Reputation Management - What are People Saying About You?

Most people are not familiar with reputation management, until it hits them full in the face.  Movie stars and public relations firms are quite aware of it, as it comes with the territory.  However, as your business grows or you and your services become more widely known, you too should be familiar with reputation management and the ways to protect yourself.

Wikipedia does a great job of providing a definition of it, as seen below:

"Reputation management is the process of tracking an entity's actions and other entities' opinions about those actions; reporting on those actions and opinions; and reacting to that report creating a feedback loop. All entities involved are generally people, but that need not always be the case. Other examples of entities include animals, businesses, or even locations or materials. The tracking and reporting may range from word-of-mouth to statistical analysis of thousands of data points.

Reputation management has come into wide use with the advent of widespread computing. This is evidenced by a recent front page story in the Washington Post featuring several online reputation management firms."

In this day and age, the most effective method of spreading an opinion (good or bad) about something is via the internet.  Some of  the most common methods are via:

• A blog
• Wikipedia
• A website
• Forums
• Email

There are numorous stories of people using (or modifying existing) Wikipedia pages to defame someone else, such as a politition.  There are also stories of people creating websites, such as BestBuySucks.com to defame whole companies.  Often these sites would be a source for former employees or customers to vent about bad experiences.  In addtion, people will spread malicious rumors about others via forum posts and email campaigns.  Some of the these rumors will be eligible for lawsuit, however others may be protected by the First Amendment. 

How do you protect yourself?

You could hire a firm to provide reputation management services or public relations, to help improve and defend your standing.  On the other hand, you can use other tools that are freely available to protect yourself.

• Always answer questions or concerns from your customers or others quickly and respectfully to prevent abuse of your reputation.  This is just a good thing to do anyway! 
  
  
• One of the tricks that I use is to monitor the feedback (Bizrate, Amazon, Ebay, Yahoo! Reviews, etc) of competitors and pay special attention to the negative feedback.  I then do whatever I can to improve on the their negativity (faster shipment, personalized notes, better packaging, quick/friendly response).
  
  
• Buy your business domains, including [enter business name]sucks.com and your first and last name.
  
  
• If you have a Wikipedia page, monitor it for changes.  If you do not have one, you may want to create one to provide a resource for people.
  
  
• Use Google Alerts to monitor your business name and personal name and any links to your site.  You can do the same with Yahoo! as well.
  
  
• Use an RSS feed based upon a search to tell you when news about you pops up.
  
  
• Create your own search engine to monitor yourself and your business.
  
  
• Monitor the latest trends that may effect your reputation or that of your competitors at Google Suggest and see what’s most commonly searched. Or try Google Trends for the latest search query trends.

What to do if you find something negative

• Try to correct factually incorrect statement and ask for a retraction.
  
  
• Allow your friends and family to rally around you and spread the word.
  
  
• Always be friendly, respectful, and professional in how you handle yourself.  Catch your breath and take a moment to collect your thoughts before responding. 
  
  
• Choose your battles wisely.  Some things just aren't worth your time and energy.
  
  
• Explain your side of the story, if possible.  Post a rebuttal to newspaper articles.  Don't let others just walk all over you.
  
  
• If it is true, do not hide.  Instead, explain what you are doing to rectify the situation.  And then rectify it.
  
  
• If worse comes to worse, hire a lawyer for advice and possible action.

In conlusion

Be proactive and protect yourself.  Be honest and open in business, just as you are in life.  After all, you are your own best friend!