improving your reputation is the first step towards a serious reputation management campaign.